Social Studies

The Social Studies Curriculum
FOURTH EDITION
The Social Studies Curriculum
Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities
FOURTH EDITION
Edited by
E. Wayne Ross
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The social studies curriculum : purposes, problems, and possibilities / edited by

E. Wayne Ross. — Fourth edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5317-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5316-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
E-ISBN 978-1-4384-5318-7 (ebook)
1. Social sciences—Study and teaching (Elementary)—Curricula—United States.
2. Social sciences—Study and teaching (Secondary)—Curricula—United States.
3. Curriculum planning—United States. I. Ross, E. Wayne.
LB1584.S6373 2014
372.83044—dc23 2013043968
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of Adam Renner (1970–2010)
Teacher, Scholar, Activist, Leader, Friend, Lover of Life
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
Part I
Purposes of the Social Studies Curriculum
1 Social Studies Curriculum Migration: Confronting Challenges

in the 21st Century 3
C. Gregg Jorgensen
2 Social Studies Curriculum and Teaching in the Era of

Standardization 25
E. Wayne Ross, Sandra Mathison, and Kevin D. Vinson
3 Creating Authentic Spaces for Democratic Social Studies Education 51

Christopher Leahey
4 “Capitalism Is for the Body, Religion Is for the Soul”:

Insurgent Social Studies for the 22nd Century 71
Abraham P. DeLeon
Part II
Social Issues and the Social Studies Curriculum
5 Dangerous Citizenship 93
E. Wayne Ross and Kevin D. Vinson
6 Teaching Students to Think about Patriotism 127

Joel Westheimer
7 Ecological Democracy: An Environmental Approach to

Citizenship Education 139
Neil O. Houser
viii Contents
8 Native Studies, Praxis, and the Public Good 161

Four Arrows (Wahinkpe Topa)
9 Marxism and Critical Multicultural Social Studies: Redux 181

Curry Stephenson Malott and Marc Pruyn
10 Prejudice, Racism, and the Social Studies Curriculum 203

Jack L. Nelson and Valerie Ooka Pang
11 The Language of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality and

Youth Experiences in Schools 227
Lisa W. Loutzenheiser
Part III
The Social Studies Curriculum in Practice
12 Making Assessment Work for Teaching and Learning 247

Sandra Mathison
13 Why Inquiry? 267

Doug Selwyn
14 Beyond Fearing the Savage: Responding to Islamophobia 289

in the Classroom
Özlem Sensoy
15 Class Struggle in the Classroom 313

Gregory Queen
16 Critical Media Literacy and Social Studies: Paying Heed to

Orwell and Huxley 335
Paul Orlowski
17 Teaching Democracy: What Schools Need to Do 353

Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer
Part IV
Conclusion
18 Remaking the Social Studies Curriculum 375

E. Wayne Ross
Contributors 389
Name Index 397
Subject Index 411

Illustrations
Figures
Figure 6.1 Teaching Students to Think about Patriotism 135

Figure 13.1 What Makes a Good Inquiry Project? 277
Figure 16.1 Left and Right on Social and Economic Spectra 346
Tables
Table 8.1 Dialectic versus Dialogic Approaches to Social Studies

Teaching 173
Table 12.1 Description of Approaches to Assessment 257
Table 12.2 Object-based Inquiry, an Illustration of
Performance Assessment Linked to Curricular Goals 259
Table 17.1 Common Features of Successful Civic Education Programs 361
ix
Preface
The Fourth Edition of The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Pos-
sibilities appears 22 years after the First Edition, and over the years I have sought
to include chapters that address perennial as well as contemporary issues that affect
the field. Like previous editions, this edition has some familiar topics and authors,
but also includes many new contributions, reflecting changing contexts and the
evolution of social studies education.
This edition includes 12 new chapters on: the history of the social studies; cre-
ating spaces for democratic social studies; citizenship education; anarchist-inspired
transformative social studies; patriotism; ecological democracy; Native studies;
inquiry teaching; Islamophobia; capitalism and class struggle; gender, sex, sexual-
ity, and youth experiences in school; and critical media literacy. Chapters carried
over from the Third Edition have been substantially revised and updated, includ-
ing those on: teaching in the age of curriculum standardization and high-stakes
testing; critical multicultural social studies; prejudice and racism; assessment; and
teaching democracy.
The aim of this collection of essays is to encourage readers to reconsider their
assumptions and understanding about the origins, purposes, nature, and possibili-
ties of the social studies curriculum. Curriculum is much more than subject matter
knowledge—a collection of facts and generalizations from history and the social
science disciplines to be passed on to students. The curriculum is what students
experience. It is dynamic and inclusive of the interactions among students, teachers,
subject matter, and the context. The true measure of success in any social studies
course or program will be found in its effects on individual students’ thinking
and actions as well as the communities to which students belong. Teachers are the
key component in any curriculum improvement and it is my hope that his book
provides social studies teachers with perspectives, insights, and knowledge that are
beneficial in their continued growth as professional educators.
I am very appreciative to all the authors who made contributions to this
and previous editions of the book, including: Jane Bernard-Powers, Margaret Smith
Crocco, Abraham DeLeon, Terrie Epstein, Ronald W. Evans, Linda Farr Darling,
Stephen C. Fleury, Four Arrows (aka Don T. Jacobs), Kristi Fragnoli, Rich Gibson,
xi
xii Preface
Neil O. Houser, David W. Hursh, Kevin Jennings, C. Gregg Jorgensen, Lisa W.

Loutzenheiser, Joseph Kahne, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Christopher Leahey, Curry
Stephenson Malott, Perry M. Marker, Sandra Mathison, Cameron McCarthy,
Merry Merryfield, Jack L. Nelson, Nel Noddings, Paul Orlowski, Valerie Ooka
Pang, J. Michael Peterson, Marc Pruyn, Gregory Queen, Frances Rains, David
Warren Saxe, Doug Selwyn, Özlem Sensoy, Binaya Subedi, Brenda Trofanenko,
Kevin D. Vinson, Walter Werner, Joel Westheimer, and Michael Whelan. Each
one of these contributors is an exemplary scholar and educator, and their work
has had a tremendous impact on my own thinking and practice, as well as that
of many other educators.
I would also like to thank all the folks at SUNY Press who have worked on
the book over the years, and in particular acknowledge Beth Bouloukos, Eileen
Nizer, and Ryan Morris for their invaluable contributions to the fourth edition.
It has been a privilege to collaborate with many great scholars over the
years on a variety of projects, including Celoa Ross Baber, Jeffrey W. Cornett,
Abe DeLeon, Steve Fleury, David Gabbard, David Hursh, Kathleen Kesson, Gail
McCutcheon, João Paraskeva, Val Pang, Stephen Petrina, Ken Saltman, Patrick
Shannon, Larry Stedman, Ken Teitelbaum, and John F. Welsh.
All the folks in, and around, The Rouge Forum have continued to be a
huge inspiration to me as a scholar, teacher, and activist, most especially Brad
Porfilio, Faith Agostinone Wilson, Gina Steins, Bryan Reinholdt, Joe Wegwert,
Greg Queen, Amber Goslee, Doug Selwyn, Dennis Carlson, C. Gregg Jorgensen,
and Adam Renner (1970–2010).
Rich Gibson, Kevin Vinson, and Perry Marker are more than just social
studies education colleagues, they are longtime friends, whom I cherish, even if
we disagree about the designated hitter rule in the American League.
Rachel Layne Ross and John Colin Mathison Ross make me a proud dad,
I love them dearly.
Sandra Mathison is the love of my life. She gives me everything I need,
and much, much more.
E. Wayne Ross
Vancouver, British Columbia
Part I
Purposes of the Social Studies Curriculum

1
Social Studies Curriculum Migration

Confronting Challenges in the 21st Century
C. Gregg Jorgensen
Introduction
A classic primary question to explore in this chapter is, What are the origins of
social studies? Secondary, but very key questions to examine are: What is the
purpose, theory, and practice of social studies as we enter the 21st century? How
can social studies be vibrant and relevant in the emerging era of social media?
Related to these central queries, Jerome Bruner (1996) challenged education with
the statement, “A system of education must help those growing up in a culture
find an identity within that culture” (p. 42).
Social studies as a subject is made up of several traditions. In United States
public education, history, geography, and civics were among the core subjects that
came to the forefront of the American curriculum by the late-19th century. By
the beginning of the 20th century emerging subjects such as psychology, sociol-
ogy, anthropology, economics, and political science came to be embraced as well.
Then, in 1916, there was the birth of social studies as a school subject. Over the
developing years of this new curriculum, subjects as diverse as multiculturalism,
law-related education, service learning, gender studies, and environmental educa-
tion have come to be known as aspects of social studies. The reason is that social
studies is, at its essence, an umbrella design. That is, social studies as an entity
is an overarching concept that merges the social nature of mankind with what it
means to be human.
This chapter discusses the origins of social studies, its evolution as a public
school course, as well as its purpose and potential as an integral part of the cur-
riculum. The discussion will establish a vision and rationale for the important role
3
4 C. Gregg Jorgensen
that social studies played and continues to play in the rapidly changing environ-
ment for education in the 21st century.
What Is Social Studies and Why Does It Matter?
As a social studies educator, I am often asked: “What is social studies?” The answer
has been understood in dissimilar ways over time. One reason is that from its
inception social studies has been contested over time (Evans, 2004). However, if
we go back to the creation of social studies in 1916, we can consider its origin
and context.
Social Studies Defined
The body of the 1916 Report on Social Studies is the final document of the tril-
ogy of reports prepared by the 1916 Committee on Social Studies. Specifically,
social studies in the United States was born through a sequence of three separate
reports by different committee members with varying agendas—the 1913 Prelimi-
nary Statement, which highlighted “good citizenship” in the context of considering
vital topics, the 1915 Report on Community Civics, which discussed civics, geog-
raphy, history, ethics, and vocational education, and the final culminating report,
the 1916 Report on Social Studies. The text of the third report does not begin until
page nine, which puts the length of the actual final report at fifty-four pages. It
begins with the 1916 committee’s definition of social studies. It reads, “The social
studies are understood to be those whose subject matter relates directly to the
organization and development of human society, and to man [sic] as a member
of social groups” (p. 9). This represents a clear definition of the social studies
subject that appears to have been overlooked by many scholars and educators, not
reflected upon by them to any large degree, or generally not considered in that
context since that time.
At the outset, the 1916 Report on Social Studies differentiated social stud-
ies from other subjects by the characteristic of social aims as opposed to social
content. After noting that social efficiency was a key element to achieve the social
aims in the school subjects of their day, the 1916 committee indicated: “Yet, from
the nature of their content, social studies affords peculiar opportunities for the
training of the individual as a member of society” (p. 9). In the Introduction,
the 1916 committee continued to delineate social studies as a forum to foster the
concept of membership in the “world community” that encompassed an apprecia-
tion for and a discernment of the different facets of society. In their concluding
remarks, committee members avowed that a rational loyalty to national ideals
should be one of the aims of social studies. Thus, in order to meet their goals
for the newly created social studies, the 1916 committee developed a reasoned,
Social Studies Curriculum Migration 5
thoughtful consensus to carve a new path for teaching and learning—a path that
was both designed and defined by the difference in the character of social studies
in comparison to other subjects.
Citizenship Education in Support of Democracy
John Dewey placed much of his focus on school pedagogy. His model for a school
community was a curriculum based on tending to students’ present interests, not
only in a stimulating way, but as a means of teaching “the essential relationship
between human knowledge and social experience” (Apple & Teitelbaum, 2001,
p. 180). To Dewey, school curriculum was the platform from which intellectual
advancement as well as social change was to occur. That is, he deemed that school-
ing should both embrace the democratic process and promote democracy itself by
exemplifying on a daily basis the principles of democracy. This could be achieved by
making “each one of our schools an embryonic community life, active with types of
occupations that reflect the life of the larger society and permeated throughout with
the spirit of art, history, and science” (Dewey, 1899, p. 27). In turn, the basis of
a democratic community required educated individuals who acquired the methods
of reflective thinking that allowed for rigorous, thoughtful academic inquiry.
Dewey was against blueprints for teaching preset curriculum or social beliefs.
Instead, he advocated developing solutions to social issues by applying scientific
inquiry based on conditions that initiated in experiences. As a group of educa-
tors, the 1916 committee may have been well ahead of the curriculum curve.
That is, they appear to have concluded that Dewey’s education concepts brought
the enduring platform and inventiveness for an emphasis on students’ needs for
present growth that was essential for the newly created subject of social studies.
The Influence of John Dewey
The third and final report of the trilogy of reports, the 1916 Report on Social
Studies, reveals the inclusive aim of the entire 1916 committee membership. The
accepted, adopted, and operational philosophy for social studies resulted from
components of numerous personal and theoretical influences including humanism,
social meliorism, developmentalism, social efficiency, and social reconstructionism
that became entrenched in the third and final report. The unique conceptual micro-
cosm that emanated from the work of the committee members involved with the
third report could be considered a synthesis of educational philosophy and ideas in
which John Dewey directly and indirectly wielded the single most important influ-
ence. Due to Dewey’s influence, the 1916 committee sought to comprehensively
bring together diverse individuals to grapple with real issues within the context
of the economic, political, and social issues in place during the beginning years
of 20th-century America.
This recognition that John Dewey was a much stronger influence on the
1916 committee than numerous contemporary scholars recognize is compelling.
Several scholars (Evans, 1996, 2004; Hertzberg, 1981, 1989; Nelson, 1994; Saxe,
1991) shed light on Dewey’s influence on the social studies and particularly in the
1916 report as its founding document. The 1916 committee’s third and final report
echoes, as well as manifests, Deweyan principles and philosophies to a much greater
extent than in the first report and certainly than in the second report. Dewey’s
philosophy and pedagogy are visibly offered through direct quotations in the 1916
Report on Social Studies in addition to approximately thirty references to Dewey’s
concepts. With a steadfast focus, the 1916 committee assimilated John Dewey’s
principles into their recommendations from the start through the end of the 1916
Report on Social Studies. The teaching illustrations selected by the 1916 committee
in the third report as examples for the newly created social studies subject were
Deweyan-based teaching approaches either in planning or already in practice in
school locations throughout the country. Dewey was the strongest influence on the
1916 committee because it was Dewey’s philosophy and concepts that provided the
approach and the means to achieve the realization of the potential of the newly
created social studies. This foundational document continues to make social studies
relevant and vital in the 21st century (Jorgensen, 2012).
What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?
In view of the nature of its theoretical lineage, social studies, as a subject in the
curriculum, has experienced, and continues to experience, the effects of societal
influences, as well as those from various advocates and opponents, as to its proper
place in the school curriculum.
Customs, Traditions, and Competing Thoughts
Social studies as a subject was born to embrace society’s customs and traditions
while at the same time cohesively absorbing competing influences. Its design inno-
vatively meshed and molded a creative new subject. Today, social studies still
holds to its original concept through years of continuous debate and sometimes
controversy. Kliebard (2004) has shown that an interplay of at least five different
camps or interest groups have battled over the social studies curriculum since
social studies’ formal creation in 1916. For instance, he points out that throughout
the 20th century—and certainly from 1916 forward—advocates for humanism,
developmentalism, social efficiency, social meliorism, and social reconstructionism
have all fought for influence over the American curriculum.
Kliebard (2004) argues that proponents of social efficiency, such as Franklin
Bobbitt and Frederick Taylor, probably became the most dominant camp among
those competing for influence over the curriculum. He continues to believe the
social efficiency camp persists in exerting influence in the context of educational
administrators. At the same time, other groups hold an opposing position that
the unique role of social studies is to transform society in the sense of challeng-
ing the status quo.
Traditional History
In John Dewey and the Dawn of Social Studies, I explore the various schools of
interpretation over time that have addressed the birth of social studies in 1916 as
a newly created subject for the American curriculum. Included in the schools of
interpretation that have tackled the 1916 Report on Social Studies is the Neoconser-
vative Revisionist School of Interpretation, which consists of historians (Hertzberg,
1981, 1989; Ravitch, 1978, 1985a, 1989a, 1989b, 2000a). The neoconservatives
argue that the 1916 report undermined and adversely affected the teaching of
traditional history. They strongly believe that social studies is not useful, promotes
social efficiency, and is utilitarian (Jorgensen, 2012).
To neoconservatives such as Diane Ravitch (1978, 1985a, 1989a, 1989b,
2000a), traditional history is congruent with chronological history. She argues that
any approach that takes time away from or strays from the premise of chronologi-
cal, traditional history is fundamentally flawed. In particular, she believes social
studies prevents students from acquiring knowledge of the past. Ravitch articulates
the position that ignorance of the past becomes a threat to all democratic forms
of government. Ravitch (1989a) explains that novels portraying a perspective of
the future where individual freedom is at risk paint a picture of a society that has
methodically eradicated all understanding and awareness of a historical past. As
an example, Ravitch points out that “the regime successfully wages a ‘campaign
against the Past’ by banning the teaching of history, closing museums, and destroy-
ing historical monuments” (p. 51).
Expressing a fear that anything short of all history, all the time, threatens
the very fabric of democratic nations, Ravitch (1985a) argues that the introduc-
tion of social studies as a school subject in 1916 began a process through which
time devoted to the teaching of traditional, chronological history was crowded
out. Ravitch (2000b) refers to this as “history’s submergence in social studies” (p.
150). This argument became both problematic as well as a signature concern in
her research concerning social studies education.
From a different view, Saxe (1997) believes there was little, if any, evi-
dence that traditional history supported citizenship education. At the same time,
Saxe, among others, did acknowledge that it was difficult to prove that subjects
such as sociology, geography, anthropology, and other social science self-contained
courses were designed to teach citizenship values and ideals. He argues that with
a subject-centered approach, social studies became entrapped in historical topics.
However, if the course is teacher-directed and challenges students through discov-

ery, inquiry, problem solving, and reflective thinking, then the course provides the
opportunity to develop the core knowledge and skills required for good citizen-
ship. Thus, Saxe suggests that the design of the teaching approach provided the
line of demarcation.
For instance, Dewey (1916) advocated for recognizing the true depth and
expanse of civic competence. What Dewey (1939) described as “creative democ-
racy” was a dynamic way of life in which citizens understood they should treat
each other with respect and in good faith. Dewey adhered to the belief that no
matter one’s personal skills and attitude, each person in a democracy was entitled
to the same opportunities to develop and grow their individual gifts.
Dewey’s idea of embracing a working faith in democracy by clarifying its
ideals with habits and attitudes also translates into the social studies classroom.
Once one realizes that democracy is in reality a way of life, rather than an external
institution, the door opens to democracy’s ideals and possibilities. This involves
having students consider moral and ethical concerns. One approach describes this
Deweyan teaching methodology based on democratic ideals as a way to differentiate
between students and learners. That is, students bring their personal life experiences
to school and become learners in the social environment of the classroom. One
needs to recognize that while students have interests that need to be met, their
needs are not mutually exclusive from those of the curriculum. Instead, the teacher’s
role is to guide and direct the students in establishing a distinction between the
social role and the active learning processes of students occurring in and out of
the school environment (Fenstermacher, 2006).
Influence of the Social Sciences
Edwin Fenton (1971) also stepped in to dispel the focus of traditional history.
Fenton argued that the very nature of historical writing and analysis is problem-
atic. No historian can in reality write all points of view and detail each aspect
of every issue or event that has transpired across the milieu of time. As a result,
Fenton recognized that judgment calls are made by historians as to what should be
included and what shall be excluded in what might be termed the official version
of events. For instance, Fenton wrote: “A historian who spends his life studying
the American Revolution can only examine a part of the part of the events which
were recorded” (p. 29). Thus, rather than concern himself with traditional history
as the sole vehicle for the transmission of knowledge and culture across the cur-
riculum, Fenton promoted the notion that even in a history course students need
to develop self-confidence and acquire positive learning attitudes. He also suggested
that students should develop the knowledge and skills needed in a rapidly changing
environment. In addition, he advocated that students should acquire inquiry learn-
ing techniques in addition to content knowledge. Fenton believed that meeting
these objectives would shed light on three key questions of life: “What is a good
man? What is a good life? and, What is a good society” (p. 31). In close succession
to these queries is the frequently asked question: Is the inquiry approach sufficient?
Social Efficiency versus Interpretive Analysis
SOCIAL EFFICIENCY
At the start of the 20th century, social efficiency advocates were concerned with
streamlined efficiency and in particular the elimination of waste. As a result, the
factory model approach was introduced. Based in large part on the most prominent
of assembly lines—that is, the assembly line model developed by Henry Ford in
the early part of the 20th century—social efficiency advocates embraced the factory
model as the pinnacle of efficiency and the antithesis of waste. By applying this
business model to the schools, the notion was that a top-down approach from
“experts” could be implemented for teachers who, acting like widgets or cogs in
the wheel, presented prepackaged lesson plans. Teachers would be trained to teach
the lessons in a structured assembly line process, which would ultimately result
in a uniform product known as a student. Based on a social efficiency model for
social studies education, those students identified as college bound would receive
courses in history and the social sciences while those tracked as vocational would
not. At the time, it was thought by many that it would be “waste” to expend the
energy and resources to extend a social studies education to someone who was
only interested in vocational education.
Subsequently, this basic posture has continued through the decades despite
various education change initiatives. The fast-paced growth in technology that
has occurred appears not to have influenced a move away from the traditional
factory model to govern schools and curriculum. This model continues to have
a detrimental effect on supporting teacher development and student learning as
advocated by Dewey and others. Instead, it is a model that merely moves students
from grade level to grade level and from teacher to teacher in a lockstep manner.
In fact, the factory model supports having students repeat a grade as a solution
for poor performance. Decision points such as this directly correlate to the factory
assembly line practice of repeating the process or sending the product to rework if
it was not successful the first time through. It would appear that education would
benefit by getting off this conveyor belt concept that is designed just to move
students through the school system (Darling-Hammond, 2010).
INTERPRETIVE ANALYSIS
On the other hand, there is a view opposed to a fixed social efficiency model.
Jerome Bruner (1996) discussed agency, reflection, collaboration, and culture. He
spoke to teachers of the importance of tough-mindedness in understanding the true

context of history, social studies, and literature. In his view, these specific studies
embraced the present, past, and the possible for all members of society. Thus, these
studies in particular required teachers to apply different skills and thoughtfulness
as well as have the courage to be creative. The narrative of any selected topic for
teaching translates into an interpretation that is examined by the teacher and the
student. Using this technique, history, for example, moves from being an account-
ing of events to a curriculum fostering an understanding of the past. The caveat is
that there may be competing source narratives. Once this is recognized as a reality,
then this teaching approach engages the teacher and the student together in close
analysis and synthesis of various interpretations.
The Role of Social Studies in the Curriculum
As created, social studies offers a vision of the value of knowledge. As a subject,

it maintains an emphasis on the need for reflective thinking skills as well as the
need to advocate democratic ideals and social justice. Among the knowledge and
skills most strongly and consistently promoted throughout the history of the social
studies curriculum is what is now commonly referred to as reflective or critical
thinking. For instance, for history as well as the Problems of American Democ-
racy courses, the 1916 committee again relied on Dewey. All through the report,
the 1916 committee referred to their clarification of the three phases of Dewey’s
teaching principle that “(a) started, whenever possible, with a problem or topic
of study carefully selected in order to meet; (b) the pupil’s own immediate inter-
est; and (c) provided a topic or problem of study that has significance to society”
(Jorgensen, 2012, p. 143).
Reflective Thinking in Social Studies
At the very outset of his career as one of the most distinguished educational phi-
losophers, John Dewey (1897) wrote his own pedagogic creed. The first of five
articles announced his belief that meaningful education and learning starts with
presenting societal issues, to create curiosity for problem solutions or answers. His
pedagogical concept holds that through this initiative the individual will be encour-
aged and emboldened to develop ideas that will benefit expanding communities in
society. The projected outcome is learning to become a member of society. Dewey
(1910) consistently linked reflective thought with belief. For Dewey, reflection
involved the examination of evidence that resulted in the formation of the basis for
belief. Dewey believed that learning was comprised of stepping back and reflecting
during, and after, a careful and extended inquiry. This process became an avenue
to focus on and deal with the present-day problems and issues that arise.
Dewey’s (1916) concept of reflective thinking reached a pinnacle in Democ-

racy and Education. Certainly this was not his final writing on reflective thinking,
however, even at that time he clearly voiced his concept that “the important thing
is that thinking is the method of educative experience . . . therefore identical with
the essentials of reflection” (p. 192). Even more important to this discussion,
Dewey’s primary teaching principle was consistently integrated throughout the
1916 Report on Social Studies. This represents a template for reflective inquiry.
A series of educational and curriculum scholars closely followed Dewey’s
lead: Alan F. Griffin, H. Gordon Hullfish, Paulo Freire, Michael W. Apple, and
others. Throughout Alan Griffin’s (1942a, 1942b, 1953) writing in the field of
history education there is a tone resonating with Dewey. Griffin (1942a) believed
that “the reflective process, through which knowledge is created and reconstructed”
(p. 36) plays a critical role in fostering democratic ideals. This launched Griffin’s
philosophical case for the act of reflective thinking as having a significant posi-
tive impact on history teaching and democratic ideals. Indeed, he described the
job of the history teacher as one who selects appropriate history materials and
makes complete use of his or her experience in order “to stimulate and to aid in
carrying forward within the experience of each student the process of reflective
thinking” (p. 43).
Issues-Centered Education versus Traditional Memorization
It should be noted that in today’s curriculum, any educational system or teacher

can provide lessons and assessments that require nothing more than memoriza-
tion. On the other hand, neither Dewey nor Freire delineated specific curriculum
for similar reasons. Freire’s aim was not to provide a quantitative blueprint of a
concrete lesson plan. Rather, he outlined the circumstances needed to initiate the
possibility of both creating and challenging discourses (McLaren, 1999). In fact, in
Letters to Christina, Freire (1996) reminded teachers who had not yet tapped into
their innate ability to take action that “while teaching the indispensable context,
he or she should bring . . . rebelliousness into focus and analyze it as a position
to be overcome and replaced by another, more critical, more consciously political,
and more methodologically rigorous position” (p. 118). Westbrook (1991) notes
Dewey believed that “classrooms in a democracy had to be not only communities
of inquiry, but democratic communities of inquiry” (p. 72). Westbrook confirms that
Dewey’s program for democratic education was to develop inquiry-based learning.
What becomes academically “rigorous” in pursuit of these ends, what that education
process looks like in terms of either “memorization” or “active engagement,” and
what teaching and learning all means in terms of opportunities for “lifelong learn-
ing” or not, can, and in large part does, depend upon each individual community.
H. Gordon Hullfish, an education professor and contemporary of Griffin,
expounded similar ideas together with Philip G. Smith in Reflective Thinking:
The Method of Education, as well as other writings. There is a tone and tenor
that resonates with Dewey in Hullfish’s discussions on reflective thinking. Hullfish
(1953) consistently turned to analogies and references to Deweyan ideas on criti-
cal thinking and the teaching of inquiry-based reflection. Drawing upon Dewey’s
ideas of reflective thinking, Hullfish (1961) described his concern that the typical
educators’ methodology was actually controlling or restricting reflective activity.
Apparently he believed that reflective intellectual activity was valued only by a
few. The challenge, therefore, was to support this limited group that advocated
critical thinking as a positive practice based on the premise that the development
of society was dependent on citizens’ free use and application of knowledge and
reflective thinking skills.
Paulo Freire (1970), who is considered to be one of the few people who
changed the world, reached a similar conclusion. He spoke of the dangers of
indoctrinating values in students that was consistent with Griffin and Hullfish—all
reflective of Dewey’s thoughts. Apple (2006) noted that he joined forces with Freire
in Brazil. During this collaborative time, Apple observed that Freire frequently said
“that education must begin in critical dialogue” (p. 247).
Dewey, followed by Griffin, and then by Hullfish, Freire, Apple, and many
contemporary scholars, including but not limited to Harold Rugg, Donald Oliver,
James P. Shaver, Maxine Greene, Henry Giroux, Stanley Aronowitz, Peter McLaren,
E. Wayne Ross, William Ayers, Shirley Engle, Anna Ochoa-Becker, Ronald W.
Evans, and others, found the way to apply a theory that does indeed provide a
foundation for sound practice. This is particularly relevant when it comes to con-
fronting issues in society. This unity of theory on reflective thinking has important
implications as scholars and educators advocating issues centered and progressive
education migrate into the 21st century.
Teaching for Social Justice
Social justice is an often misunderstood and hotly contested concept that evades
a seamless, singular definition. When one considers the multiplicity of issues of
power and privilege alone combined with the varying outlooks on ideas of fairness
and equity, the disparity of understandings for the term social justice should come
as no surprise. As a concept, social justice is complicated. However, its distinctive
nature is what makes social justice crucial and significant for both society and the
curriculum. Social justice teaching represents the essence of social studies’ role in
fostering democratic ideals in society.
For Dewey, a system of education in a democratic society needs to be avail-
able to all citizens. That is, schools need to concentrate on providing an education
that accounts for the vastly different background and experience among students.
Democratic education needs to foster freedom and encourage individual growth
so that democratic ideals will continue to support citizens and communities. And,
he advocated that comprehending and appreciating all disciplines—history, science,

art, music, and literature—was imperative in order to eliminate barriers existing
between classes and create an environment that cultivated broadly scoped, mutually
shared interests (Boisvert, 1998).
Today, social justice teaching can have a positive impact as a practice in
classrooms. Social justice has been a teaching practice for a span of decades, spurred
on by scholars as well as grassroots advocates. Further, it is “nearly impossible to
teach democracy without placing the pursuit of social justice and the examination
[of ] existing social, economic, and political structures at the center of the endeavor”
(Ross, 1998, p. 458). At the present time, the proponents of social justice teach-
ing “continue in the movement to challenge an education model of ‘teaching to
the test’ that constrains teachers and reinforces rote rather than critical learning”
(Arnove, 2009, p. 89). It is important that we continue to press forward and
advocate critical thinking teaching practices for the classroom as a social justice
teaching foundation.
Teaching for social justice in the 21st century should be built on this premise.
A key dilemma is to increase the efforts of teacher education programs to gradu-
ate true advocates of critical pedagogy and reflective thinking who are prepared to
become active participants in designing and accomplishing social justice teaching.
As social justice issues continue to require social transformation efforts, critical
thinking and problem solving become a goal for teaching. Social justice in edu-
cation becomes relevant depending on teachers’ willingness to bring the content
and appropriate contexts of social problems that pose challenges into an ongoing
critical pedagogy (Giroux, 1998).
For 21st-century education, teachers and teacher education programs should
consider revitalizing and refreshing the tradition of issues-centered teaching as a
concept that will evolve, change, and make a difference within the arena of social
justice. Evans (2010) states that “the process of democratic, issues-centered teaching
may be one of the most effective means to reach the goal” (p. 244). However, the
standard testing regime in place that reinforces a race to the textbook, and also
the Common Core preselected material to be implemented, appears to leave little
time for critical pedagogy as an avenue for social justice teaching.
Social Studies Curriculum Decision Makers
The decision-making process for social studies curriculum involves several enti-
ties at various levels of influence that do not necessarily act or move in consort
together. As the following discussion demonstrates, it is imperative for social studies
educators to identify and understand these players or groups. Teachers and educa-
tors need to strive to protect and enhance the vital role that social studies fulfills
in society.
Publishers and Their Promotion of Expanding Environments
The curriculum structure of social studies has stayed remarkably consistent since
the publication of the 1916 Report on Social Studies, and this affects textbook
publishers. What is generally known as the concept of “expanding environments”
has now been articulated at great length by publishers as the scope and sequence
of elementary social studies—especially those who focus their content on the first
through sixth elementary grades. The idea behind this particular approach to
elementary social studies is that each child progresses through the growth stages
from an understanding of self, to family, to school, to community, to state, to
nation, and finally to becoming a member of the world community. The concept is
designed to constantly expand and enlarge each child’s self-awareness in perpetually
expanding communities of influence, connectedness, and cooperation as he or she
progresses throughout the school grades and life.
In conjunction, textbook publishers create complete packages of student
textbooks, teacher guides, and supplemental material that are known as textbook
programs. Grade 1 has a program on school and family life. Grade 2 focuses on the
neighborhood. Grade 3 has a complete program devoted to communities. Grade
4’s program concentrates on regions and the state. Grade 5 materials are devoted
to the study of U.S. history and geography. The published materials for Grade 6
concentrate on world cultures and geography. Each grade program includes the
student textbook and the teacher’s guide, which often includes ideas concerning
English Language Learner (ELL) support for language development, worksheets,
test guides, assessments, pictures, maps, map skill activities, strategies involving
performance activities, primary source material, and related materials aimed at
various reading levels.
Despite Parker’s (2012) admonition that teachers should not be subservient
to the textbook, the question remains as to the degree to which teachers do in
fact reach beyond the established textbook program—especially when it comes to
issues of values in democracy. After all, Fenton’s (1967) observation appears to
be applicable even today. He indicated that, “despite lessons about ‘community
helpers’ like the policeman, the typical social studies curriculum of the elementary
schools fails to contribute much to the formation of a democratic political value
system” (p. 19).
The same may be said for middle school and high school textbooks. In the
United States, secondary materials published for middle-level education as well
as for the high schools tend to concentrate on course textbooks as opposed to
elementary program packages. Course textbooks, for the most part, lack footnotes
and are aimed at U.S. and world history, world geography, American government,
and the ever increasingly popular personal finance markets. Variations on many
of the same ancillary materials for the elementary schools provided by textbook
publishers are also readily available for secondary education teachers and their
students. Yet, when it comes to the values surrounding social studies content,
that is currently overlooked in textbooks, Richard Hardy, who wrote the widely
distributed textbook Government in America, stated in a personal interview with
this author that “the politics are terrible. And everybody’s got their perspective and
what they want in there [textbooks].”
Do Local Communities Matter?
A major focus of the 1916 Report on Social Studies is its emphasis on reconceptual-
izing the course of study formally known as civics into a revitalized course titled
“community civics.”
The power of community can be seen in the work of Paulo Freire (1970).
He advocated toward an education of “ ‘I wonder,’ instead of merely, ‘I do’ ” (p.
36). Specifically Freire believed, as did Dewey, that citizens need an education that
would lead to a new introspective view of their problems. Whether Freire con-
fronted a two-tiered class system, or Dewey confronted increasing industrialization
in a growing, more diverse, culturally changed society, for both, the solution was to
teach critical pedagogy to enable citizens to gain the freedom to attain and retain
equality and equity in their communities. Boisvert (1998) observed of Dewey: “The
answer to oppression is not an escape from association, but the effort, a concrete,
empirically grounded effort, to reform the types of associations so as to produce
the optimal conditions of growth within them” (p. 55).
Freire’s (1974) analysis was similar:
The fewer the democratic experiences which lead through concrete

participation in reality to critical consciousness of it, the more a
group tends to perceive and to confront that reality naively. . . . The
less critical capacity a group possesses, the more ingenuously it treats
problems and the more superficially discusses subjects. (pp. 37–38)
Specifically, citizens needed an education that would lead to a new, introspective

view of their problems—based on their own research not irrelevant principles.
Dewey also consistently articulated the utmost confidence in the teacher’s ability
to determine the best teaching methods and practices to use in the classroom
(Boisvert, 1998).
With that in mind, the concept of community is not only essential in
understanding the basic nature of what it means to be social, but it is the local
community that forms the combined effort that only groups of unified people can
accomplish when pushback is required against inequality. These encounters include
issues and problems that resonate inside or outside of the classroom curriculum.
Do National Organizations Matter?
NCSS THEMATIC APPROACH
In 1921 the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) was established and
assumed the mission of guiding the teaching of social studies. Now, in the 21st
century, the NCSS (2010) recently revised their national standards. This revision
currently views, as well as defines, social studies in terms of a thematic approach
that involves ten interrelated themes. At the present time the promulgated themes
involved are:
Number 1, “Culture,” states: “Social studies programs should include

experiences that provide for the study of culture and cultural diversity.”
Number 2, “Time, Continuity, and Change,” states: “Social studies

programs should include experiences that provide for the study of the
past and its legacy.”
Number 3, “People, Places, and Environments,” states: “Social stud-

ies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of
people, places, and environments.”
Number 4, “Individual Development and Identity,” states: “Social stud-

human development and identity.”
Number 5, “Individuals, Groups, and Institutions,” states: “Social Stud-

interactions among individuals, groups, and institutions.”
Number 6, “Power, Authority, and Governance,” states: “Social studies

programs should include experiences that provide for the study of how
people create, interact with, and change structures of power, authority,
and governance.
Number 7, “Production, Distribution, and Consumption” states:

“Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for
the study of how people organize for the production, distribution, and
consumption of goods and services.”
Number 8, “Science, Technology, and Society,” states: “Social studies

programs should include experiences that provide for the study of
relationships among science, technology, and society.”
Number 9, “Global Connections,” states: “Social studies programs

should include experiences that provide for the study of global con-
nections and interdependence.”
Number 10, “Civic Ideals and Practices,” states: “Social studies pro-
grams should include experiences that provide for the study of the
ideals, principles, and practices of citizenship in a democratic republic.”
Thus, in numerical thematic order, NCSS advocates social studies programs that
include experiences supporting multiculturalism, history, physical and cultural
geography, psychology, sociology, political science and government, economics,
the interplay between the social aspects of science and technology, globalization,
and citizenship education in a democratic society.
Governmental Influence on Social Studies
THE COMMON CORE BAND -AID TO NCLB
The Common Core Standards are positioned to take effect in 2014. For those
states affected, the Common Core speaks to literacy and attempts to create shared
responsibility for additional disciplines to integrate reading standards into their
curriculum. Frederick Hess and Chester Finn Jr. (2004) state that the mandated
testing in the math and reading core subjects for grades 3–8 in conjunction with
the adequate yearly progress (AYP) measurement to determine progress in student
proficiency is the heart and soul of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The
proficiency effort includes procedures to have what is considered actual student
progress verified through testing. When the results are not deemed to be a success,
then consequences via sanctions and interventions follow to resolve the school’s
perceived deficiencies.
Under the pending Common Core initiative, the idea is that what is termed
history/social studies, science, and technical subjects will participate along with
English language arts to incorporate reading standards into each respective dis-
cipline. The Common Core specifically directs attention toward disciplines not
previously tested under NCLB such as social studies, but expressly addresses it only
from the standpoint of literacy. The “Common Core Reading Standards History/
Social Studies” has separate components for grades 6–8, 9–10, and 11–12. An
increased emphasis on “informational text”—which includes primary sources—will
impact elementary social studies programs as grades 1–5 are subsequently rolled
into the Common Core initiative.
Arne Duncan (2011), United States Secretary of Education, indicates sup-
port for the Common Core overall. He promotes states’ efforts to develop what
he describes as better tests and higher standards for social studies. Recognizing
and arguing for the need for “better” assessments from the states aligned with the
Common Core for English language arts and math, as well as “higher standards”
and “better” testing in social studies education, Duncan proposes a solution. He
advocates that social studies educators as a group should persuade “states and local
boards to develop high social studies standards based on themes and skills and to
create authentic growth measures of student learning” (p. 125).
However, given that no reference, for instance, is made to the kind of work
that Fred M. Newmann (1988, 1990a, 1990b, 1990c, 1991a, 1991b) and his
teams provided in the 1980s and 1990s, it is difficult to visualize what “better”
looks like under standards that appear to merely allude to the themes and skills
already in place under the thematic approach developed by NCSS. For example,
Newmann’s concepts and theories on teaching and learning in social studies may
speak directly to the conflicting results of the No Child Left Behind initiative
and the Common Core standards under implementation. Today, NCLB reflects
the apparent fact that the obstacles identified by Newmann still remain and it is
likely that any projections for Common Core results may be similar. That is, as
long as schools and departments are structured in a top-down, hierarchal manner,
teaching and learning in social studies apparently will remain textbook-oriented,
subject-centered, based on a traditional chronological history curriculum that will
be tested according to the student’s ability to recall rote memory. This traditional
structure has resulted in high stakes testing where authentic assessment of in-depth
student learning in social studies is bypassed and replaced by the completion and
tallying of survey driven “bubble sheets.” Newmann’s work reveals that, as a pri-
mary basis, he draws on Dewey’s belief that the essential elements of a successful
pedagogical method are observation, analysis, and inference.
Duncan (2011) called the marginalization of social studies while math and
reading have been privileged over all other subjects “not only misguided, it is edu-
cational neglect” (p. 24). Yet, for social studies the Common Core initiative to be
implemented with its primary emphasis on literacy, preceded by NCLB’s continued
focus on math and reading, does little more than slightly attend to the medical
wounds that social studies has suffered due to neglect during the era of NCLB.
Defining the Teacher’s Role and Authority
Identifying and determining the teacher’s role and authority in social studies class-
rooms is anything but settled. However, with the combination of (1) the guidance
of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), (2) state standards across
the nation, (3) the input of scholars examining the discipline specific subjects of
history and the social sciences, as well as (4) contributions made by interest groups
and advocates for issues-centered education and other social studies perspectives,
teachers have an extraordinary part to play in the teaching and learning of social
studies. Without a doubt, social studies lends itself to creative, innovative, and
novel approaches to the curriculum regardless of any outside pressure on a teacher

to conform to a one size fits all agenda. Due to the unique premise of social stud-
ies, a teacher needs to be recognized as the intellectual leader, not a lecturer, in the
classroom. As such, the teacher guides students in active learning that emphasizes
independent thought and creativity. The reason is that by the nature of its founda-
tion, social studies is an interpretive subject.
Having Faith in Teachers on the Front Line of Learning
Dewey consistently articulated the utmost confidence in teachers’ ability to deter-

mine the best teaching methods and practices to use in the classroom. Freire
championed teachers’ capacity to change from what he described as the banking
method concept to a problem-solving method. Similarly, Apple (1990) encouraged
teachers to prime their students by equipping them with the “political and con-
ceptual tools needed to face the unequal society in which they also live” (p. 104).
In an era of No Child Left Behind and now Common Core with its
top-down curriculum and associated high stakes testing, the tenets and Deweyan
ideals of the 1916 Report on Social Studies appear to be under fire. It practically
goes without saying that a student’s own immediate interest cannot reasonably be
determined on a national, state, or even community level. Unlike a factory-built
product, each child is not the same. Arguably, a student’s own potentially unique
immediate interest can best be determined by a classroom teacher.
At the same time, a topic or problem of study that has significance to society
cannot reasonably be determined on a national level and may not be reasonably
determined on a state level. However, it may be determined on a community level.
Most importantly, the topic or problem can be determined by individual class-
room teachers in each community. Thus, as outlined in the 1916 report, the only
reasonable approach to teaching social studies is to start, whenever possible, with
a topic or study carefully selected in order to meet the student’s own immediate
interest and which provides an issue or problem of study that has consequence to
society. This precept is predicated on starting with and having faith in the ability
of the classroom teacher. No other approach is consistent with the original tenets
of social studies when it comes to teaching and learning especially under the
application of problem-based inquiry.
Conclusion
In a New York Times Magazine article, Ravitch (1985b) wrote a definition of social
studies with the intent of negating its place as a valid school subject. However,
after deftly leaving out history while delineating the scope of social science sub-
jects, she acknowledged social studies’ effort to enable students’ comprehension of
social issues. She also recognized the benefits of social studies teaching on ethical
citizenship. Most importantly, Ravitch added that a “popular definition holds that
its purpose is to teach values, critical thinking, and respect for cultural diversity.”
When all is said and done, the error of omission in her list of social studies sub-
jects is critical. If Ravitch had also included history in her inventory of courses
that are contained within the scope of social studies subjects, then in reality her
statement would represent a very apt description of a school subject of significant
substance and value—one that is both broad and steeped in gaining knowledge
and skills that support morals, values, and citizenship.
It is possible in today’s world for social studies educators to remain true to the
defined mission of their subject. Change in schools has occurred and will continue
to occur. Social studies itself has changed in that it has been refined and redefined
to encompass aspects of human rights education, multicultural education, global
education, issues-centered education, Holocaust education—disciplines poised to
embrace the 21st century. Local communities and citizens can become both sup-
porters and recipients of the tenets of all the disciplines and perspectives within
social studies. However, the continuing attention to education reform models under
the banner of improvement will not end. On a daily basis, social studies educators
will need to remain steadfast in their role and prevent social studies from slipping
into second-tier status in the curriculum.
This environment of change challenges 21st-century educators. In part, it
is fueled by the fast pace of technology advancements. World community events,
global public media, and social media significantly impact the myriad of social,
political, and economic issues confronting citizens. It is possible for teachers and
students alike, indeed citizens and communities, to turn to the mantra of John
Dewey, as did the 1916 committee. It was John Dewey who admonished:
We are continually uneasy about the things we adults know, and are
afraid the child will never learn them unless they are drilled into him
by instruction before he has any intellectual use for them. If we could
really believe that attending to the needs of present growth would keep
the child and teacher alike busy, and would also provide the best pos-
sible guarantee of the learning needed in the future, transformation
of educational ideals might soon be accomplished, and other desirable
changes would largely take care of themselves. (Bureau of Education,
1916, p. 11)
Social studies educators need to stay true to their defined role of fostering,
knowledge, skills, and democratic ideals. As Dewey suggested, teachers should
introduce issues and problems of immediate interest, which support the needs of
present growth and are of vital importance to society. Dewey placed his faith in
teachers as well as in the students’ ability to be socially, developmentally, or cog-
nitively ready to examine present-day issues. His concept is diametrically opposed

to the longstanding tradition that adults simply attempt to indoctrinate youth
with what adults believe children and adolescents will need to know sometime
in the future. Keeping this primary concept at the forefront of education, social
studies will be prepared to migrate into and meet the challenges of society in the
21st century.
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2
Social Studies Curriculum and Teaching

in the Era of Standardization
E. Wayne Ross, Sandra Mathison, and Kevin D. Vinson
Social Studies as a School Subject
Social studies is the most inclusive of all school subjects. Stanley and Nelson, for
example, define social studies education as “the study of all human enterprise over
time and space” (1994, p. 266). Determining what is included in the social studies
curriculum requires facing key questions about social knowledge, skills, and values,
including how best to organize them with respect to specific subject matters (e.g.,
history, geography, anthropology, etc.) and in relation to the unique subjectivities
of teachers and their students. Given this, it is not surprising that social studies
has been racked by intellectual battles over its purpose, content, and pedagogy
since its very inception as a school subject in the early part of the 20th century.
The roots of today’s social studies curriculum are found in the 1916 report of
the Committee on Social Studies of the National Education Association’s (N.E.A.’s)
Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Schools. The final report of the
committee, The Social Studies in Secondary Education, illustrates the influence of
previous N.E.A. and American Historical Association committees regarding history
in schools, but more importantly, emphasized the development of “good” citizen-
ship values in students and established the pattern of course offerings in social
studies that remained consistent for the past century. (See chapter 1 by Gregg
Jorgensen for more on the history of social studies as school subject.)
Throughout the 20th century, the social studies curriculum has been an ideo-
logical battleground in which such diverse curricular programs as the “life adjustment
movement,” progressive education, social reconstructionism, and nationalistic history
have held sway at various times. The debate over the nature, purpose, and content of
the social studies curriculum continues today, with competing groups variously argu-
25
26 E. Wayne Ross, Sandra Mathison, and Kevin D. Vinson
ing for a “social issues approach,” the “disciplinary study of history and geography,”
or action for social justice as the most appropriate framework for the social studies
curriculum (see Evans, 2004; Hursh & Ross, 2000; Thornton, 2004). As with the
curriculum field in general, social studies curriculum has historically been defined by
a lack of strong consensus and contentiousness over its goals and methods.
But there has been at least superficial agreement that the purpose of social
studies is “to prepare youth so that they possess the knowledge, values, and skills
needed for active participation in society” (Marker & Mehlinger, 1992, p. 832), but
the content and pedagogies of social studies education have been greatly affected
by various social and political agendas. What does it mean to be a “good citizen”?
Arguments have been made that students can develop “good citizenship” not only
through the long-privileged study of history (Whelan, 1997), but also through
the examination of contemporary social problems (Evans & Saxe, 1996), public
policy (Oliver & Shaver, 1966), social roles (Superka & Hawke, 1982), social
taboos (Hunt & Metcalf, 1968), or by becoming astute critics of one’s society
(Engle & Ochoa, 1988).
Competing Viewpoints within Social Studies Education
Because of the diversity of viewpoints on the meaning of citizenship education—

and thus diversity in the purposes, content, and pedagogy of social studies educa-
tion—social studies educators have devoted considerable attention to identifying
categories and descriptions of the major traditions with the field. Various schemes
have been used by researchers to make sense of the wide-ranging and often con-
flicting purposes (Vinson, 1998). The most influential of these was developed by
Barr, Barth, and Shermis (1977), who grouped the various positions on the social
studies curriculum into three themes: cultural transmission, social science, and
reflective inquiry. Martorella’s (1996) framework extends the work of Barr, Barth,
and Shermis, and includes social studies education as: (1) citizenship transmission;
(2) social science; (3) reflective inquiry; (4) informed social criticism; and (5)
personal development. Each perspective is briefly summarized below.
SOCIAL STUDIES AS CITIZENSHIP (OR CULTURAL) TRANSMISSION
In this tradition, the purpose of social studies education is to promote student

acquisition of certain nationalistic or “democratic” values via the teaching and
learning of discrete, factual pieces of information drawn primarily from the canon
of Western thought and culture. Content is based on the beliefs that: certain
factual information is important to the practice of good citizenship; the nature
of this information remains relatively constant over time; and this information is
best determined by a consensus of authorities and experts. From this perspective,
diversity of experience and multiculturalism are downplayed, ignored, or actively
Social Studies Curriculum and Teaching 27
challenged. Cultural and social unity are proclaimed and praised. In the curricu-
lum, history and literature dominate over such considerations as learner interests,
the social sciences, social criticism, and personal-subjective development. This per-
spective has long been dominant in the field and has seen a resurgence (see, for
example, recent revisions to social studies curriculum in Texas and Florida (Craig,
2006; Foner, 2010).
SOCIAL STUDIES AS SOCIAL SCIENCE
This tradition evolved during the Cold War and directly out of the post-Sputnik
effort of social scientists to have a say in the design, development, and implementa-
tion of the social studies curriculum. From this viewpoint, each individual social
discipline (e.g., political science, history, economics, geography) can be considered
in terms of its own distinct structure of concepts, theories, and modes of empiri-
cal inquiry. In educational scholarship this idea was most widely and successfully
advanced by psychologist Jerome Bruner (1969, 1977) and curriculum theorist
J. J. Schwab (1969); it formed, in part, the basis for what became known as the
“new social studies” (Fenton, 1966; Massialas, 1992).
In this tradition, citizenship education includes mastering social science con-
cepts, generalizations, and processes to build a knowledge base for later learning.
Social studies education provides students with the social scientific content and
procedures for successful citizenship, and for understanding and acting upon the
human condition in its historical, contemporary, political, social, economic, and
cultural contexts. In general, instructional methods include those that develop
within learners the characteristics of social scientists, characteristics indicative of
conceptual understandings as well as modes of strategic inquiry (e.g., an anthropol-
ogy course might focus conceptually on “culture” and methodologically on “eth-
nography,” as was the case with the curriculum project Man: A Course of Study).1
Social studies scholars have recently moved away from the more traditional
social studies as social science approach to disciplinary structure and toward increas-
ingly complex interrogations of the importance of particular constructions of the
specific social and historical disciplines. From this newer perspective, academics,
teachers, and students all have some understanding of the structure of the various
social sciences that relates to how they produce, use, and disseminate disciplinary
knowledge. These ideas of disciplinary conceptualizations influence all individual
modes of teaching and learning. Thus, it is impossible to teach social studies accord-
ing to any other approach without simultaneously maintaining some structural
comprehension of the knowledge and modes of inquiry of the various academic
disciplines. There are, however, competing and dynamic possibilities such that
teachers and students may each possess a unique orientation. Within the social
studies, much of this contemporary work has focused upon history education,
and has emphasized multiple, complex instructional approaches, constructivist
understandings of meaning, the production and interpretation of text, historical

sense making, and interdisciplinary conceptions of content (e.g., Seixas, 2004;
VanSledright & Afflerbach, 2000).
SOCIAL STUDIES AS REFLECTIVE INQUIRY
This approach to social studies developed originally out of the work of John Dewey
(1933), particularly his sociocognitive psychology and philosophical pragmatism.
From this position, citizenship remains the core of the social studies. But unlike
citizenship transmission, in which citizenship rests on the acquisition of preestab-
lished values and content, or social science, where citizenship involves the range
of academic social disciplines, citizenship here stresses relevant problem solving, or
meaningful decision making within a specific sociopolitical context.
From this perspective, then, the purpose of social studies education is nur-
turing within students abilities necessary for decision making in some specified
sociopolitical context (e.g., liberal democratic capitalism), especially with respect
to social and personal problems that directly affect individual students. This pre-
supposes a necessary connection between democracy and problem solving, one in
which the key assumption behind this link is that within the social-political system
significant problems rarely imply a single, overt, and/or “correct” solution. Such
problems frequently require decisions between several perceived good solutions and/
or several perceived bad solutions. Democracy thus necessitates a citizenry capable
of and competent in the identification of problems, the collection, evaluation, and
analysis of data, and the making of reasoned decisions. Dewey’s work on democratic
reflective thinking led to the evolution of a powerful pragmatic theory of educa-
tion, prominent during the early to middle post–World War II era, spearheaded
in social education by Hunt and Metcalf (1968) and Engle (1987). The continu-
ing influence of this tradition in social studies is found in works by authors such
as Evans and Saxe (1996) and Ross (1994). By carrying forward Dewey’s legacy,
these scholars offer an alternative to the social sciences per se and to contemporary
“back to basics” movements, one grounded in reflective decision making centered
on so-called closed areas or taboo topics representing a precise time and place—or,
more precisely, problem solving within a specific sociopolitical context.
SOCIAL STUDIES AS INFORMED SOCIAL CRITICISM
This framework is rooted in the work of social reconstructionists (Brameld, 1956;

Counts, 1932) and related to the more recent work of “socialization-counterso-
cialization” theorists (Engle & Ochoa, 1988) and critical pedagogues.2 The con-
temporary literature primarily addresses themes such as the hidden curriculum,
sociocultural transformation, and the nature and meaning of knowledge and truth.
The work of Nelson (e.g., 1985; Nelson & Pang in this volume), Stanley (1985),
and Hursh and Ross (2000) perhaps best represents the current status of this
tradition. From this standpoint the purpose of social studies is citizenship educa-
tion aimed at providing students opportunities for an examination, critique, and
revision of past traditions, existing social practices, and modes of problem solving.
It is a citizenship education directed toward:
Social transformation [as] defined as the continuing improvement

of . . . society by applying social criticism and ethical decision making
to social issues, and using the values of justice and equality as grounds
for assessing the direction of social change that should be pursued.
(Stanley & Nelson, 1986, p. 530)
Social studies content in this tradition challenges the injustices of the sta-
tus quo. It counters knowledge that is: generated by and supportive of society’s
elites; rooted in logical positivism; and consistent with social reproduction and
the replication of a society that is classist, sexist, and racist. While it is specific to
individual classroom settings and students, it can include, for example, redressing
the needs of the disadvantaged, improving human rights conditions, and stimulat-
ing environmental improvements. Moreover, teachers and students here may claim
their own knowledges—their content, their individual and cultural experiences—as
legitimate. Instruction methods in this tradition are situational, but are oriented
away from lecture and information transmission and toward such processes as
“reflective thinking” and the dialogical method (Shor & Freire, 1987), sociocultural
criticism, textual analysis, deconstruction (Cherryholmes, 1980, 1982), problem
solving, critical thinking, and social action.
SOCIAL STUDIES AS PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Focusing again on the role of citizenship education, this position reflects the belief
that citizenship education should consist of developing a positive self-concept and
a strong sense of personal efficacy among students. It is grounded in the idea
that effective democratic citizenship involves understanding one’s freedom to make
choices as well as one’s obligation and responsibility to live with their ultimate
outcomes. Social studies content is selected and pursued by the students themselves
so that it is embedded in the nature, needs, and interests of the learners. Instruc-
tional methods are shared between teachers and students, but include techniques
such as Kilpatrick’s “project method,” various forms of individualized instruction,
and the Socratic method of dialogue. For, in essence, this approach evolved out
of the child-centered progressive education movement of the early 20th century
and within the settings of humanistic psychology and existential philosophy. Its
best-known contemporary advocates include Nel Noddings (1992) and, in the
social studies, scholars such as Pearl Oliner (1983).
Social Studies, Curriculum Standards, and School Reform
Since its formal introduction into the school, social studies has been the subject
of numerous commission and blue-ribbon panel studies, ranging from the six-
teen-volume report of the American Historical Association’s Commission on Social
Studies in the 1930s to the recent movement for national curriculum standards in
the United States. Virtually all of the subject matter–based professional groups in
the United States undertook the development of curriculum standards during in
the 1990s. With the relative success of the 1989 National Council for Teachers
of Mathematics (NCTM) curriculum and evaluation standards, other associations,
including a number in the social studies, joined the movement with high hopes.
There are separate and competing standards for U.S. and global history, geography,
economics, civics, psychology, and social studies. And these are just the national
standards. There were often companion state-level and, sometimes, local district
curriculum standards as well.3
The emphasis in school reform in North America for the past two decades
has been the development of “world-class” schools that can be directly linked to
increased international economic production and prominence. In the United States,
this emphasis can be traced to the 1989 education summit in Charlottesville,
Virginia, which gave rise to the Goals 2000: Educate America Act subsequently
passed by Congress in 1994 and endorsed by the National Governors Association
(Ross, 2001). And even farther back to the A Nation at Risk report of 1983. In
that report, American educational performance was linked to the decline in the
“once unchallenged preeminence [of the United States] in commerce, industry,
science, and technological innovation.” The report focused on raising expecta-
tions for student learning. The National Commission on Excellence in Education
encouraged states and local school districts to adopt tougher graduation standards
(such as requiring students to take more courses), extend the school year, and
administer standardized tests as part of a nationwide, although not federal, system
of accountability. Every presidential administration from Reagan to Obama has
intensified efforts to reform education to serve economic needs as defined by what
is in the best interests of corporate capital. The primary tools of these efforts have
been curriculum standards linked to high-stakes tests (see, for example, Carr &
Porfilio, 2011; Gabbard & Ross, 2008; Gorlewski & Porfilio, 2013; Saltman &
Gabbard, 2010; Vinson & Ross, 2000).
The term educational standards is used, though, in different ways. Kohn
(2000) distinguishes between a horizontal and vertical notion of standards. Hori-
zontal standards refer to “guidelines for teaching, the implication being that we
should change the nature of instruction.” The emphasis in the NCTM Standards
on problem solving and conceptual understanding, rather than rote memoriza-
tion of facts and algorithms, is a good example of this use of higher standards.
“By contrast, when you hear someone say that we need to ‘raise standards,’ that
represents a vertical shift, a claim that students ought to know more, do more,
perform better.” The term standards is therefore used to refer to both the criteria
by which we judge a student, teacher, school, and so on, as well as the level of
performance deemed acceptable on those criteria (Mathison, 2000).
Vinson and Ross (2001) sum up what standards-based education reform
(SBER) is. SBER is an effort on the part of some official body—a governmental
agency (such as the U.S. Department of Education or British Columbia Ministry
of Education) or a professional education association (such as the NCSS)—to
define and establish a holistic system of pedagogical purpose (such as Goals 2000),
content selection (such as curriculum standards), teaching methodology (such as
the promotion of phonics), and assessment (such as government-mandated tests).
These intents combine such that: (1) the various components of classroom practice
are interrelated and mutually reinforcing to the extent they each coalesce around
the others, and (2) performance is completely subsumed by the assessment com-
ponent, which serves as the indicator of relative success or failure.
There are a number of assumptions underlying the invocation of stan-
dards-based educational reform:
• Students do not know enough;

• Curriculum standards and assessment will lead to higher achievement;
• Standards are necessary to ensure national/state/provincial competi-
tiveness in world markets;
• Federal guidance and local control can coexist;
• Centralized accountability and bottom-up initiative and creativity
are coherent aims;
• Standardization will promote equal educational opportunity;
• “Experts” from outside the classroom are best positioned to deter-
mine what ought to be taught and how in schools.
These assumptions, generally untested and without much supporting evidence,

are shared by many along the political spectrum, creating a strong pro-standards
alliance.
Social Studies Curriculum Standards
While in most subject matter areas there has been a univocal call for and representa-
tion of curriculum standards, in social studies there are no fewer than six sponsors
of curriculum standards and ten standards documents competing to influence the
content and pedagogy of social education.4
The most generic curriculum standards are those created by the National
Council for the Social Studies (originally released in 1994 and revised in 2010).
As indicated earlier, these standards seek to create a broad framework of themes
within which local decisions can be made about specific content. Specifically, the
ten thematic strands are the following:
• Culture
• Time, Continuity, and Change
• People, Places, and Environment
• Individual Development and Identity
• Individuals, Groups, and Institutions
• Power, Authority, and Governance
• Production, Distribution, and Society
• Science, Technology, and Society
• Global Connections
• Civic Ideals and Practices
In contrast, the history standards prepared by the National Center for His-
tory in Schools, are much more specific, especially for grades 5–12, and provide
a sense both of how children should think (historically) and about what. Contrast
both the NCSS and the history standards with those published by the American
Psychological Association for the teaching of high school psychology. These stan-
dards mimic the study of psychology at the collegiate level, including a focus on
research methods and the subdisciplines of psychology.5 None of these standards
documents accounts for the others—each is a closed system that maintains the
particular discipline intact. In addition, these multiple sets of standards, when com-
bined with state/provincial curriculum documents, identify too many educational
outcomes to be taught and learned in the time allocated, what Popham (2004)
identifies as one of the fatal mistakes of SBER.
Implementing Standards-Based Reform through High-Stakes Testing
Advocating higher standards (either vertical or horizontal) makes a difference only

if there is a clear sense of how we will know if higher standards have been attained.
The single most critical, even overwhelming, indicator used in SBER is standard-
ized tests, especially high-stakes tests. High-stakes tests are those for which there
are real consequences—such as retention, required summer school, graduation,
pay increases, budget cuts, district takeovers—for students, teachers, and schools
(see Heubert & Hauser, 1998). In virtually every state, the adoption of higher
standards has been accompanied by the creation of high-stakes standardized tests
or changes to exiting testing programs that make them high-stakes.
The frequency with which standardized tests are employed and the faith in
their power to reform schools, teaching, and learning seem ironic. Nonetheless,
even the most prominent of educational measurement experts judge the ever
more sophisticated testing technology as inadequate for most of the purposes
to which it is put, a refrain heard from an ever enlarging group (Mathison &
Ross, 2008; Mehrens, 1998; Popham, 2004; Sacks, 1999). As one of the world’s
leading educational measurement experts summarized,
As someone who has spent his entire career doing research, writing,
and thinking about educational testing and assessment issues, I would
like to conclude by summarizing a compelling case showing that the
major uses of tests for student and school accountability during the
past fifty years have improved education and student learning in dra-
matic ways. Unfortunately, this is not my conclusion. Instead, I am
led to conclude that in most cases the instruments and technology
have not been up to the demands that have been placed on them by
high-stakes accountability. Assessment systems that are useful monitors
lose much of their dependability and credibility for that purpose when
high stakes are attached to them. The unintended negative effects of
high-stakes accountability uses often outweigh the intended positive
effects. (Linn, 2000, p. 14)
As Popham (2008) notes, this failure is often a result of schools using the
wrong tests in a SBER context, either norm-referenced tests or state standards tests
that include a smattering of all standards in a subject area. Both types are what
Popham calls “instructionally insensitive.”
The Common Core State Standards
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are the most recent incarnation of
curriculum documents that define what will be taught and how it will be taught
in schools. CCSS reflects the same language and concerns as other SBER efforts
with an emphasis on “world class” standards, 21st-century skills, and a logic that
sees schools as serving the needs of corporate capitalism at the expense of educating
individuals to contribute to the commonwealth. CCSS also creates new markets
to be exploited by corporations. As Au (2013) explains,
There is certainly money to be made. Some conservative groups like the

Pioneer Institute and American Principles Project suggest a mid-range
estimation that the CCSS implementation will cost $15.8 billion over
seven years: $1.2 billion for assessments, $5.3 billion for professional
development, $6.9 billion for tech infrastructure and support (Account-
ability Works, 2012). The Fordham Institute predicts the CCSS could
cost $12.1 billion over the next 1–3 years (Murphy, Regenstein, &
McNamara, 2012). Given this potential market for private industry, it
is not surprising that The New York Times reports venture capital invest-
ment in public education has increased 80% since 2005 to a total of
$632 million as of 2012 (Rich, 2013). The development of the CCSS
and the consequent rolling out of assessments, preparation materials,
professional development, and other CCSS-related infrastructure fits
quite well with the neoliberal project of reframing public education
around the logics of private businesses (Apple, 2006) as well as the
shifting of public monies into the coffers of for-profit corporations
through private contracts (Burch, 2009).
Some educators claim the Common Core offers a more progressive, stu-
dent-centered, constructivist approach to learning as opposed to the “drill and kill”
test prep and scripted curriculum of NCLB classrooms (Au, 2013; The Trouble
with the Common Core, 2013). But as the editors of Rethinking Schools point
out, these advantages will likely disappear once the tests for the Common Core
arrive. CCSS are for all intents and purposes, NCLB 2.0, with the closing the
achievement gap rhetoric removed (Au, 2013).
We have seen this show before. The entire country just finished a
decade-long experiment in standards-based, test-driven school reform
called No Child Left Behind. NCLB required states to adopt “rigor-
ous” curriculum standards and test students annually to gauge progress
towards reaching them. Under threat of losing federal funds, all 50
states adopted or revised their standards and began testing every student,
every year in every grade from 3–8 and again in high school. (Before
NCLB, only 19 states tested all kids every year, after NCLB all 50
did.) (The Trouble with the Common Core, 2013, para 8)
CCSS are the product of the same coalition that produced previous SBER
efforts—the major U.S. political parties, corporate elites, for-profit education com-
panies, and the U.S. teacher unions, along with most cultural conservatives and
not a few supposed liberal progressives. Despite the name, the Common Core State
Standards are top-down, national standards written by Gates Foundation–funded
consultants for the National Governors Association, designed to circumvent federal

restrictions on the adoption of a national curriculum and create a perfect storm
for the testing and curriculum corporations, such as Pearson.6
[T]he Common Core State Standards Initiative goes far beyond the
content of the standards themselves. The initiative conflates standards
with standardization. For instance, many states are mandating that
school districts select standardized student outcome measures and
teacher evaluation systems from a pre-established state list. To maxi-
mize the likelihood of student success on standardized measures, many
districts are requiring teachers to use curriculum materials produced by
the same companies that are producing the testing instruments, even
predetermining the books students will read on the basis of the list of
sample texts that illustrate the standard. The initiative compartmental-
izes thinking, privileges profit-making companies, narrows the creativity
and professionalism of teachers, and limits meaningful student learning.
(Brooks & Dieta, 2012/2013, p. 65)
Despite the frequently repeated claims that standards-based education reform

is a key factor in improving the economy there is “no independently affirmed data
that demonstrate the validity of the standards as a vehicle to improve economic
strength, build 21st-century skills, or achieve the things they claim are lacking
in the current public school system” (Teienken, 2011, p. 155). And, there is no
research or experience to justify the claims being made for the ability of CCSS
to ensure that students are college- and career-ready, which is not surprising as
evidence illustrates that NCLB reforms were a colossal failure even when judged
on their own distorted logic (Saltman, 2012; Stedman, 2010; 2011). As Au (2013)
points out:
Simply put, there is a severe lack of research evidence that increased

standards correlate with increases in test scores and achievement gener-
ally (Guisbond et al., 2012; National Research Council, 2011; Weiss &
Long, 2013), and a similar lack of evidence that increased test scores
correlate with increased competitiveness in the global economy—two
of the central presumptions undergirding the arguments for advancing
the CCSS. (p. 4)
NCLB, Common Core, and Social Studies
NCLB has not been kind to social studies as a school subject. The NCLB emphasis
on testing to meet “adequate yearly progress” goals in literacy and mathematics
severely limited the curriculum and instructional time in other subjects. Previous
standards-based reform efforts have produced “codified sanitized versions of history,
politics, and culture that reinforce official myths while leaving out the voices, con-
cerns, and realities of our students and communities” (The Trouble with the Com-
mon Core, 2013, para 18). In his incisive critique of CCSS, Au (2013) describes
two trends regarding social studies. First, under NCLB, there has been a broad
reduction in the teaching of social studies “as schools increased the time spent on
tested subjects, non-tested subjects like social studies were increasingly reduced”
(p. 6). Common Core State Standards for Literacy in Social Studies/History (National
Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School
Officers, 2010) exacerbates this trend, making social studies (and other subjects)
ancillary to (the pursuit of higher test scores in) literacy and mathematics (see,
e.g., Gilles, Wang, Smith, & Johnson, 2013).
A striking aspect of the Social Studies/History CCSS is that they

essentially exchange the pure content of previous era’s ossified standards
for a new focus on pure skills. While existing content-focused social
studies/history standards have never been particularly good, in exchang-
ing pure content in favor of pure skills . . . [CCSS] take the “social”
out of the “social studies.” In some important ways there simply is no
“there” there. (Au, 2013, p. 7)
Singer’s (2013) assessment of CCSS puts it this way:
The sad thing is that citizenship, democratic values, and preparation

for an active role in a democratic society are at the core of many ear-
lier state standards and are prominent in the curriculum goals of the
National Council for the Social Studies. But these are being ignored
in the Common Core push for higher test scores on math and read-
ing exams. (para 10)
Drawing upon Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Leahey (2013) explores the logic
of standards-based education reform and the ways accountability systems, perfor-
mance standards, and market-based reform initiatives have degraded teaching and
learning in public schools. In his analysis of the No Child Left Behind Act and
the Race to the Top fund, he explores three dominant themes woven throughout
Heller’s work and how they are reflected in standard-based education reform: (1)
the reliance on symbolic indicators of progress, (2) the irrational nature and dead-
ening effect of bureaucratic rules and procedures, and (3) the dangers of unchecked
capitalism. Leahey argues that these reform efforts are not only counterproductive,
but eroding the democratic foundations of our public school systems and signal
the “end of the art of teaching.”
[The] curriculum, student assessment, and now classroom instruction

have all been reduced to an externally-determined list of skills, techni-
cal knowledge, and compliant behaviors reinforced with institutional
rewards (i.e., grade promotion, merit distinctions, public recognition,
job security) and punishments (i.e., retention, remediation, public
criticism, and termination). The bureaucratic structure reduces the
art of teaching to a series of artificial performance indicators that are
used to represent “value” or “quality.” These indicators are powerful
bureaucratic devices that have reorganized schools and the very mean-
ing of classroom teaching around artificial constructs like “proficiency,”
“adequate yearly progress,” “school in need of improvement,” and
“effective and ineffective.” Within this system, state education depart-
ments continuously monitor fidelity and progress toward these abstract
(and often meaningless and unrealizable) goals. Reaching these goals is
indicated through the act of reducing outcomes to simple numerical
indicators. (p. 9)
Leahey concludes that to maintain their autonomy and professionalism,

teachers will have to find alternative ways of organizing and produce a counter-
narrative that not only exposes the failings of standards-based reform but also offers
meaningful alternatives. (See Leahey’s chapter in this book for more on creating
curriculum alternatives.)
Standards-based education reforms have slowly and steadily transformed
teaching from professional work into technical work, where teachers have lost
control over the process and pace of their work, a process Braverman (1974)
called “deskilling.” This detailed division of labor breaks down complex work into
simpler tasks and moves special skills, knowledge, and control to the top of the
hierarchy, separating the conception of work from its execution and thus creat-
ing dehumanizing, alienating work. For example, teachers’ work is diminished
as they lose control of the content of the curriculum or how they might assess
student learning (both of which are now dictated by governments or indirectly
via high-stakes tests).
Many teachers have internalized the ends-means distinction between cur-
riculum and their work, as a result, they view their professional role, at best, as
instructional decision makers, not curriculum developers (Thornton, 2004). What
is clear from studies of teacher decision making, however, is that teachers do much
more than select teaching methods to implement curricular goals defined by people
outside the classroom (see Ross, Cornett, & McCutcheon, 1992). Teacher beliefs
about social studies subject matter and student thinking in social studies as well
as planning and instructional strategies, together, create the enacted curriculum of a
classroom—the day-to-day interactions among students, teachers, and subject mat-
ter. The difference between the publicly declared formal curriculum (as presented
by curriculum standards documents) and the actual curriculum experienced by

students in social studies classrooms is significant. The enacted curriculum is “the
way the teacher confirms or creates doubt about assertions of knowledge, whether
some opinions are treated as facts while other opinions are discounted as unworthy
of consideration” (Marker & Mehlinger, 1992, pp. 834–835). For example,
One teacher may proclaim that one of democracy’s virtues is a toler-

ance for many points of view, but in the classroom choke off views
inconsistent with his or her own. Another teacher may offer no asser-
tions about the value of democracy, while exhibiting its virtues in his
or her own behavior. (Marker & Mehlinger, 1992, p. 835)
In the SBER era teachers must assert themselves and actively resist top-down
school reform policies if they are to recapture control of their work as professionals.
Resisting Standards and Testing
In the face of great enthusiasm for standards-based education reform and high-stakes
testing there is a growing resistance movement. This resistance, like the support
for SBER, comes in a variety of forms and is fueled by the energies of parents,
students, teachers, advocacy groups, and a handful of academics. The resistance to
SBER is based on three quite distinct arguments: (1) a technical one—the tests
are technically flawed or inappropriately used; (2) a psychological one—SBER’s
reliance on external motivation is counterproductive and will lead to both lower
levels of achievement and disempowerment for teachers; and (3) a social critique of
testing—testing is a social practice that promotes corporate interests and antidemo-
cratic, anticommunity values. Each of these arguments will be briefly summarized.
For some, the problem with using standardized tests to ensure high stan-
dards is that the tests are not very good. There is plenty of evidence to support
this argument. The use of primarily or only multiple choice questions is prima
facie a questionable practice given the current understandings about how one can
know what a student knows and can do. A multiple choice item is a very limited
sample of any knowledge and/or skill. Bad test questions (bad because there is
no right answer; because they are developmentally inappropriate; because they are
impossibly difficult; because they are trivial; because they are culturally biased;
and so on) appear with regularity, often in newspapers and in the popular press.7
The other aspect of the technical argument is that high-stakes tests are mis-
used. In a statement on high-stakes testing by the National Research Council’s
Committee on Appropriate Test Use, Heubert and Hauser (1998) describe the
misuse of any single indicator for decision making.
Any educational decision that will have a major impact on a test taker
should not be made solely or automatically on the basis of a single
test score. Other relevant information about the student’s knowledge
and skills should also be taken into account. (p. 3)
While this has been a longstanding position within the educational measurement
community, it has not been a compelling restraint on policymakers in establishing
high-stakes testing programs that flaunt complete disregard for this standard of
appropriate and ethical test use.
While the technical inadequacies and shortcomings of tests and test items
are easily identified, this critique is ultimately a shallow one. It is a critique that
might send test publishers and SBER proponents back to the drawing table,
briefly. Technological advances that increase the quality and validity of tests and
test items are often short-lived and sometimes even rejected (Mathison & Frag-
noli, 2006). Although much could be done to make tests better and to promote
responsible use of tests, “better tests will not lead to better educational outcomes”
(Heubert & Hauser, 1998, p. 3). Attaining better or different outcomes is a much
more complex matter than having ever more accurately and precisely calibrated
indicators.
The second argument underlying the SBER resistance movement is a psycho-
logical one. The pressure to perform well on high stakes tests leads teachers and
administrators to adopt teaching styles and activities that depend on an extrinsic
reward structure. Research on motivation and academic achievement clearly points
to a high correlation between extrinsic motivation and lower academic achievement
(Ryan & LaGuardia, 1999; Kohn, 1996). The corollary to this is research suggest-
ing that school reforms that increase student engagement in personally meaningful
tasks and build a sense of belonging in a community of learners are ones that lead
to higher levels of academic achievement (Ryan & LaGuardia, 1999).
With regularity, stories appear in the mainstream media of damage

done to kids. For Debbie Byrd, a restaurant owner in Pittsfield, Mass,
the call to arms came two years ago, when her son began suffering
panic attacks and gnawed holes in his shirts over the state’s demanding
fourth-grade proficiency tests. (Lord, 2000)
She turned 10 last week. Her bed at home lies empty this morning
as she wakes in an unfamiliar bed at a psychiatric hospital. Anxiety
disorder. She had a nervous breakdown the other day. In fourth grade.
She told her parents she couldn’t handle all the pressure to do well
on the tests. She was right to worry: On the previous administration,
90% of Arizona’s kids flunked. (Arizona Daily Star, April 2, 2000)
When an East Palo Alto parent asked school district Superintendent

Charlie Mae Knight why there are no whale watching field trips this
year, Knight replied, “Kids are not tested on whale watching, so they’re
not going whale watching.” When the parent complained that whale
watching doesn’t happen on Saturdays, Knight shot back, “You mean
to tell me those whales don’t come out on weekends? Listen, after May
2, you can go (on a field trip) to heaven if you want. Until then, field
trips are out.” (Guthrie, 2000)
School Board members will discuss today whether they should institute
mandatory recess for all elementary schools, in response to a campaign
by parents to give their children a break between classes. Preparing for
Virginia tests had so consumed most Virginia Beach schools they had
abandoned this traditional respite. The notion that children should
have fun in school is now a heresy. (Sinha, March 21, 2000)
And on a broader scale, damage to children is reflected in higher rates of

children leaving school for GED programs, increased dropout rates, increases in
grade retention rates, and the creation of insurmountable hurdles of educational
achievement for English language learners, special needs students, and generally
those who are living in poverty (Mathison & Ross, 2008).
Test-driven reforms also have a negative effect on teachers’ motivation—rob-
bing them of their professional capacity to choose curricular content; to respond
in meaningful ways to particular student needs; to set an appropriate instruc-
tional pace; and so on (Mathison & Freeman, 2003; Stephen Round, Providence
Teacher, Quits, 2012). In Chicago, teachers are provided with a script—a detailed,
day-to-day outline of what should be taught in language arts, mathematics, science,
and social studies. Lest there be any confusion about why this script is necessary,
at the top of each page is a reference to the section of the standardized test that
will be given to students in a specific and subsequent grades.
SBER constructs teachers as conduits of standardized curriculum delivered
in standardized ways, all of which are determined by others who are very distant
from the particular circumstances of classrooms, schools, and neighborhoods. A
fundamental assumption of SBER is that deciding what should be taught is an
unsuitable responsibility for teachers. Ironically, or perhaps not, standardized cur-
riculum and high-stakes testing directly contradict efforts, such as shared decision
making, to make schools more democratic, responsive to local needs, and sup-
portive of teacher development and reflective practice.
The other aspect to this psychological critique is the extent to which SBER
and high-stakes testing ignore the diversity of learning styles and rates among chil-
dren. Ohanian (1999) captures the idea succinctly in the title of her book, One Size
Fits Few. This extreme standardization and universal application view is inconsis-
tent with developmental psychology (Healy, 1990), does damage to most students
(Ohanian, 1999), and ignores the diversity of students, schools, and communities.
Finally, there is a social critique argument proffered in the resistance to SBER/
high-stakes testing movement. This argument, while not disagreeing with the techni-
cal or psychological arguments, suggests the interests and values underlying SBER
and high-stakes testing are what are at issue. In particular, high-stakes testing and the
standards movement in general are conceived as a broad corporate strategy to control
both the content and process of schooling. In most states as well as on the national
scene, corporate leaders and groups such as the Business Roundtable promote SBER
in the name of reestablishing global competitiveness. The social critique of SBER
suggests this support is more about social control: control through the establish-
ment of a routine, standardized schooling process that will socialize most workers
to expect low-level, mundane work lives that will cohere with the low skill level
jobs that have proliferated with globalization and increased technology, and control
through the well-established sorting mechanism provided by standardized testing.
A critical element of this social critique of high-stakes testing is an analysis
of the values that are called upon by the corporate interest, and which have appeal
to many North Americans in general. These are values such as competition, indi-
vidualism, self-sufficiency, fairness, and equity.
While corporations (big business, including the education businesses of cur-
riculum production, textbook publishing, test publishing, and for-profit educational
management organizations—EMO’s) promote SBER and the use of high-stakes
testing, parents, kids, and teachers “push back.” Grassroots groups of parents (such
as Parents for Educational Justice in Louisiana; Parents Across Virginia United to
Reform SOLS; Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education in Massachusetts; Cali-
fornia Resistance to High Stakes Testing; Parents United for Responsible Education
in Illinois), teachers (such as the Coalition for Educational Justice in California),
students (such as the Organized Students of Chicago), and combinations of these
constituencies (such as the Rouge Forum, Whole Schooling Consortium, and Badass
Teachers) have sprung up around the country. They stage teach-ins, organize but-
ton and bumper sticker campaigns, lobby state legislatures, work with local teacher
unions, mount Twitter campaigns, and boycott or disrupt testing in local schools.
In recent years the resistance movement has mushroomed, and the spring of
2013 witnessed a testing-reform uprising as students, parents, and teachers engaged
in boycotts, “opt-out” campaigns, and walkouts in Portland, Oregon, Chicago,
Denver, and New York and other communities. Seattle teachers defied state poli-
cies by refusing to give a mandated test and were backed by parents and students,
and they won. In 2012, Chicago teachers went on strike over SBER policies.
These actions demonstrate in dramatic fashion how effective organized resistance
to SBER and high-stakes standardized testing can be, but the battle continues as
a part of long tradition of workers resisting the dehumanization of work and the
workplace (Gude, 2013). There is currently no more powerful force in education
and schooling than the Standards-Based Education Reform movement. It is a
movement that enjoys both favor and disfavor across the political spectrum, as
well as special interest groups including social classes, ethnicities, and races. There
is every reason to believe it will fail. This likelihood makes it no less compelling
as a force in contemporary educational reform.
Rethinking Teaching and Curriculum
Social studies teaching should not be reduced to an exercise in implementing a set

of activities predefined by policymakers, textbook companies, or a high-stakes test.
Rather, teachers should be actively engaged in considering the perennial curriculum
question—What knowledge is of most worth? Social studies learning should not
be about passively absorbing someone else’s conception of the world, but rather
be an exercise in creating a personally meaningful understanding of the way the
world is and how one might act to transform that world.
Thinking of curriculum not as disciplinary subject matter but as something
experienced in situations is an alternative (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). This is
a Deweyan conception—curriculum as experience—in which teachers and students
are at the center of the curriculum. Dewey’s image of the teacher and her or his
role in the creation of school experiences can be found in How We Think (1933)
and the essay “The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education” (1964). He argued
that teachers must be students of both subject matter and “mind activity” if they
are to foster student growth. The teaching profession requires teachers who have
learned to apply critical thought to their work. To do this, they must have a full
knowledge of their subject matter as well as observe and reflect on their practice
and its social and political context.
The professional knowledge of teachers is theoretical knowledge, or what has
been called “practical theories of teaching.”
Practical theories of teaching are the conceptual structures and visions

that provide teachers with reasons for acting as they do, and for choos-
ing the teaching activities and curriculum materials they choose in
order to be effective. They are principles or propositions that undergird
and guide teachers’ appreciations, decisions, and actions. (Sanders &
McCutcheon, 1986, pp. 54–55)
Such theories are important to the success of teaching because educational problems
are practical problems, defined by discrepancies between a practitioners’ theory
and practice, not as gaps between formal educational theory and teacher behaviors
(where ends and means are separated).
Problems of teaching and curriculum are resolved not by discovery of new

knowledge, but by formulating and acting upon practical judgment (Carr & Kem-
mis, 1986). The central aim of curriculum work is to improve the practical effec-
tiveness of the theories that teachers employ in creating the enacted curriculum.
This aim presents problems in that sometimes teachers are not conscious of the
reasons for their actions or may simply be implementing curriculum conceived by
others. This means that reflective practice must focus on both the explicit and the
tacit cultural environment of teaching—the language, manners, standards, beliefs,
and values that unconsciously influence the classroom and school environment
and the ways in which teachers respond to it. As Dewey asserted in Democracy
and Education,
We rarely recognize the extent in which our conscious estimates of

what is worthwhile and what is not are due to standards of which we
are not conscious at all. But in general it may be said that the things
which we take for granted without inquiry or reflection are just the
things which determine our conscious thinking and decide our conclu-
sions. And these habitudes which lie below the level of reflection are
just those which have been formed in the constant give and take of
relationship with others. (Dewey, 1916, p. 18)
Social studies teaching and learning should be about uncovering the tak-
en-for-granted elements in our everyday experience and making them the target
of inquiry. Critical examination of the intersection of language, social relations,
and practice can provide insights into our work as teachers and uncover con-
straints that affect our approaches to and goals for social studies education. The
teacher and curriculum are inextricably linked. Our efforts to improve and trans-
form the social studies curriculum hinge on developing practices among teachers
and their collaborators (colleagues, students, research workers, teacher educators,
parents) that emerge from critical analyses of teaching and schooling as well as
self-reflection—the exploration of practical theories employed by teachers and the
actions that they guide.
In the end, the question is whether social studies education will promote
citizenship that is adaptive to the status quo and interests of the socially powerful
or whether it will promote a transformative citizenship that aims to reconstruct
society in more equitable and socially just ways. Social studies teachers are posi-
tioned to provide the answer.
Notes
1. Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) is a curriculum project from the 1970s, funded
by the National Science Foundation. Students studied the lives and culture of the Inuit of
the Canadian Artic to see their own society in a new and different way. Students were asked
to consider the questions: What is human about human beings? How did they get that way?
How can they be made more so? The core curriculum materials included the Netsilik Film
Series, which captured a year in the life of an Inuit family and became an acclaimed achieve-
ment in visual anthropology. The curriculum, and particularly the films, became the subject
of a major political and educational controversy in the United States. Print materials from the
project are available for noncommercial use at http://www.macosonline.org. The documentary
Through These Eyes (Laird, 2004) examines the curriculum and the controversy it sparked and
includes excerpts from the Netsilik Film Series. Through These Eyes (http://www.nfb.ca/film/
through_these_eyes/) and the Netsilik Film Series (http://www.nfb.ca/explore-all-directors/
quentin-brown) can also be viewed on the Web site of the National Film Board.
2. Also important here are earlier works by authors such as Anyon (1979), Bowles
& Gintis (1976), Freire (1970), and Willis (1977/1981).
3. See http://www.education-world.com/standards/national/soc_sci/index.shtml for
a substantial overview of these standards at all levels.
4. Curriculum standard sponsors, documents, and Web sites: (1) NCSS: Expecta-
tions of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, (socialstudies.org): (2) National
Center for History in the Schools: (a) Historical Thinking Standards; (b) History Standards
for Grades K-4; (c) United States History Content Standards; (d) World History Con-
tent Standards; (http://www.nchs.ucla.edu/Standards/); (3) Center for Civic Education:
National Standards for Civics and Government (http://new.civiced.org/resources/pub-
lications/resource-materials/national-standards-for-civics-and-government); (4) National
Council for Geographic Education: Geography for Life: National Geography Standards,
2nd Edition (http://ncge.org/geography-for-life); (5) Council for Economic Education:
National Content Standards in Economics (http://www.councilforeconed.org/resource/
voluntary-national-content-standards-in-economics/); (6) American Psychological Asso-
ciation: National Standards for High School Psychology Curriculum (http://www.apa.org/
education/k12/national-standards.aspx).
5. Links to all these standards, and other standards documents can be found at:
http://www.educationworld.com/standards/national/soc_sci/index.shtml.
6. Between 2008–2012, The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gave out 56 grants
totaling nearly $100 million for the development of the Common Core State Standards
(Au, 2013).
7. For examples of “stupid test items” see Susan Ohanian’s Web site: http://www.
susanohanian.org/show_testitems.php.
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3
Creating Authentic Spaces for

Democratic Social Studies Education
Christopher Leahey
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) the United States

Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment provided corporations and
unions the legal right to spend unlimited money to finance campaign broad-
casts in the run-up to elections.
In 2007, the U.S. military budget exceeded $600 billion, a number surpassing
the military expenditures at the height at the Cold War and the Vietnam War
—D. Isenberg, Budgeting for Empire
The United States Census Bureau reported that in 2006 the top 20% of US
citizens received 50% of aggregate household income while the lowest 20%
of the citizenry earned 3.4%.
—C. DeNavas-Walt, B. B. Proctor, & J. Smith,
Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006
At the end of 2010, the U.S. gross national debit totaled more than $13.6
trillion, amounting to approximately 60% of the Gross Domestic Product
—U.S. Government Accounting Office
The trends and events listed above represent challenges to our democracy. The
growing corporate influence on our electoral system, unchecked military spending,
the concentration of wealth in the upper strata of society, and a spiraling national
debt pose significant challenges to a way of life rooted in democracy, equality, and
freedom. Fully comprehending these events requires a wider understanding of the
51
52 Christopher Leahey
history of the United States and its shifting culture, economy, political system, and
the myriad ways popular will and powerful interests have struggled to shape the
nation. A robust form of social studies education prepares students to understand
and engage the complex political landscape where power, privilege, and democratic
struggle combine to determine how we know the past, the configuration of the
present, and possibilities for the future. Democratically oriented social studies edu-
cation conceptualizes students as “citizens-in-the-making” where the teachers’ aim
is to complicate the past, the curriculum is an emergent document centered on
real world problems, and students are challenged to ask questions, pursue answers,
and construct knowledge in a rapidly changing world.
Social studies instruction that actively examines the world and seeks to
place problems at the center of instruction represents an ideal that is difficult to
attain within the prevailing climate of standards-based reform. Curricular standards
(Mathison, Ross, Vinson, 2006), textbooks (Leahey, 2010; Loewen, 2007), and
standardized tests (Au, 2009) represent significant challenges to teachers committed
to creating authentic classroom instruction and learning experiences that challenge
students to explore the issues of the day. Doing transformative, engaging work
centered on critical social problems and empowerment can, however, be negoti-
ated by teachers interested in providing students authentic classroom experiences
rooted in inquiry and shared through deliberation. Creating and implementing
an empowering form of social studies education involves three tasks: (1) building
an understanding of the aims and objectives of democratic social studies educa-
tion; (2) investigating and assessing the institutional obstacles that limit what can
be achieved in the classroom; and (3) articulating a plan to negotiate curricular
content and create time and space for inquiry, deliberation, and purposeful action.
A Democratic Conception of Social Studies Education
Connecting the Past, Present, and Future
Social studies education starts with a willingness to examine the world around
us. The study of society necessarily requires the classroom teacher to embrace the
world in all of its complexity and actively seek to understand the currents of his-
tory and how they have shaped and continue to shape our lives. Harold Rugg,
an influential progressive educator suggested teaching and learning be linked to
practical problems. He warned educators to avoid the study of “superficial minu-
tiae” embodied in presidential elections, political parties, and developments in law
(Rugg, 1936, p. 28). To limit social education to studying the past as a discrete
body of information was to miss a valuable opportunity to assist students in actively
examining the world in which they live and the world they will someday inherit.
Creating Authentic Spaces 53
Rather than study the past as a static field of discrete events disconnected
from the present, Rugg envisioned a more dynamic, albeit practical, form of social
studies that started with the study of human civilization, paying close attention to
patterns of change and the problems associated with modernity. Rugg suggested
teachers lead students in questioning the nature of economic systems, tracing the
development and changes of our political institutions, examining how society is
stratified into “special-group interests,” appreciating the various ways public opin-
ion is controlled, and understanding how ideas such as rugged individualism and
laissez-faire serve as central concepts for business and government (Rugg, 1936, p.
29). For Rugg, encounters with social world through critical inquiry and question-
ing were an essential element of social education:
It is clear that the school must take a position in regard to these funda-
mental questions. The search for answers will expose the deepest roots
of our American culture, and will show, too, how this culture is being
transformed by the startling changes of the present. The answers to these
questions, therefore, underlie any thoughtfully constructed curriculum
devised for and of this emergent curriculum. (Rugg, 1936, p. 29)
Perhaps the most transformative aspect of progressive social education is it’s

forward-looking nature and emphasis on supporting students to use the past as
a reference point for actively examining the world. John Dewey viewed the past
not as something to be cherished, but as something that held value only when
connected to the present. Humans continuously remake the world in ways that
transcend the boundaries and limitations of the past. And even then, Dewey rea-
soned, “[t]he present is not just something that comes after the past; much less
something produced by it. It is what life is in leaving the past behind it” (Dewey,
1916/1966, p. 76).
Limiting social education to studying the past, without any connection to the
present, or thought toward the possibilities to the future, is to limit social education
to socially constructed bodies of names, events, and concepts that ultimately leave
students powerless to understand the past and play an active role in remaking their
world. Early progressive social educators believe that studying the past was only
valuable if it opened pathways to study and understand a continuously changing
world. Dewey explains it best:
The mistake of making the records and the remains of the past the
main material of education is that it cuts the vital connection of pres-
ent and past, and tends to make the past a rival of the present and
the present a more or less futile imitation of the past. Under such
circumstances, culture becomes an ornament and solace; a refuge and
an asylum. Men [sic] escape from the crudities of the present to live
in its imagined refinements, instead of using what the past offers as
an agency for ripening those crudities. (Dewey, 1916/1966, p. 76).
To make the past the centerpiece of social education is to fix students’ minds on
a world that no longer exists while diverting attention from the most pressing
matters of the day. It also limits the social studies curriculum to established ways
of seeing and knowing, leaving students and teachers with little room for inde-
pendent thinking or innovation. To sever the past from lived experience and recoil
from contemporary social problems is preparation for complacency and intellectual
dependence, not active political engagement and free thinking.
Social Studies as Dialogue
Viewed from a democratic perspective, the social studies curriculum cannot be

viewed as a static document to be read, interpreted, and implemented in similar
ways across different contexts. Democratic social educators view the social studies
curriculum as a product of the teachers’ and students’ interaction with and dialogue
about the forces of the past and present. Highlighting the importance of allowing
teachers and students to create an emergent curriculum, Thornton (2005) explains,
“[T]he curriculum should be as an instrument to be manipulated by active educa-
tors rather than as an inflexible plan that confines them and forbids receptivity
to individual differences in students and aptitudes among students” (pp. 65–66).
Democratic social education offers students and teachers an emergent curriculum
as it provides space and time for students to examine and even challenge the forces
that shape their worlds.
Rather than working to reconstruct or master the past, democratic social
education invites students to interact with the past through inquiry, delibera-
tion, and actively constructing their own meaning about the world. Singer (2011)
explains that social studies begins with students’ questions about the world and
how it became what it is today. The social studies curriculum moves throughout
time, sometimes forward, sometimes backward “to examine case studies from the
past, to help us gain insight into the human condition, and to stimulate questions
about the present” (p. 5). Democratic social education is grounded in students’
lives, and the curriculum is conceived as a platform from which to question the
past, learn about the world, and prepare to act. In his series of lectures on the
nature and meaning of history, Carr (1967) reminds us that “history is a continu-
ous process between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the
present and the past” (p. 35). With the social studies classroom, meaning is not
transmitted directly from teacher to student, but flows from the dialogue generated
by teachers and students interacting with one another, within a particular context,
as they study the historical record.
Unlike the contemporary fixation on mastering social studies curriculum

comprised of dates, figures, events, and concepts, democratic social education treats
history as subordinate to the primary goal of producing citizens capable of play-
ing an active role in government. Dewey (1916/1966) reminds us that “growth
is characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond
itself. The criterion of the value of school education is the extent in which creates
a desire for continued growth and supplies means for making the desire effective
in fact” (p. 53). Two decades later, Rugg (1936) imagined an active, collaborative
form of social education consisting “of young and old citizens studying, thinking,
discussing, initiating legislation, scrutinizing and reviewing acts of representatives,
recalling them from office, ousting ineffective governments and installing new ones”
(p. 15). For Dewey and Rugg, the classroom was a point of departure to a life
committed to learning and participating in the political process.
Empowering students with the skills and disposition to engage and perhaps
improve their world can start in the classroom. Parker (2008) explains that seminar
and deliberation are two forms of classroom discussion that highlight the value
of democratic thought and political engagement. Rich, meaningful texts challenge
students to consider multiple perspectives emanating from various interpretations,
and classroom deliberation allows discussants to think through problems, listen to
one another, consider multiple possibilities, and determine the best course of action
to address complex social problems (Parker, 2008, p. 71). Perhaps the best way to
foster democratic social education is for preservice teachers to experience it prior
to entering the classroom. Teacher preparation programs can prepare prospective
teachers to promote civic engagement through instructing prospective teachers to
engage issues related to social justice and freedom. Teacher education programs
can potentially foster a strong sense of civic engagement by supporting prospec-
tive teachers in creating a critical literacy curriculum drawing upon instructional
techniques such as role play, civic debate, and interrogating primary sources (Mar-
shall & Klein, 2009, p. 218). Providing a robust form of democratic education,
however, is difficult to achieve in today’s classrooms where standardized curriculum,
corporate textbooks, and high-stakes exams regulate the relationships between the
teacher and students as well as the students and the social world.
The Standardized Curriculum, Corporate Textbooks,

and High-Stakes Testing
While a progressive form of social studies education is student-centered, focuses

on contemporary problems, and seeks to provide authentic opportunities to engage
in political, economic, and social analysis, the nature and goals of social studies
have changed in response to political and social developments. There has been
an ongoing struggle between social reconstructionists who view social studies as
preparation for challenging the status quo and working for progressive change and
conservative educators who view social studies as focused on transmitting historical
knowledge and imparting reverence for American institutions and traditional values
(Kliebard, 2004; Bennett, 1998). Despite its roots in inquiry, critical analysis, and
problem solving, the focus of social studies has gradually narrowed to focus on
traditional history and the social sciences (Evans, 2004).
The Curriculum of Compliance
Today, the hundreds of objectives delineated in social studies curricula guidelines,

the thousands of pages contained in textbooks, and the mass-produced paper and
pencil tests reflect the architecture of traditional history where students’ access to
the past (and the present, for that matter) is highly regulated and closely moni-
tored. In addition to serving as a form of communication about what is and is not
worth knowing and understanding (Apple, 2000), these devices place a premium
on acquiring and memorizing some content, while discounting or altogether omit-
ting voices, perspectives, and events that do not fit into the dominant narrative of
history (Leahey, 2010). This is what might be considered a curriculum of compli-
ance, or a set of carefully constructed curricular objectives, texts, and test items
that compel students to study and see the world in a limited, even hegemonic
way that conceals alternative narratives, evidence, and voices that may challenge
a traditional rendering of history. One examination (Leahey, 2012) of how state
curriculum guidelines used in California, Florida, New York, and Texas present
the Vietnam War found glaring inconsistencies between the historical record and
curricular objectives. U.S. provocations and larger context of the conflict were
omitted, voices of Vietnamese civilians and Viet Cong were muted, and domestic
opposition was vilified (Leahey, 2012). Despite the fact that the Vietnam War was
longest war in U.S. history, claiming the lives of two to three million Vietnamese,
Laotians, and Cambodians, and 58,000 American soldiers, these state curricular
guidelines reduce this event to a series of curricular objectives, that, when taken
together, mask the devastating, tragic nature of the event (Herring, 1991, p. 13).
The standardization of social studies curricula has reshaped the nature and
goals of the discipline. Whereas social studies was originally conceived as a disci-
pline designed to support students in engaging the world and working collectively
to solve problems, the standards movement emphasizes aligning the curriculum,
instructional materials, and tests. Rather than bringing students into contact with
the forces that shape their lives and influence their future, the standards move-
ment directs students’ attention backward, where a false sense of “mastering” a
fixed past and completing high-stakes tests become the overarching goal of social
studies education. Working with the standardized system, the teacher’s primary
role is to show students the world as delineated in curricular standards, conjured
in textbooks, and tested on paper and pencil tests. In directing students’ attention
to the curriculum, textbook, and test, the teacher turns his back to students and
loses the opportunity to have a dialogue about the past, and their place in the
world. Sleeter (2005) explains standards-based instruction also frames the social
studies curriculum “as a commodity for individual consumption rather than as a
resource for public good” (p. 170).
Focusing on educational outcomes (e.g., test scores) rather than student inter-
ests and public problems, the standardization of social studies changes the role of
the teacher from working with students to uncover the complexity of the past, its
relationship to the present, and exploring possibilities for the future to imparting
fragments of the past to be passively consumed, memorized, and retrieved for the
state test. Ross (2000) argues that traditional social studies limits students’ role
in the knowledge construction process, choice of content, texts, and assessments,
and these limitations prepare students to settle for a form of “spectator citizen-
ship” where “individual agency is construed primarily as one’s vote, and voting
procedures override all else with regard to what counts as democracy” (p. 55).
In addition to transforming the goals of social studies education, stan-
dards-based learning also distorts the relationship between instruction and assess-
ment. When the social studies curriculum is designed without consideration of the
factors (i.e., student interests, classroom resources, teacher expertise) influencing
implementation, teachers are challenged with determining how to provide students
with a rigorous, relevant social studies program while meeting the demands of
the curriculum and the test that will ultimately determine student achievement.
For classroom teachers, the necessity of covering hundreds of objectives
throughout the school year creates pressure to teach social studies superficially,
spending more time on some areas and little to no time on others. In her study of
the impact Virginia’s accountability system had on seven beginning history teachers,
van Hover (2006) found that novice teachers felt pressured to cover the curriculum
before the state test was administered in May. One new teacher, Patricia, describes
the impact state curricular standards had on her social studies instruction:
The biggest influence of SOLs [Standards of Learning] is the pres-

sure to cover everything. . . . I’ve had to cover stuff in a day. We do
Africa, the America’s, and I do Japan in about 20 minutes. Because
literally, last year I didn’t do it all. It’s not something they have to
have a lot of knowledge about and it wasn’t a player in early history.
The way it works out, I will probably spend three class periods on
civilizations in Africa and Americas after Egypt. And its eight or nine
civilizations—like Ghana, Mali, and Aztecs and Incas, and Mayas. It’s
crazy. It’s my least favorite thing to teach because its always so rushed
and the nature of how much stuff has to be covered around the world
from the beginning of time to 1500. The decision [to spend little time
on this topic] is based on SOL [tests]. The number of questions, it’s
so random. You have to know this one little thing about Ghana, and
one little thing about Mali, and the Mayans created the calendar, and
the Aztecs this and it’s so choppy. (cited in van Hover, 2006, p. 209)
The demands of the standardized curriculum place considerable pressure on teach-

ers to quickly move through the social studies instruction, trading inquiry and deep
historical understanding for the shallow, meaningless ritual of coverage. History is
no longer about human experience, and what we can draw from the past as we
face the future, but a sterile field of discrete concepts and topics to be manipulated
and mastered. This pressure to cover all of the hundreds of curricular objectives
discounts students’ interest and may make sustained historical inquiry and critical
thought difficult, if not impossible.
The Problematic Nature of the Corporate Textbook
In addition to placing considerable pressure on teachers to superficially cover the

curriculum, the breadth of standardized curriculum and the hundreds of objectives
delineated within make textbooks invaluable classroom resources. Although high
school social studies textbooks are not considered scholarly works (i.e., they are
not peer-reviewed, do not include citations, are often written by committee, and
usually consist of more than one thousand pages of voiceless narrative), for many
teachers they are essential elements for teaching the standardized social studies cur-
riculum. In an effort to make their textbooks more marketable, large publishing
houses design textbook packages of curricular materials, reading guides, tests, and
videos aligned with state curriculum guidelines. Rather than support students in
examining the historical record, posing questions, and pursuing answers, textbooks
limit history to that which is listed in the state curriculum and may appear on
the test. Textbook sections and chapters are written to reflect the organization and
wording of curricular guides. Some textbook companies have integrated assessment
strategies into the book itself. The New York State edition of McDougall Littell’s
World History: Patterns of Interaction (2007) includes a 33- page testing guide
entitled “Strategies for Taking the Regents Examination” (p. S1). This section
outlines strategies for taking multiple choice tests, analyzing charts and graphs,
interpreting documents, and writing thematic essays.
THE LIMITATIONS OF THE CORPORATE TEXTBOOK
While textbook narratives are valuable resources for teaching in a standards-based

environment, there is a substantive body of critical research raising questions about
the content of textbook narratives and how they misrepresent social class (Anyon,
1979), military conflict (Griffen & Marciano 1979; Marciano, 1997; Leahey,
2010), as well as issues related to race and racial conflict (Sleeter & Grant, 1991;
Brown & Brown, 2010). Equally important is the way textbooks treat crucial
historical events. Hess and Stoddard (2011) found that textbook narratives writ-
ten after 9/11 failed to clearly define terrorism, did not offer sufficient details for
students to understand the complexity of 9/11, and did not connect the terrorist
attacks to the controversial policies (e.g., Patriot Act) created and implemented
in the wake of the attacks. Similarly, in his analysis of American history textbook
treatments of 9/11, Romanowski (2009) found that most classroom textbooks
did not include moral or ethical issues in their treatment of the U.S. response
to terrorism. Failing to include these dimensions of the conflict treats 9/11 as an
uncontested historical event while simultaneously serving to legitimize the U.S.
military response and the controversial domestic policies created in its aftermath.
Textbook narratives might be best understood by examining state laws and
market forces that regulate production and distribution. Presently, large multi-
national corporations dominate the $5.5 billion U.S. elementary–high school
textbook market (Association of American Publishers, 2011). The U.S. market is
comprised of open states where corporate textbook companies design books that
can be sold directly to local school districts and closed states (e.g., Texas, Florida,
California, k-8) where textbook adoption boards pick a select few textbooks for
the entire state (Delfattore, 1992; Ravitch, 2004). This creates a problematic phe-
nomenon whereby closed states with large student populations become powerful
actors in determining they way textbooks are produced and written. For example,
by rewriting the social studies curriculum, the Texas State Board of Education can
force publishing houses to rewrite textbook narratives in an effort to gain access
to one of the most lucrative markets in the nation (Ansary, 2004; Bigelow, 2010).
Social studies textbooks featuring sanitized and/or rewritten narratives designed to
meet the demands of the conservative Texas State Board of Education may also
be sold in other states. The result is that students throughout the nation may be
provided prepackaged, politically charged narratives void of controversy, multiple
perspectives, and values, that may effectively serve to indoctrinate rather than
illuminate the complex nature of the past.
High-Stakes Testing
High-stakes testing is the third component shaping social studies teaching and
learning in the prevailing age of accountability. Standardized testing can be traced
back to the social efficiency movement of the early 1900s when IQ tests were
administered to immigrants and used as a device to evaluate U.S. army personnel
(Gould, 1996; Sacks, 1999). For educators and those invested in schools, tests
are commonly considered a fair, reliable means to measure student achievement,
teacher effectiveness, and program quality. Standardized testing is deeply ingrained
within American schooling as not only measuring success, but also a seemingly fair
way to distribute institutional rewards (e.g., honor roll, class rankings, grade point
averages) to students who choose to comply and invest their time and energy in an
educational system that largely resembles the factory system of the industrial age.
Testing scores are also widely accepted as a fair way to sanction students who fail
to meet the demands of learning in a compulsory setting (Grant, 2008).
TEST-DRIVEN SOCIAL STUDIES INSTRUCTION
Assessing the impact standardized testing has on social studies education is chal-
lenging. While National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores can
be used to study nationwide trends in fields related to social studies (i.e., civ-
ics, geography, U.S. history, and geography), differences in course sequencing,
the content and organization of curricular guidelines, and testing formats make
state-to-state comparisons difficult, perhaps impossible (Grant & Salinas, 2008,
p. 223; Au, 2009). Further, assessing student knowledge of a discipline where
there is considerable disagreement (Evans, 2004) about goals and outcomes is dif-
ficult. Horn (2006) identifies four methodological complexities in testing students’
knowledge of social studies. First, there is no consensus among social studies educa-
tors regarding the appropriate approach (e.g., standardized exam, multiple choice
test, inquiry-based project, or document-based essay) to measure student learning.
Second, the broad scope of most social studies courses make it impossible to test
everything in the curriculum. Consequently, standardized tests measure a limited
sample of the course content. Third, standardized tests are subject to error and in
most states, one test determines whether or not students passes a course and earns
credits. The arbitrary nature of creating cut scores and assigning value to assessment
tasks can play a significant role in determining outcomes. Fourth, there are also
concerns about how to create scales that accurately measure historical knowledge,
particularly when there is disagreement about the best way to format test items
(e.g., constructed response, essay, multiple choice).
Acknowledging these challenges, there is also evidence suggesting high-stakes
tests distorts the relationship between curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Rather than the teacher working from a curriculum to build a strong, engaging,
instructional program, and students’ knowledge of the curriculum assessed with
a test, the elevated importance of the test may actually force teachers to choose
between providing quality instruction that reflects the goals and aims of the cur-
riculum or to offer limited skills and rote activities that would prepare students to
perform well on the state test. In his study of social studies teachers’ perceptions of
the social studies test administered in Michigan, Segall (2006) found that teachers
did not feel that the state-mandated tests were valid measurements of the social
studies standards, creating a paradox where they were forced to choose between
offering high-quality instruction reflecting the curriculum and rote instruction that
prepared students for the exam. This paradox left teachers in a no-win situation
where they believed that if they taught the curriculum as it was delineated in the
state guidelines, students might become more knowledgeable about social studies
but actually perform worse on the state exam. Or, if teachers presented the course
content in a way that reflected the nature and format of the test, students would
be deprived of a deeper understanding of social studies.
STANDARDIZED TESTS AND THE SIMPLIFICATION OF THE

SOCIAL STUDIES CURRICULUM
When teachers align instruction to reflect the content and form of the test, quality
instruction may indeed be compromised. Standardized tests generally test historical
knowledge in a simplified, decontextualized manner where a single item is used
to represent students’ knowledge of an entire event or era. The June 2011 New
York State Regents exam, for example, offers this question:
12. What was one ideal of Renaissance humanism?
(1) training as a knight and practicing chivalry

(2) obeying divine right monarchs and the church
(3) living apart from the world and taking monastic vows
(4) investigating areas of interest and fulfilling one’s potential
(NYSED, 2011)
While this test item requires students to associate Renaissance humanism with
developing human potential, it fails to represent the richness of the curriculum
that indicates that students explore how geography and capitalism contributed
to the Renaissance and how the rise of a new secular worldview influenced art,
literature, and technology over the next several centuries (NYSED, 1999). Teach-
ers who spend valuable class time exploring the artistic works of Botticelli, da
Vinci, and Michelangelo, the struggles between avant-garde artists, their wealthy
patrons, and the Catholic Church, or growing consumerism and global trade will
not find knowledge of these important developments tested on this exam. Rather,
the European Renaissance is reduced to associating the Renaissance with human-
ism, the spirit of the era.
Treating standardized exams as the centerpiece of social studies also limits
students’ opportunities to interact with the historical record, critically analyze the
past, and understand their place in a dynamic, ever-changing world. By reduc-
ing social studies to “right” or “wrong” multiple choice questions, essay prompts,
or even document-based questions, history is effectively sealed off from students’
lived experiences, inquisitive minds, or thoughtful questions. Teaching within this
system becomes a ritual of supporting (and sometimes pressuring) students to see

the world as it is artificially constructed in the curriculum, textbook, and test,
not necessarily as it is. This creates a schism between what we teach and what we
see around us. The emphasis on standardization requires students to experience
social studies through a framework that values conformity, accommodation, and
compliance. Consequently, diversity of opinion, original ideas, and expression are
devalued and subtracted from the equation (Au, 2009, p. 53).
Creating Authentic Spaces in the Social Studies Classroom
Standards-based education and the special emphasis it places on testing outcomes

makes teaching social studies for democratic empowerment difficult, although not
impossible. Ross (2006) explains that there are three dominant roles for social
studies teachers: (1) consumers of teacher-proof curriculum materials; (2) “active
implementers” of curriculum materials constructed by outside experts; and (3)
curriculum developers who actively work to transform the formal curriculum. To
rework the prevailing standards-based social studies program that limits learning
to the objectives and standards outlined in the curriculum, problematic textbook
narratives, and the content of the test, teachers must see themselves as professional
educators who have the capacity to develop a parallel curriculum of original materi-
als, and authentic assignments that fit their circumstances, students’ interests, and
available resources (Regenspan, 2002; Thornton, 2005).
Rather than capitulating to the institutional demands to streamline the cur-
riculum and raise test scores, classroom teachers may want to consider the larger
goals of their instruction and how they can create and sustain a classroom environ-
ment that supports free inquiry, critical thought, and problem solving. In her work
on “un-standardizing” the curriculum, Sleeter (2005) suggests teachers consider
four central curricular questions:
1. What purposes should the curriculum serve?
2. How should knowledge be selected, who decides what knowledge

is most worth teaching and learning, and what is the relation-
ship between those in the classroom and the knowledge selection
process?
3. What is the nature of students and the learning process, and how
does it suggest organizing learning experiences and relationships?
4. How should curriculum be evaluated? How should learning be

evaluated? To whom is curriculum evaluation accountable? (Sleeter,
2005, pp. 24–25)
These questions suggest democratic classrooms are a product of well-organized

instruction, sharing power, building relationships with students, and attending to
how students interact with the curriculum.
“Ambitious Teaching”
Gradwell and Grant (2010) describe teachers’ efforts to think deeply about the
curriculum and classroom instruction, understand how students perceive the world,
and work to create spaces for authentic learning (even when it is not welcomed
or appreciated) as “ambitious teaching” (p. vii). To teach ambitiously is to resist
the demands to lead students in a superficial tour of the past as delineated in lists
of curricular objectives and bland textbook narratives without regard to students’
needs and interests. Most importantly, ambitious teaching starts with an under-
standing of the purposes of social studies instruction and the teacher’s relationship
to the curriculum and students. If we begin with the notion that social studies
instruction should be designed to provide students with opportunities to under-
stand the world and the problems of contemporary life, social studies teachers
should plan and organize classroom instruction accordingly. Rather than working
exclusively from the themes articulated in the state curriculum, relying on text-
book narratives, and making test scores the dominant goal, teachers can develop
a parallel curriculum (Leahey, 2011; Regenspan, 2002). A parallel curriculum is a
dynamic process by which teachers use the official curriculum to generate themes
and inquiry-based activities, and create possibilities for students to interact and
understand social studies in myriad ways. These generative themes can be used to
focus instruction and build a framework for studying the past that resonates with
student’s interest and experiences.
For example, rather than studying the Middle Ages as a period of Euro-
pean history dominated by the feudal system, the emergence of kings such as
Charlemagne, and the ascendancy of the Catholic Church, a parallel curriculum
might organize instruction and classroom activities around concepts such as power,
inequality, or freedom. Students can start by interrogating these concepts and creat-
ing examples of how they influence their lives. Building from this understanding,
these concepts can be used a foundation from which we study the relationships
between lords and serfs, peasants, nobles, kings, and popes. Working from these
concepts, students can investigate how the institutions of feudalism and the manor
system served to preserve and reproduce asymmetrical power relationships. Teach-
ers and students can investigate the political and economic context of the Magna
Carta (1215), the limitations it placed on King John, and how it served to protect
the privileges enjoyed by England’s feudal barons and provide basic protections
for freemen while leaving commoners without the protection of law. From there,
students can explore other constitutional documents investigating how prolonged
struggles have resulted in the expansion of political and social rights. This unit of
instruction might culminate in a critical analysis and understanding of contem-

porary social movements for greater equity in the workplace, same-sex marriage,
and economic equality. Using the social studies curriculum to better understand
our lived experiences reconnects past and present, empowering students to see
themselves within a historical context, and for some, continue the long struggle
for equality and social justice.
Approaching social studies in this matter places teachers and students at
the center of the curriculum and repositions textbooks and state curricular guides
closer to the margins. Developing a parallel curriculum also empowers teachers
to choose how students will interact with the historical record and how they will
demonstrate learning and understanding. Working in this way acknowledges the
role personal values play in studying the past. Carr (1967) reminds us of the
relationship between values and historical inquiry:
When we seek to know the facts, the questions which we ask, and
therefore the answers which we obtain, are prompted by our system
of values. Our picture of the facts of our environment is moulded
by our values, i.e., by the categories through which we approach the
facts; and this picture is one of the important facts we have to take
into account. Values enter into the facts and are an essential part of
them. Our values are an essential part of our equipment as human
beings. (p. 174)
Detailed curriculum guidelines delineate the past as a series of static, value-free

concepts, historical actors, and isolated events to be mastered in compulsory set-
tings. Rather than accept and endorse a standards-based system that conceals how
values influence our study of the past, teachers interested in a democratic form
of social studies can encourage students to openly articulate how values inform
the ways in which we investigate history. To do so creates a space for students to
draw upon their experiences and personal perspectives to “read” the past. In this
sense, the curriculum is transformed from a “commodity for consumption” (Sleeter,
2005) to a set of experiences giving rise to an ongoing dialogue between students
and teachers. Teachers who create spaces for classroom dialogue about the histori-
cal record resemble the professional historians who acknowledge the complexity
of historical research and, nonetheless, seek to gain an understanding of the past
(Iggers, 2005). Creating space for classroom dialogue allows a more democratic
form of social studies where student experiences and interests are taken seriously
and appreciated as important elements in learning about the past.
Reading Beyond the Corporate Textbook
Rather than rely on corporate textbooks to provide the central classroom text and
source of information, teachers can compare the contents, tone, and organization
of textbook narratives and historical literature with the larger historical record
(Wineberg, 2001, p. 67). The Internet has made a wide range of historical resources
available to teachers and students. The National Archives and Records Admin-
istration (www.archives.gov.education/) and Modern History Sourcebook (www.
fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/modsbook.asp) offer a variety of primary sources that
support authentic historical inquiry and provide rich, compelling glimpses into
the past. These resources offer students a greater variety of documents and texts
that can be used to complicate the historical record, offer alternative perspectives,
and provide new opportunities to construct their own knowledge.
If we are serious about preparing students for democratic citizenship, we
might do well to provide students opportunities to critically examine textbook nar-
ratives, holding them up to the historical record and comparing them to their own
lived experiences. Teachers interested in empowering students can provide oppor-
tunities to examine and share their thoughts about textbook narratives. In their
study of Muslim students’ reaction to textbook treatments of 9/11, Saleem and
Thomas (2011) found that Muslim students believed textbook narratives resembled
propaganda making and that sections that included Muslim voices were interpreted
as inauthentic caricature that failed to capture the diversity of reactions to 9/11.
Rather than passively accept what textbooks reveal about the past, this type of
analysis affirms students’ ideas, reasoning, and allows students to fully participate
in their social studies education.
Fostering Historical Presence
Prior to instruction, democratic social education teachers must make a commitment

to provide students opportunities to understand themselves as historical beings who
have a presence that influences the ways in which they understand the world and
their place within it. This can be accomplished, for example, through develop-
ing parallel projects and assessments that value inquiry, deliberation, and critical
thought. Within my ninth grade world history class, students are introduced to the
concept of a parallel curriculum by creating personal histories and recording these
histories on the digital recording program Audacity. After creating their personal
histories they identify themes (e.g., justice, equality, power, freedom, rebellion) that
will be used as a lens to explore the world history curriculum. Throughout the year
students create long-term, inquiry-based projects investigating their themes within
a specific historical context. This project encourages students to form historical
questions, conduct research, and use digital technologies such as Moviemaker and
iMovie to produce their own documentaries. In place of a standards-based social
studies instruction that tends to fragment the past into a collection of facts, these
long-term projects allow students to create a coherent, complete narrative that is
both individually constructed and personally meaningful. These documentaries can
then be shared with their classmates, and many students choose to upload their
work to YouTube to share with a wider global audience.
While authentic projects rooted in inquiry depart from the traditional his-
tory and the curriculum of compliance, it is a viable way to provide students
engaging, rigorous opportunities to learn and share what they have learned about
the world. As schools begin to embrace the flexibility and creativity associated
with 21st-century thinking skills, these technologies and authentic projects can be
negotiated to transcend traditional state standards and create opportunities to teach,
learn, and demonstrate student achievement in classroom instruction grounded in
student’s experiences and evolving understanding of the world.
Conclusion
In 1947, Harold Rugg argued that the teacher’s overarching task was to nurture
and support the development of two great attitudes. The first attitude emanated
from the U.S. Bill of Rights and encouraged students to think their own thoughts
and feel their own feelings. The second attitude required students to not only
think and feel for themselves, but to also think and feel in their own unique ways.
Combining these two great attitudes, Rugg reasoned that students should believe,
“I am not only free to express my thoughts and feelings but I am obligated to
my fellows to express them, to put them into some objective form” (Rugg, 1947,
p. 449). The primary goal of social studies instruction is to nurture the develop-
ment of student’s civic sensibilities and provide a place to refine their ideas and
understanding of the social world, in all its complexity. As we continue the march
toward standardizing social studies curriculum, classroom instruction, and assess-
ment, Rugg’s task is a useful reminder of how far we have drifted from the ideals
democratic social studies education was originally founded upon. If nothing else,
the contemporary problems of corporate power, militarization, economic dispar-
ity, and spiraling national debt might serve as a reminder of why the creation of
informed, engaged citizens should be a national priority.
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4
“Capitalism Is for the Body, Religion Is for the Soul”

Insurgent Social Studies for the 22nd Century
Abraham P. DeLeon
What it came down to was this: the world was not as it seemed. Not remotely
as it seemed. Forces conspired (governmental, religious, medical) to conceal
and silence those who had more than a passing grasp of that fact, but they
couldn’t gag or incarcerate every one of them. There were men and women who
slipped the nets, however widely flung; who found back-roads to travel where
their pursuers got lost, and safe houses along the way where they’d be fed and
watered like visionaries, ready to misdirect the dogs when they came sniffing.
—Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show
Social studies, and social studies education, should find itself in a precarious posi-
tion. On one hand, social studies as a discipline allows us to ask important ques-
tions about the world. It opens the past to students and can give them ways to
deal with present realities. Students can be presented with social theories that
question the pre-given and engage with relationships of power. Social studies can
potentially introduce students to the humanities and questions that emerge from
this important tradition. However, despite these opportunities, it appears social
studies teachers and scholars are positioned in a binary between the status quo
and promoting an alternative vision for the future. In the midst of No Child Left
Behind, and now, Race To The Top and the Common Core State Standards, it
appears that social studies education is trumped for narrow definitions of reading,
math, and science (Burroughs, Groce, & Webeck, 2005). If the situation in Texas
that saw the implementation of right-wing standards and a conservative rewrit-
ing of history is any indication, social studies is on the frontlines of promoting a
71
72 Abraham P. DeLeon
particular vision of our past, present, and future possibilities. It seems alarmist to
speak of a “crisis” in education as the discourse of crises has largely driven edu-
cational “reform” efforts (Berliner & Biddle, 1995). However, the nexus between
schools and society relays the embedded nature of social, political and economic
realities and the perilous economic situation that has structured the last five years
with discourses of austerity and neoliberal conceptions of privatization that directly
impact educational theory, practice, and possibilities. If the beginnings of the 21st
century were a portent of what is yet to come, social studies education must be
rethought in light of these impending challenges.
Some of the best responses to the current economic conditions (and domi-
nant ideology in general) can be found on the Internet in the anonymous postings
that litter mainstream news sources. The quotation that titles this chapter appeared
in one of these comment sections for a story on the rise of Mitt Romney for the
2012 presidential election on Yahoo! News on September 3, 2011. It struck me as
not only poignant, but one in which to situate and argue for an alternative vision
of social studies education. This quote remains a powerful reminder, and revelation
for some, that capitalism is not only contained in the economic realm but also exists
in our subconscious and helps shape our deepest subjectivities: it is the ability of
capitalism to not only territorialize the earth, but also infect the affects and circuits
of emotion that connect us all (Hemmings, 2006). The fact that this anonymous
poster places capitalism squarely within the realm of our bodies demonstrates its
firm entrenchment in our collective subconscious and how capitalism transcends
institutional realities. But, in the tradition of radical hope, this also leaves those
committed to a critical social studies pedagogy a crack in which to exploit this
pervasive form of empire (Holloway, 2010a). Placing capitalism within the realm
of the body also reveals the inherent disciplinary mechanisms that capitalism relies
upon for its reproductive capabilities. The existence of capitalism within the deepest
corners of the life-world and the bodies that inhabit them points to the necessity
in which rethinking our sense of self will need to be a vital component to resisting
larger structures/systems/ideologies/practices of domination.
But, where does resistance exist and remain? Like the anonymous poster who
placed capitalism squarely in our bodies, we must reconfigure our sense of self to
not only resist the multiple subjectivities available under a market economy, but
to return to the imagination that exists in the recesses of these same territorial-
ized bodies. Despite the pervasive nature of capital accumulation and neoliberal
discourses, the imagination still thrives. The imagination, like a force, explodes in
the traditions of graffiti, literature, performance art, and other artistic creations.
Including a quotation to open this chapter rooted in this imaginative realm (a
novel by Clive Barker) is a risky affair in which one opens their work toward a
critique of not having enough scientific “rigor.” But, his quote points toward escape:
seeking the cracks in the current system and exploiting them to envision a new
“Capitalism Is for the Body, Religion Is for the Soul” 73
world. This chapter assumes an activist stance toward resisting oppressive power
manifestations and aims toward a utopian future that thinks of a reality outside
of markets and capital. I will, no doubt, be accused of pointless daydreaming. My
work may be construed as a discourse relegated to the ivory tower, but instead it
is a means to provoke a different way in which to think about our content and
the way in which we envision pedagogy. This chapter seeks to de-territorialize our
bodies from capital accumulation and reconfigure ourselves into something apart
from what we are now; we must fashion ourselves anew, and insurgent social
studies must play a role in this transformation.
I deliberately point toward the 22nd century in the title because this reveals
my radical political imagination at work and the desire to leave behind archives of
radical. This chapter points to the future because it seeks to escape current realities
mired in the necropolitical (Mbembe, 2003). Mbembe argued that although states
can produce life, they also work at determining disposable bodies. Or put simply,
states determine “who must live and who must die” (p. 11). Social studies must
meet these challenges with praxis to attack the physical and ideological manifesta-
tions of power. As social studies teachers invested in the world, we must develop
strategies that attest to the nefarious ways in which power emerges, from form-
ing our subjectivities to the forces and flows behind global capitalism. I mention
forces and flows because capitalism exists over a diffused, borderless globe despite
bodies chained to their county of origin. Capital is liquid despite bodies being
constructed as static and stationary (Seigworth & Tiessen, 2012). This diffused
capitalism that trumps even the state is also invested in the affective realm of
bodies; the emotional body that is further alienated from its labor, its own sense
of self, and its desires (Hemmings, 2006). Social studies must exist as a discourse
of not only epistemological frameworks, but also as the praxis of utopian hope to
combat this physical, emotional, and bodily alienation.
This last claim is what should invigorate an alternative way in which to
construct social studies education and the ways in which social studies teachers
envision what is pedagogically and politically possible. Infused with a variety of
critical social traditions, social studies can be envisioned as not only a discourse of
utopian hope, but one in which students can explore new forms of subjectivity that
try to escape the confines of neoliberal and market ideologies. This means that this
chapter will build a vision for a future social studies in conversation with anarchist
practices of direct action (DeLeon, 2009, 2010c, 2012), poststructural explorations
of self through autoethnographic writing and employing utopian impulses that seek
to build visions for a future people yet to come (Jameson, 2005). Social studies
has insurgent potentiality because moments arise in the actual practice and forma-
tion of social studies in which to exploit cracks in what appears to be a pervasive
empire. I will close this chapter pointing toward those cracks for teachers and
students to reflect upon and further theorize.
Insurgency Through Autoethnography
Although insurgency has largely been defined through the actions of the U.S.
military, it becomes a provocative way in which to think of how resistance in the
academy can be informed. An insurgency arises when there is no formal way in
which to bring grievances and is supported by efforts for groups who cannot match
the physical power or prowess of a perceived opponent or condition (Osanka,
1962). However, we can think of resistance in much a similar way for intellectuals/
teachers that want to resist what can be a behemoth institution such as a public
school or corporate university. Thinking of our teaching and research productions
as tools/weapons, we can imagine how to reconfigure writing, teaching against the
grain of accepted forms of knowledge and producing radical scholarship toward
ends that question and challenge institutional realities. More importantly, they are
readily available to the social studies teacher who wants to infuse their praxis in
radically new ways. Informed by anarchist traditions such as direct action, theory
can be fashioned toward emancipatory ends. Direct action, the anarchist practice of
direct confrontation of social problems without permission from the state or other
authority figures, should be a beginning point for social studies teachers looking
to question historical events, current social realities, or helping students redefine
the politics of everyday life (Amster, DeLeon, Fernandez, Nocella II, & Shannon,
2009). One example of direct action available to radical intellectuals that I readily
point to is the practice of autoethnographic writing.
Writing, as has been argued elsewhere, has the possibility to transform our
sense of self (Ambrosio, 2008), but also forces us to experiment with alternative
forms of representation not generally respected in the academy. Take publishing
in journals, for example: the rigid structure and dogmatic approach propagated by
journals is often rooted in hierarchical notions of knowledge that limit the realm
of possibilities available. With their firm entrenchment in the various regimes of
knowledge supported and maintained by the corporate university, journal writing
is one of the few legitimated ways in which to not only obtain promotion and
tenure, but also to gain “acceptance” in the larger academic community. However,
this limits what may be possible to us as subjects because not only the elitist nature
of journal publications, but also because the limited accessibility that many have to
these privileged forms of knowing. Spaces must be spontaneously and organically
created to think outside of these truth regimes found in the corporate university
and the standardized school, pushing us outside what we think may be “true” or
permanent.
Although exploring and writing about self is often shunned by similar mecha-
nisms that legitimate certain ways of knowing over others, social studies teachers
and scholars should explore the discourses and disciplinary practices that inform
who we think we are. As Brian Massumi (1992) has argued,
Institutional regularization becomes ever more severe (discipline), and

selective evaluation increasingly vigilant (surveillance). Discipline requires
rigid segregation of bodies according to category, in order to prevent
unseemly mixing and the identity blurring it may lead to. Surveillance
requires a carefully maintained hierarchy. (Massumi, 1992, p. 115)
If we think about how knowledge is produced in the supposedly enlight-

ened spaces of most corporate universities or social studies classrooms, we can
immediately deconstruct and attack the epistemological boundaries that contain
not only our knowledge, but also our bodies. Most educational research (and let
us be honest, social studies research as well) appears to fall in this same trap,
with its binary construction of knowledge through quantitative and qualitative
methodology that reproduces similar relationships in how knowledge was/is con-
structed under colonial regimes (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). Although this appears to
be a damning critique of the state of most educational research (maybe in a way
it should be), there are cracks that appear in this current empire of knowledge. It
seems imperative for us social studies insurgents invested in exploring the possibili-
ties of social change that we must find the cracks to exploit. I speak of “cracks”
in much the same way that John Holloway has done, and which not only puts
a sense of urgency in our work, but also speaks to the direct action possibilities
that writing coupled with politically informed pedagogical practices can engender
(Holloway, 2010a, 2010b).
Autoethnography forces us tell our stories through a rigorous engagement
with social theory: a reflective dance that moves between theory, experience, and
self-reflection resembling processes of direct action that forces resistors to engage
directly against relationships of power. Likening autoethnography to direct action
places theory and research within the realm of possibilities available to building
insurgent forms of social studies that have been taken up by other groups such as
anarchists and the Animal Liberation Front (Amster et al., 2009). It links “outside”
struggles toward the “inside” of academic and knowledge production. Anarchism,
often maligned as only violent or oppressively individualistic, has been influenced
by a variety of critical traditions that seek to dismantle and challenge the state,
sabotage and infiltrate hierarchical institutions, rethink the way in which we live,
and eventually dismantle capitalism for alternative economic, social, personal, and
political relationships (DeLeon, 2008). Although autoethnography is not necessar-
ily a direct tool to dismantle the state per se, it does have the possibility of being
likened to a direct action done by those influenced by anarchist practice: direct
action against our fractured selves under neoliberal capitalism and a necessary tool
in retelling the stories of our experiences (BRE, 2007).
I mention “self ” and not “individual” because the notion of an autonomous
individual weaving through society forging its own path is inextricably linked
to Western European modernism and supports a neoliberal ethos that demands

“individual” solutions to economic inequality and systemic oppression. Rightfully
so, critical social thought has thrown into question this supposedly autonomous
individual (Barker, 2012). This is doubly so for anarchists who have not only
questioned individualism, but also individual notions that sit outside of communal
and federated living (Amster et al., 2009). I turn to anarchism not because I hold
myself up as an example of what an anarchist is or should be, but because the
theory itself has created a stir inside of me.
This affect has nurtured the conditions for me to explore new forms of
literature not previously available, but also demonstrated that I was intellectually
ready to challenge who I was and push the limits of my own possibilities. If, as
social studies teachers, we provide similar experiences for our students, in a way
that resists grand theorization and telling one singular (T)ruth claim, we have the
possibility of inspiring new forms of political action possibly unavailable to us.
Students have the potential to become producers of new ways of knowing and
developing alternative ways to think about the future(s) available to us. Lawrence
Lawlor wrote that thinking about changing our sense of subjectivity and who we
think we are can have profound impacts in making us rethink the many oppres-
sive practices that comprise daily life in the West. Lawlor speaks of rats, and the
gnashing of teeth inside of us that prompts us to think differently about who we
are and what our future potential(s) hold (Lawlor, 2008).
It is the gnashing of teeth inside of Lawlor that also stirred me: the gnash-
ing of teeth being the impetus toward transformation and, ultimately, rethinking
our sense of self. Not to become a rat (what a macabre sight that would be!),
but instead to think like a rat: meaning to think outside the realm of possibilities
available to us as situated and historical human actors. Maybe part of the radical
project as a social studies educator is to become something other than human. As
Lawlor (2008) eloquently elaborates, “When I hear myself speak, I also insepara-
bly hear the gnashing of the teeth of an animal in the agony of death. The voice
of the animal is in me, and thereby I undergo the ways that animals change or
become” (p. 170; italics in the original). Thus, Lawlor insists that becoming is not
just metaphorical, nor is it imitation; to become something else means we push
ourselves outside the limit(s) of the normal-abnormal binary.
To become, means to not only deconstruct the binaries that shape daily life
in the West, but also to know that becoming is never an end destination. Deleuze
and Guattari (1987) argued that, for new possibilities to emerge, we must produce
a work of art or other project, or to paraphrase their words, we must escape the
black hole; we must break through the wall; we must dismantle the face (p. 186;
italics added). What they mean, in other words, is to “go across, get out, break
through, make a beeline, don’t get stuck on a point” (p. 186). It is the creative
act of producing something that makes transformations an endless possibility; it is
the destruction of the old that becomes a pivotal act in which to begin. And to
practice insurgent social studies means to exist in a space of potential production

that creates alternative narratives. To become in the tradition of social studies
would be to move in a zigzag between producing writing, being reflective about
the nature of historical and social events (I can think of the skills that existential-
ists have given us), and rethinking who we are and our place in the world. It is
what emerges after the fall; it emerges after the great undoing.
Unfortunately, social studies education is mired in a modernist conception
of reality, relying upon grand historical narratives and linear conceptions of time
and space to explain past, present, and future realities. Modernist social studies
force-feeds us the idea that history is linear; that knowledge can be quantified,
classified, and measured; that thrills and happiness await those willing to trust
Science, the State, and other hierarchical structures (Bowker & Star, 2000). Turn-
ing to Lawlor (2008) again: “Instead, becoming consists in a zigzag structure: we
become animal so that animal becomes, not human, but something else” (p. 178).
If we think about the process of writing, it never assumes a linear march to some
end destination, hopefully, but takes us to places we had never imagined going
at the beginning of our journey of self-transformation. Writing is never mapped
beforehand like a neat little blueprint or curriculum force-fed to us by state edu-
cational authorities, but instead carries with it a chaotic element that can bring
unexpected journeys and/or transformations. This speaks to the ways in which I
envision insurgent social studies: an unfinished curricular project that combines
the utopian imagination with historical study and the ability to produce artistic
and creative work that questions social, cultural, and political realties.
Recently, at the Eastside Social Center in Houston, Texas, I conducted a
guerrilla workshop at this community space about the nature of writing and why,
as anarchists and community activists, we should write about our multiple expe-
riences. Although I will never know the ultimate effectiveness of that particular
pedagogical insurgency I conducted, it seems that planting the seeds for new ways
to become for those outside of the academic milieu needs to be a viable strategy in
how we do “politics” under rhizomatic capitalism (Vandenberghe, 2008). Stretching
this, it seems imperative that social studies teachers need to also provide examples of
alternative realities for their students: alternative conceptions in which to construct
history and our understanding of social institutions and structures. This can be a
double activity in which we think of new ways to formulate our sense of self while
redefining the possibilities available to us as social studies teachers. In particular, it
seems that autoethnographic writing is a tool that can push us to the boundaries
I write about here, giving us possibilities to move beyond the borders and limits
of our own fractured subjectivities.
The beauty of social studies lies in its prospects of exploring the past and
taking students through journeys that open up different worlds and eras previously
unknown to them. Because I resist history as some unfolding causal linearity, I
strive to represent knowledge that accounts for historical contingencies (Gutting,
1989). Like these contingencies, autoethnography is not a retelling of stories that

fit into some preconceived ending that you think you may have in your head.
Autoethnography forces us to confront our memories; stories tied to affective expe-
riences buried deep inside bodies inhabiting spaces of terror and death (DeLeon,
2011). I speak of death because, as other scholars have argued, not only are bodies
dumped in vacant lots in postindustrial cities (Williams, 2012) and queer bodies
mutilated and beaten beyond recognition (Stanley, 2011), but also death is experi-
enced when our spirits and dreams wither and die under oppressive social, political,
and economic realities that stifle healthy emotional development (Zevnik, 2010).
Like the reflective nature of autoethnography, anarchism forces us to engage
with the coercive and hierarchical domination experienced in daily life; the death
that surrounds us under neoliberal capitalism. Although fascism points to spaces
of terror and death, capitalist relations do as well, what Brian Massumi (1992)
calls “fields of death” (p. 117). If one does historical research on anarchism, it
has been openly antagonistic to structures of domination; to those death spaces
cultivated and nurtured under oppressive and hierarchical systems of oppression
(Guérin, 2005). Because, in the end, a “fascist state is a suicide state” (Massumi,
1992, p. 117) and social studies teachers must address these critiques in their own
teaching and pedagogical practices if we are indeed committed to radical social
change. Although autoethnography and social studies are not inherently anarchistic
in any real sense, there appear to be ways these traditions can potentially comple-
ment each other to push us beyond death toward new forms of creativity (DeLeon,
2009, 2010). What appears to be the productive nature that unites anarchism,
autoethnography, and social studies education? It would seem that the link emerges
when the moment of becoming emerges through social studies; becoming Other
historical subjects; becoming imperceptible against dominant ideology; becoming
anew through a rigorous engagement with utopian politics that insurgent social
studies can provide.
Becoming-Other
To produce alternative ways of knowing and to give students different visions of

the future in which to think utopian, we must rearrange who we think we are.
A postmodern exercise in subjectivity, it is the idea of becoming that seems to
align with a way in which to ultimately rethink who we are and our place in this
world. Pulling from the traditions offered by Deleuze and Guattari, becoming
puzzled many social theorists. What does it mean to become? In my own inter-
pretation, becoming is a transformative experience. Becoming is never replication,
metaphor or similarity; to become is to be something different than we were
before (Massumi, 1992). Becomings, because they cannot be centered, exist as a
potentially rhizomatic experience that contains no center or starting point. Never
linear, becoming should produce a line of escape that zigzags through social experi-
ences in multiple, unplanned ways.
For the social studies teacher, this can be a profound revelation, especially as
we see our discipline fading in light of the push toward specific forms of standard-
ization and accountability. But it is precisely the rise of these hegemonic paradigms
that allows resistance to blossom and mature. We must make social studies, like
autoethnography, a rhizomatic experience, resisting preconfigured or prefigurative
social arrangements, historical narratives, and identities. To resist standardization
and the push toward quantitative measures of accountability, we must imagine
social studies as we would an organic body, or what Deleuze and Guattari (1987)
called bodies without organs (BwO). They wrote of those bodies unwilling to be
filled with the already; those bodies that wish to break free from the confines
of Western society; those bodies that resist truth mechanisms found in identity
politics: the pointing toward the molecular. BwO is a body with potentiality to
be Other; to produce different affects; a vast sea of other potentialities (Deleuze &
Guattari, 1987).
As Deluze and Guattari (1987) argued, “This body without organs is perme-
ated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities
or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitionary particles” (p. 40). Thus, this
imaginal body always points toward the crack; to seek escape from the confines of
Western discourses (Papadopoulos, Stephenson, & Tsianos, 2008). As insurgents,
we must point social studies toward these cracks as well that have emerged histori-
cally across the globe. I wrote molecular earlier not in the Western scientific sense,
but molecular referring to the possibility of new forms emerging; those desires we
wish to explore outside of our current hegemonic order to become-form (Man-
ning, 2007). Form can become if we work at self-transformation and toss aside
the notions and discourses of neoliberal individualism. Self can, and should, be
vitally created under the conditions of community, classroom, clan, cell, or group
(Massumi, 1992, p. 101).
In a way, we must start at the end: all becomings are already molecu-
lar. That is becoming is not to imitate or identify with something or
someone. Nor is it to proportion formal relations. Neither of these two
analogies is applicable to becoming; neither the imitation of a subject
nor the proportionality of a form. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 300)
After I inserted this quote from their work, I was immediately struck with how
this would seem esoteric to those who follow positivism: the practice of measuring,
classifying, and quantifying knowledge (Bowker & Star, 2000). But, the beauty of
autoethnography is its existence outside of standardization, something that social
studies teachers and scholars should note because of the privileging of “STEM”
subjects at the expense of the arts and humanities. Autoethnography would appear
to have a potential role when we think about the process of becoming-Other within
the context of an eroding epistemological footprint in public education. Like our
experiences that are never quite imitation, becoming, social studies, and autoeth-
nography should never fall into standardized or quantifiable ways of knowing.
Although critiqued by skeptical academics (Taft-Kaufman, 2000), thinking and
writing toward becoming can push critical social studies scholars toward writing
about our practices, our tactics, and our understanding of theory that guides us:
the praxis and discourse of struggle.
Although I am under no illusion about the fantastical nature of this chapter,
it demonstrates the pointing toward a becoming where writing, or the production
of any work, will serve a vital role in thinking of an existence outside of market
and capital. As a social studies teacher, I can immediately imagine the implications
if curriculum were centered upon notions of becoming and producing critique
within a space that nurtured transformative knowledge. Producing a work within
the context of social studies captures the affective potential inside the deep recesses
of our bodies that capitalism cannot touch: the unfettered and wild nature of our
collective social imaginations. Social studies is the possibility of what can be; it
is the pointing toward a future nowhere that remains unwritten; social studies is
an escape mechanism for our fractured selves; social studies has the possibility to
contain affective potentialities, or what Elizabeth Grosz (2008) called artistic “sensa-
tions” (p. 1). But to think outside pre-given reality, even the potential to do this
type of utopian work, would mean a psyche that can, and must, be broken; broken
from the tentacles of capitalist ideology. Bodies are forged and conceptualized for
us by marketing and other capitalist signifiers. But what happens to those percep-
tions, those affects, and those identities that refuse the processes of domestication?
To answer this question we can turn back to the works of Deleuze and
Guattari. Provocatively, they wrote and spoke of the schizophrenic. Schizophrenia
understood not in the clinical sense as constructed by the privileged discourses
of psychiatry and madness (Foucault, 2006), but in those subjects that can expe-
rience multiple realities on different levels and planes. Eugene Holland (1998)
locates schizophrenia where Deleuze and Guattari did, in the throngs and pro-
cesses of social desire harnessed by capitalism. “And what frees desire, according to
Deleuze-Guattari, is capitalism rather than anything psychological or therapeutic:
schizophrenia arises from the decoding processes characteristic of capitalism.” (p.
66). Here, Holland not only points to the processes of capitalism as producing
schizophrenia, but its ties to larger social and economic processes.
It is the possibility that schizophrenia might “decode” capitalism and its
structures that interests scholars in the postmodern tradition: it is in schizophrenia’s
processes of deterritorialization (think of taking back a territory from a colonial
power, except that territory is our bodies) that gives it potential to think about the
world differently, what Holland (1998) calls, “the entropic principle and motive
force of revolution.” (p. 66). Of course, they are not speaking of schizophrenics
literally, but in the idea of those that are willing to think about, and act toward
building, an alternative vision of the future and our present: the BwO willing to
experiment with new ways of being. This is where becoming produces a powerful
critique and action against the traditions engendered by neoliberal capitalism. This
is where the productive forces of social studies can emerge. To become a capitalist,
one must surrender one’s sense of community, cherished cultural traditions, and
other important markers of identity that communities hold dear. But, to resist this
type of reality, we must push the boundaries for humanity to think outside market
ideology through rigorous critique and historical study, which social studies offers.
The proliferation of capitalist ideology in the politics of everyday life is a
daunting reality, but social studies itself and the production of knowledge outside
of standardization give us new tools with which to think of alternative futures:
a pointing to a future reality that may still exist as the potentially unwritten. In
this way, social studies will play a vital role. Mired in everyday “reality,” many
of us cannot think of exceptions to the present because we have little experience
in imagining new frontiers and ways to interact with the world around us. For
example, I engage my students to imagine what a new form of education would
look like. Students end up not picking the assignment either because of its per-
ceived difficulty, or the problems many perceive in conceptualizing reality outside of
our current notions of schooling: rigid structures, tests, content areas, hierarchical
leadership, and the compartmentalization of knowledge.
What this demonstrates is our inability to produce imaginative renderings
because of the threat that the imagination poses to oppressive social conditions.
It seems the point of schooling is to murder creativity. To think of becoming
within the context of social studies education, it must exist and take form in the
imaginative middle ground between “reality” and the utopian impulses that exist
when we engage social theory, history, and the world around us. As Lawrence
Grossberg (2010) argues about the potential of cultural studies that I liken to the
potential of social studies,
[C]ultural studies [or social studies] matters because it is about the

future, and about some of the work it will take, in the present, to
shape the future. It is about understanding the present in the service
of the future. By looking at how the contemporary world has been
made to be what it is, it attempts to make visible ways in which it
can become something else. (p. 1)
Grossberg, like myself, points to the future tense not just in cultural studies, but
in the production of utopian thinking and the role of social studies therein; future
utopian possibilities that becoming can offer subjects who wish to experiment with
new forms of being and “doing” politics, inside and outside of educational realities
(Lewis, 2006). The next section will map out potentialities that exist for others to
take up and explore; possible lines of flight that point toward new ways in which
to become-Other through a transformative and insurgent social studies experience.
Transformative Social Studies: Pointing toward the Utopian
As a historically situated subject, I can never escape history, discourse, or rep-

resentation. But, what can be explored are the utopian impulses trapped within
the recesses of bodies. These burst forth at times in many unexpected ways. For
example, the proliferation of street art that now occupies urban walls; urban gar-
dens springing forth from decaying lots; the emergence of anarchist resistance to
the state in places like Seattle; the Zapatistas or other indigenous resistance practices
toward Western imperialism. Whatever the case or context, the utopian impulse
emerges. For David Halpin (2003), hope and utopia should play a vital role in
the educational experiences of children.
Utopian impulses that create alternative visions and possibilities for escape
can transcend the affective realm and manifest in creations like those that radical
social studies can provide toward nurturing many possible revolutionary potentials
(Raunig, 2007). I view utopian potentials in the same way that Halpin (2003) does,
a, “positive escapism into a world uncontaminated by common sense where it is
possible simultaneously to imagine and anticipate radical alternatives to the status
quo” (p. 34). I envision a transformative social studies experience to be situated
within the middle ground of reality and utopia, in the cracks that emerge from
oppressively modernist paradigms. Although I place it within a binary of reality or
utopia, I recognize that transformative experiences exist in multiplicity, meaning
multiple realities that comprise daily life. I will begin to trace a utopian impulse
inside of me that sees writing, being, artistic creation, and becoming as intertwined
experiences for those social studies teachers that seek alternative subjectivities. It
is because utopias
afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is never-

theless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold;
they open up cities with vast avenues, superbly planted gardens, coun-
tries where life is easy, even though the road to them is chimerical.
(Foucault, 1994: p. xviii)
Despite many who may object because utopian thinking cannot be standardized
or replicated (which is its ultimate beauty and radical potential), I will take the
chimerical road that Foucault prompts us to take and leave the reader with some
future potentials that can be explored by engaging social studies and its concep-
tions in radically different ways.
Accept Limitless Horizons
To speak of limitless horizons, one must open one’s experiences to a borderless

world. When one seeks to transcend our own limited subjectivities, a “bridge is
established between the visible and the invisible. Then, beyond the horizon, in the
imagination, appear Utopias” (Marin, 1993, p. 8). Utopias devoid of the idea that
one can actually be made molecular in our current conjuncture, but the practice
of thinking utopian, allowing for dreams to take hold, spaces for alternative forms
of representation to finally emerge, along with new ways to organize ourselves that
question neoliberal sensibilities; emerging for a remade humanity. Between the real
and unreal there still exists a middle ground, however, and Marin speaks of the
horizon as the spaces in-between the known and the unknown. It is this horizon
that keeps us pointing toward that future-potential of becoming-Other. Although
utopia can be thought of as “a perfect idea above any limit” (Marin, 1993, p.
13), the fact is that the actual construction of a utopia seems almost a ridiculous
exercise in light of the realities of global capitalism.
But, this is also where the strength resides in the utopian imagination: in
those spaces constructed as ridiculous and absurd: those spaces in which new ways
of being and doing can be dreamed (DeLeon, 2010b). Utopias do not have to be
in the real, but can also take us on journeys through our imaginations, because
for them to emerge, we must also work at undoing ourselves. “To have dismantled
one’s self in order to finally to be alone and meet the true double at the other end
of the line. A clandestine passenger on a motionless voyage . . . to paint oneself
gray on gray” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 197). A motionless voyage exists
in our daydreaming: in the pointing toward that utopian space where alternative
realities can be traced. To paint ourselves gray means to paint ourselves the color
of the middle ground: that gray shade that exists between the black and white
binaries that litter Western epistemological frameworks that can be deconstructed
through an insurgent social studies pedagogy. In this way, utopian thinking within
social studies education is located as an “island in between two kingdoms, two
States, the two halves of the world, the interval of frontiers and limits by way of a
horizon that closes a site and opens up a space” (Marin, 1993, p. 10). Interestingly
I will speak shortly to the potentials of space, but it is important to understand
the links between varying forms of praxis. Meaning that when we think of writing,
it goes along with direct forms of action and organizing. We can write about our
experiences organizing and it can also inform our pedagogical practices. Writing can
serve as the utopian imaginary in which we use the written word to push the real,
along with using the real to push our imaginative renderings. It is an interesting
dialectic that emerges between what is and what can possibly be.
Marin (1993) reiterates the importance of the spaces created that point
towards utopia, a space that does not “belong . . . to the one nor to the other,
a gap between the interior space” (p. 15). This middle ground, although fraught
with dislocation and alienation, allows subjects to also see and experience multiple
realities that can exist across social spectrums. The middle ground erases horizons
and builds bridges; metaphorical ones that span experiences, ethnic ties, social
class locations, gender binaries, and other categories that keep us separated. These
middle grounds that have existed historically can be opened up with an insurgent
social studies that teaches against standardization, exploring with students new
ways of being and doing, say, education or politics. Although the horizon remains
free from our gaze while we are staring at it from afar, the closer we get to this
horizon makes it quite apparent that it is not a boundary, but a new possibility
filled with the potential for rebirth: to practice new forms of becoming. The
horizon connects the here and now to what can possibly be. That is the utopian
imaginary; that is pointing to a possible future nowhere, which insurgent social
studies engenders.
Reclaim Public/Private Space(s)
Along with rethinking subjectivities, insurgent social studies must imagine spaces
that can possibly exist outside of capitalism. Space is never a neutral place in which
we live our lives, but instead has to be theorized and understood with the rise of
capitalism and market ideologies. Although Bentham’s architectural model for the
prison appeared as the “perfect eye of power,” this also occurred outside of penal
architecture, such as in factories and schools (Foucault, 1995, 1996). Many aspects
of social life were initially dedicated to the development of ways of closely moni-
toring and controlling bodies with politically devised architecture. “One begins to
see a form of political literature that addresses what the order of a society should
be, what a city should be, given the requirements of the maintenance of order”
(Foucault, 1984, p. 239). Architecture became implicated with how the modern
nation-state would come to structure appropriate public and private space, ordering
our bodies and daily existence. This obsession with order was at the forefront of
the development of a disciplinary society. “Ordering is not just simply something
we do, as when we make lists; more significantly, it is something we are in” (Heth-
erington, 1997, p. 35; emphasis added). Although what “order” eventually means
is historically specific, it remains a pervasive aspect of schooling (Foucault, 1970).
We should immediately be able to see the implications this has for social studies.
Embodying insurgent social studies as a resistant mechanism toward hege-
monic spaces becomes imperative because of the possibilities that space can offer
outside of capitalism and be reclaimed, as Occupy Wall Street demonstrated in
2012. This may make traditional social studies educators uneasy because of the
overt political implications of insurgent social studies. However, this also assumes
that the traditional social studies curriculum is also not a tool wielded by the ruling
elites to help politically pacify the masses. Anarchism should enter the conversation
at this key point, pushing for organizing that exists outside of the state. Through
the anarchist imaginary, theorists have dreamed of establishing autonomous zones
in which social experimentation can flourish (Bey, 2011). The state is immersed in
spatial relationships, establishing “Free Speech Zones” at protests, which activists
are corralled into (Bailey, 2004). However, as social studies insurgents we must
collectively resist the spatial conditions created by states. Space should not be
bounded by hierarchical sensibilities, and there should be little distance between
the state binary of “public” and “private.” In other words, to fully become, space(s)
must also be transformed through a mutually organic and constitutive process that
an insurgent social studies can nurture.
Infiltrate and Sabotage
When I theorize becoming, it means to move beyond our limited and fractured
subjectivities. Although we can never be complete or whole, we can allow ourselves
to be moved by other realities and potentials that exist. Once we are pointing
toward this becoming by practicing and doing radical scholarship, we should feel
compelled to share our experiences with others. Insurgent social studies makes
it imperative that we give others tools to think outside the parameters that are
currently given. This means we should be animated by a passion for anticapitalist
thinking; we should feel obliged to resist the forms of domination that curtail new
possibilities; we should take to task rethinking the parameters that structure and
guide our thought. If one examines the historical traditions found in anarchism
and current anarchist theory (Amster et al., 2009), one can see a spirit of this
anticapitalist sensibility. However, anarchists have moved beyond critique and have
taken direct political actions to confront structures of domination and authority.
But, anarchism is not just confrontation in the streets; it also gives us ideas about
subversion through a potentially insurgent social studies.
Infiltration means to act as a provocative saboteur; to allow spaces to exist
in the classroom for students to question their reality and what is force fed to
them as “culture.” It means inserting ourselves into institutions that profess only
dominantly accepted and held frameworks. Never acting as if having the answer
to social problems, the social studies insurgent realizes that his/her own subjec-
tivity and knowledge is still limited by the discursive parameters that guide and
structure our larger society. Thus, we cultivate provocative questions to pose to our
students that give them tools to read the world in alternative ways. We will not
capture everyone’s attention nor should we, but we at least begin to build a dif-
fused resistance to powerful social norms. Hopefully, infiltration will also produce
more changes in the provocateur, further pushing insurgents toward confronting
our own limited subjectivities.
I See an Alternative Future Ahead, or

“How I Stopped Worrying and Loved” Utopia
My ode to Stanley Kubrick’s classic film closes this pointing toward becoming-Oth-
er. Although I see a utopia in the horizon between the real and the imaginary,
it seems almost an impassable chasm. Impossible because it is littered with traps
along the way that emerge in close-minded thinking, boundaries, borders, the
discourse of neoliberalism and the hegemony of “reality.” Spaces of death must
be traversed, but this should not relegate us to defeat. Although we may exist in
the middle ground, this does not have to be our permanent locale. Fear is the
ultimate enemy of radical thought and experimentation. Fear of being ostracized
for being “different,” fear of losing our credibility by not doing teaching/research
that falls in line with the ruling order, and/or fear of losing ourselves in our mind
where imagination can overtake being grounded in the lived reality of the present.
But, once we release our imaginations by embodying an insurgent approach
to social studies, we can theorize and act toward possible potentials that emerge,
and fear will dissipate toward hope. Linking the personal to the theoretical and
to larger experiences that exist outside of our singular bodies. Writing provides
an avenue in which to chart new territories of becoming. I mention chart and
not map because I do not wish to see standardization nor do I wish to build
boundaries and borders between ways of doing, thinking, and being. This provoca-
tion seeks a line of flight outside the privileged discourses of the state, neoliberal
capitalism, and traditionally conceived socials studies education; it seeks to chart
the cracks in modernist social studies; it seeks to simply escape. This means
exploring new cartographies of becoming that exist for us to re-chart our own
subjectivities through the lenses of becoming-Other; in whatever form, disguise,
subjectivity, or identity that emerges. What happens to humanity when we shed
empiricism for new ways to understand and study the world? What happens
when humanity rethinks European modernism to point toward utopian forms
of becoming? This seems to be the adventure inherent in rethinking our own
forms of subjectivity and embodying an insurgent vision in social studies. When
does your journey begin?
References
Ambrosio, J. (2008). Writing the self: Ethical self-formation and the undefined work of
freedom. Educational Theory, 58(3), 251–268.
Amster, R., DeLeon, A., Fernandez, L., Nocella, A. J., II, & Shannon, D. (2009).
Contemporary anarchist studies: An introductory anthology of anarchy in the academy.
Bailey, R. (2004). Speakers cornered: Orwellian free speech zones violate the constitution.
Reason.com. Retrieved from http://reason.com/archives/2004/02/05/speakers-cornered.
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Part II
Social Issues and the

Social Studies Curriculum
5
Dangerous Citizenship
E. Wayne Ross and Kevin D. Vinson
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our
problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of lead-
ers . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . . Our
problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty
and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people
are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves . . . (and) the grand thieves
are running the country. That’s our problem.
—Howard Zinn
Background and Contexts:

Neoliberal Education Reform in the United States and Canada
For more than three decades now there has been a steady intensification of educa-
tion reforms, worldwide, aimed at making schools and universities more responsive
to the interests of capital than ever before. There was never a golden age of public
education in the public interest, but since the rise of neoliberalism in the 20th cen-
tury—marked by economic liberalization, free trade, open markets, privatization,
and deregulation—education and other public sector services have been subjected
to an unrelenting market fundamentalism, or the belief that free markets can solve
economic and social problems (Ross & Gibson, 2007).
Neoliberal education reform aims for a large-scale transformation of public
education that opens it up to private investment. The global education market is
now valued at $4.4 trillion (up from $2.5 trillion in 2005), with projections for
rapid growth the next five years (Strauss, 2013). Key strategies of corporate-driven
education reform: (1) school choice and privatization; (2) human capital policies
93
94 E. Wayne Ross and Kevin D. Vinson
for teachers; and (3) standardized curriculum coupled with the increased use of
standardized testing.
Charter schools are publicly funded independent schools that are attended
by choice. Corporate education reformers promote policies that would close public
schools deemed “low performing” and replace them with publicly funded, but
privately run charters and/or expanded use of vouchers and tax credit subsidies
for private school tuition.
Human capital policies for teachers aim to alter the working conditions
of teachers, which makes eliminating or limiting the power of teacher unions a
primary objective of corporate education reform. Human capital education poli-
cies include increasing class size (often tied to firing teaching staff); eliminating or
weakening tenure and seniority rights; using unqualified or “alternatively certified”
teachers; increasing the hours that teachers work and reducing sick leave; replacing
governance by locally elected school boards with various forms of mayoral and
state takeover or private management; and using the results of student standard-
ized tests to make teacher personnel decisions in hiring, firing, and pay (see, for
example, Karp, 2012; Saltman, 2012).
Key parts of the education reform discourse in the United States, which can
be traced directly through every Republican and Democratic presidential admin-
istration from Reagan to Obama, include a focus on standardization of the cur-
riculum and de-professionalization of teachers as teaching is increasingly reduced
to test preparation. From Reagan’s A National At Risk, to George H. W. Bush’s
National Education Summits, Clinton’s Goals 2000, to George W. Bush’s No Child
Left Behind Act, and Obama’s Race To the Top, there has been an ever-tightening
grip on what students learn and what teachers teach. The primary instruments used
in the surveillance of teachers and students and enforcement of official knowledge
has been the creation of state-level curriculum standards paired with standardized
tests, creating bureaucratic accountability systems that undermine the freedom to
teach and learn (see, for example, Carr & Porfilio, 2011; Gabbard & Ross, 2008;
Gorlewski & Porfilio, 2013; Saltman & Gabbard, 2010, Vinson & Ross, 2000).
In parallel to the rise of standards-based, test-driven education there is been
an ever-growing resistance at the grassroots levels in the United States. What started
as a small movement in the education community in the 1990s—led by groups
such as the Rouge Forum (Ross, Gibson, Queen, & Vinson, 2013), Chicago public
schools teachers and other educators who produce the newspaper Substance, includ-
ing teacher and writer Susan Ohanian, The National Center for Fair and Open
Testing (FairTest), and the Rethinking Schools collective—has blossomed into a
widespread resistance movement.1 For example, teachers in Chicago (Gutstein &
Lipman, 2013; Kaplan, 2013) and Seattle (Strauss, 2013) have recently won impor-
tant victories for the resistance to corporate education reforms.
While community-based groups across the United States continue to gain
traction in efforts to derail test-driven education (Brown, 2013; Jaffe, 2013),
Dangerous Citizenship 95
the education de-formers led by Obama’s education secretary Arne Duncan and
corporate/philanthropic backers including the Gates, Broad, and Walton Family
foundations still have the upper hand (Saltman, 2010), demanding use of student
standardized test results to make teacher personnel decisions in hiring, firing, and
pay. And, the next big thing in standardized curriculum is known as the Common
Core State Standards, which were created by Gates Foundation consultants for the
National Governors Association (The Trouble with the Common Core, 2013).2 The
Common Core is, in effect, a nation curriculum that will be enforced via tests that
are currently being developed by publishing behemoth Pearson.3
The political and educational landscape in Canada differs in important ways
from the United States, but it is certainly not immune to the deleterious effects
of neoliberal education reform. The Canadian education system is a collection
of regional systems in which governments have advanced neoliberal agendas for
public education, including:
fostering private schools (e.g., “increasing choice”), introducing a number

of market mechanisms into the public school system, imposing stan-
dardized tests, enhancing competition between schools, and allowing
private companies to advertise their products in schools. (Schuetze et
al., 2011, p. 62)
The province of British Columbia, in particular, is an important battleground over

neoliberal education reform. BC is home to one of the most politically success-
ful neoliberal governments in the world and schoolteachers have been waging a
pitched battle against the BC Liberals since the party swept into power in 2001.
The BC Liberals have closely followed the neoliberal blueprint by cutting
taxes for the wealthy, slashing social programs, privatizing state-owned enterpris-
es, goods, and services, and attacking unions, particularly the British Columbia
Teachers Federation (BCTF). In 2002 the Liberal government imposed draconian
legislation on public sector workers that overrode provisions in existing collective
bargaining agreements. Bills 27 and 28, which applied to teachers, unilaterally
deleted contract provisions that applied to class-size maximum; class composition;
staffing levels; support for inclusion of students with special needs; length of the
school day; and hours of instruction in the school year (Macdonald, 2010). Over
the past decade BCTF has challenged and won legal decisions against the govern-
ment’s actions, yet the government has not yet complied with the court decisions.
Since the BC Liberals took power, there has been only one voluntarily negotiated
collective agreement with the BCTF, which is the single, province-wide bargaining
unit for teachers.
School governance in the province is also “an entirely top-down approach,
but with the appearance of local influence” via local school planning councils
(Schuetze et al., p. 73). While BC does not have the proliferation of standardized
tests that exists in the United States, standardized tests scores are used by the
Fraser Institute, an influential neoliberal think tank, to rank schools in BC. Fraser
Institute rankings are used to promote the notion of “choice” in education and
generally serve as a means for categorizing poorer, more diverse public schools as
“failing,” while wealthy private schools dominate the top spots.
In BC, government retains its authority over public education, but no longer
undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational well-being of the public.
Instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards.
The funding model for public education in BC reflects the neoliberal prin-
ciple that more of public’s collective wealth should be devoted to maximizing
private profits rather than serving public needs. The privatization and marketization
of public schools in BC is being pursued through multiple strategies, including:
• Private schools (known as independent schools in BC) now receive

more than $200 million per year in public funding, with some
schools receiving 35–50 percent of their funding from taxpayers and
private schools for low-incidence, severely disabled students receiving
100 percent public funding;
• School districts are encouraged to sell seats in public schools to

international students. International students pay about $12,000/
year tuition to attend BC public schools, which is about twice
as much as the provincial grant for Canadian students in public
schools;
• Public school districts are now allowed to create private, for-profit

business companies to set up overseas schools staffed by BC-certified
teachers teaching the BC provincial curriculum as a way to make
up for inadequate government funding;
• Inadequate funding from the province has pushed local parent

groups into more and more fundraising and made schools more
vulnerable to corporate incursions, which include advertising and
corporate-branded private grants to support core curricular as well
as extracurricular school activities. (Schuetze et al., 2011)
Canada, like the United States, has also seen a dramatic pushback against
neoliberal education reform. Perhaps the most widely known recent action was the
2012 Quebec student protests, aka Maple Spring, in response to government efforts
to raise university tuition (Gibney, 2013). One of the more significant examples
of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade is the
British Columbia teachers’ 2005 strike, which united student, parent, and educator
interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest
(Rosen, 2005; Ross, 2005 February; 2005 November).
The first step in resisting neoliberalism is realizing that we are not “all in this
together,” that is, neoliberalism benefits the few at the expense of the many (Ross
& Gibson, 2007). The corporate mass media would have us adopt the mantra that
what is good for the corporate capitalist class is good for the rest of us—thus we
have the “logic” of “efficiency” or “cost containment” in education prized over the
educational well-being of the public.
The central narrative about education (and other social goods) has been
framed in ways that serve the interests of capital. For example, in North America,
free market neoliberals in think tanks and foundations and in the dominant
media outlets have been successful in framing discussions on education in terms
of accountability, efficiency, and market competition. The assumptions underly-
ing these narratives are typically unquestioned or at least under-analyzed. Indeed,
neoliberal education reforms are not only flawed in their assumptions, but even
when judged on their own terms these reforms are empirical failures and have
worsened the most pressing problems of public education, including funding
inequalities, racial segregation, and anti-intellectualism (Saltman 2012; Stedman,
2010; 2011).
It is imperative that educators challenge the dominant neoliberal frames that
would define education as just another commodity from which profits are to be
extracted. Examples of resistance include individual teachers working to reframe
government-mandated curricula in their classrooms (e.g., Ross & Queen, 2010) as
well as collective resistance of students, teachers, parents, and community activists
working together on a broad array of fronts, such as the Rouge Forum (Gibson,
Queen, Ross, & Vinson, 2009) or the March 4/October 7 movement in the United
States (Education 4 the People!, 2010).
In this chapter we examine narratives of conflict with and resistance to
neoliberal- (and neoconservative-) inspired education policies in the Canada and
the United States, describing circumstances of teaching and learning in schools
where academic freedom and free speech are severely limited and education has
become merely a means of social control. In response to these circumstances we
offer ideas that we hope will foster pedagogies of resistance to and subversion of
neoliberal schooling—insurrectionist pedagogies aimed at making learners (and
teachers) dangerous citizens.
Mac The Turtle, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,

and Other Threats to Students in BC Schools
First, Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle was deemed too political for British Columbia
classrooms, then the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—specifically the
provision that protects free speech—was the subject of censorship in the Prince
Rupert School District (No. 52).4 In an effort to “shield children from political
messaging,” Prince Rupert school administrators and trustees have been vigilant
(to the point of absurdity) in their attempts to enforce a 2011 arbitrator’s ruling
that BC students must be insulated from political messages in schools.
Yertle the Turtle—one of six Dr. Seuss books that have repeatedly been
banned or censored—is a story of the turtle king (of a pond) who stacks himself
on top of other turtles in order to the reach the moon, and then yells at them
when they complain (Baldassarro, 2011). In 2012, a Prince Rupert teacher was told
a quote from the story is a political statement that could not be displayed or worn
on clothing in her classroom. The quote in question is: “I know up on top you
are seeing great sights, but down here on the bottom, we too should have rights.”5
The teacher had included the quote in materials brought to a meeting with school
officials after she received a notice about union material that was visible in her
car on school property. The story, written in 1958 by Theodor Seuss Geisel, is an
allegory of the subversion of fascism and authoritarian rule. Ironically, the Prince
Rupert School District Web site prominently displays a message that “everyone
should be safe from bullying. Don’t let them control you and keep you down.”6
In January 2013, the Prince Rupert School District struck again, banning
several teachers from wearing T-shirts that displayed the Shakespearean question
“2(b) or not 2(b)” on the front and excerpts from Section 2 of the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the back: “Everyone has the following funda-
mental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought,
belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of
communication; (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and (d) freedom of association.”
Three Prince Rupert teachers were told to remove or cover the black shirts
they wore during a “dark day for education” event organized to mark the anniver-
sary of Bills 27 and 28, legislation that stripped BC teachers’ rights to collectively
bargain class size and composition. The BC Civil Liberties Association (2013) called
on the district to reverse the ban, comparing the district’s action to a “badly-written
comedy sketch” and stated that “[a]s a government body, [Prince Rupert] School
District No. 52 is bound by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including the
guarantee of freedom of expression and freedom of association. Governments can
only limit such rights in a narrow range of circumstances, according to legal tests
established by the Supreme Court of Canada.”
Since 2004, there have been a series of disputes between teachers and the
British Columbia Public School Employers’ Association (BCPSEA) over teach-
ers’ rights to express their views on public issues. Most recently, arbitrator Mark
Thompson delivered a ruling in response to a 2009 grievance filed by teachers after
the Southeast Kootnay School District (No. 5) told teachers to remove materials
from bulletin boards and classroom doors related to the British Columbia Teachers’
Federation “When Will They Learn” campaign.7 The union’s campaign focused
attention on school closures, overcrowded classrooms, and lack for support for
students with special needs. Thompson’s decision came eight months after arbitra-
tor Emily Burkes found that the Kamloops/Thompson School District (No. 73)
was justified in its infringement of teachers’ freedom of expression when district

administrators ordered teachers to remove and refrain from talking to students
about the black armbands they were wearing to protest the BC’s Foundation Skills
Assessment tests. The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) is appealing
Thompson’s decision.
In the case before Thompson, the BCPSEA argued that limiting teachers
free speech rights was justified in light of several objectives including: (1) schools
must be politically neutral; (2) prohibition of partisan political messages is necessary
for the maintenance of public confidence in the school system; (3) students must
be insulated from partisan political messages while at school; (4) prohibition of
political messages displayed by teachers is needed to ensure professionalism of the
teaching staff; and (5) regulation of partisan buttons is a necessary exercise of a
principal’s authority to manage and organize schools.
The union, in line with the employers, argued that protecting students from
hateful or discriminatory speech or indoctrination is an important objective, but
that students did not need to be sheltered from political controversy. The materials
in this case—which focused on class size and composition and support for special
needs students—the union argued, did not fall into the category of partisan polit-
ical messages. On this point arbitrator Thompson agreed, describing the materials
in question as “issue advertisements.” In other words, the materials addressed edu-
cational issues, the messages were political, but not partisan. Thompson’s reasoning
was that while the materials appeared in conjunction with elections, “they did not
mention a political party, let alone endorse one” (p. 37).
Nonetheless, using tortured logic, Thompson reasoned that “insulating stu-
dents from political messages in the classroom is a ‘pressing and substantial object-
ive’ ” (p. 45), and concluded that teachers may not introduce the “When Will They
Learn” campaign material “either in the form of printed matter or buttons worn
on their garments into the classroom or the walls or doors immediately adjacent
to classrooms” (p. 47). Further, the arbitrator concluded that
the messages in question were worded to influence parents, not students.

However, the location for posters and buttons worn by teachers were
unlikely to reach many parents compared to the number of students
who would see them. In other words, the impairment on [teachers’]
expression directed at parents was minimal. The deleterious effects of
the restriction on teachers’ expression were proportional to the salutary
effects of the insulation of the students. (p. 46)
While Thompson found the limits on teachers’ expression in this case “pro-
portional” and “minimal” he established a foundation for much more extensive
restrictions on teachers’ expression by accepting at face value the school employer’s
objective of “insulating students from political discourse in the classroom.” In a
similar case in the United States (California Teachers Association v. Governing Board
of San Diego Unified School District, 45 Cal App. 4th 1383, 1996), which involved
teachers wearing buttons, the court stated that “the only practical means of dis-
sociating a school from political controversy is to prohibit teachers from engaging
in political advocacy during instructional activities” (p. 6).
Of course, it is easy to identify the potential problems of partisan electoral
politics in schools (although one might also describe electoral politics in North
America as generally serving to distract the people from issues that matter in
much the same way that watching the National Football League and drinking beer
do). The issues of the teacher as authority figure and students as impressionable
and “vulnerable to messages from teachers” are always at the forefront of these
discussions. And, inevitably, someone uses the phrase about “the role of teachers
molding young minds,” and that is exactly the point. In his decision arbitrator
Thompson writes that “when a teacher advocates political views . . . this intrudes
on the political neutrality of the school” (p. 25). Indeed, all the parities in the
Cranbrook arbitration, including the teachers’ union, agreed (albeit with slightly
different levels of significance) that “maintenance of political neutrality in schools”
was an objective. Is this naiveté or the result of arguments undone by a logical
fallacy? Either way, the belief that schools are or could be politically neutral belies
the nature of schools and the way they function in society.
Ideology of Neutrality, or What Exactly Are We Protecting Students From?
It is not really surprising that the BCTF agreed with the schools’ employers that
schools should be “politically neutral.” Educators often eschew openly political or
ideological agendas for teaching and schools as inappropriate or “unprofessional.”
The question, however, is not whether to allow political discourse in schools or
to encourage particular social visions in the classroom, but rather, What kind of
social visions will be taught?
There is a misguided and unfortunate tendency in our society to believe
that activities that strengthen or maintain the status quo are neutral or at least
nonpolitical, while activities that critique or challenge the status quo are “political”
and inappropriate. For example, for a company to advertise its product as a good
thing, something consumers should buy, is not viewed as a political act. But, if a
consumer group takes out an advertisement charging that the company’s product
is not good, perhaps even harmful, this is often understood as political action.
This type of thinking permeates our society, particularly when it comes to
schooling and teaching. “Stick to the facts.” “Guard against bias.” “Maintain neu-
trality.” These are admonitions or goals expressed by some teachers when asked to
identify the keys to successful teaching. Many of these same teachers (and teacher
educators) conceive of their roles as designing and teaching courses to ensure that
students are prepared to function nondisruptively in society as it exists. This is
thought to be a desirable goal, in part, because it strengthens the status quo and is
seen as being an “unbiased” or “neutral” position. Many of these same teachers view
their work in school as apolitical, a matter of effectively covering the curriculum,
imparting academic skills, and preparing students for whatever high-stakes tests
they might face. Often these teachers have attended teacher education programs
designed to ensure that they were prepared to adapt to the status quo in schools.
Anyone who has paid attention to the debates on curriculum and school
reform knows that schooling is a decidedly political enterprise (DeLeon & Ross,
2010; Mathison & Ross, 2008a; Mathison & Ross, 2008b; Ross & Gibson, 2007;
Ross & Marker, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c). The question in teaching (as well as teacher
education and school reform) is not whether to allow political discourse in schools
or whether to advocate or not, but the nature and extent of political discourse and
advocacy. “The question is not whether to encourage a particular social vision in
the classroom but what kind of social vision it will be” (Teitelbaum, 1998, p. 32).
It is widely believed that neutrality, objectivity, and unbiasedness are largely
the same thing and always good when it comes to schools and teaching. But,
consider the following. Neutrality is a political category—that is—not supporting
any factions in a dispute. A neutral stance in a conflict is no more likely to ensure
rightness or objectivity than any other and may be a sign of ignorance of the issues.
Michael Scriven (1991) puts it this way: “Being neutral is often a sign of error
in a given dispute and can be a sign of bias; more often it is a sign of ignorance,
sometimes of culpable or disabling ignorance” (p. 68). Demanding neutrality of
schools and teachers comes at a cost. As Scriven points out, there are “clearly
situations in which one wants to say that being neutral is a sign of bias” (p. 67).
For example, being neutral in the debate on the occurrence of the Holocaust; a
debate on atomic theory with Christian Scientists; or a debate with fundamentalist
Christians over the origins of life and evolution. To rephrase Scriven, it seems better
not to require that schools include only neutral teachers at the cost of including
ignoramuses or cowards and getting superficial teaching and curriculum.
Absence of bias is not absence of convictions in an area; thus, neutrality is
not objectivity. To be objective is to be unbiased or unprejudiced. People are often
misled to think that anyone who comes into a discussion with strong views about
an issue cannot be unprejudiced. The key question, however, is whether and how
the views are justified (e.g., Scriven, 1994).
“A knowledge claim gains objectivity . . . to the degree that it is the product
of exposure to the fullest range of criticisms and perspectives” (Anderson, 1995, p.
198). Or as John Dewey (1910) argued, thoughts and beliefs that depend upon
authority (e.g., tradition, instruction, imitation) and are not based on a survey of
evidence are prejudices, prejudgments. Thus, achieving objectivity in teaching and
the curriculum requires that we take seriously alternative perspectives and criti-
cisms of any particular knowledge claim. How is it possible to have or strive for
objectivity in schools where political discourse is circumscribed and neutrality is
demanded? Achieving pedagogical objectivity is no easy task. The objective teacher

considers the most persuasive arguments for different points of view on a given
issue; demonstrates evenhandedness; focuses on positions that are supported by
evidence, etc.
This kind of approach is not easy, and often requires significant quanti-
ties of time, discipline, and imagination. In this light, it is not surpris-
ing that objectivity is sometimes regarded as impossible, particularly
with contemporary social issues in which the subject matter is often
controversial and seemingly more open to multiple perspectives than
in the natural sciences. However, to borrow a phrase from Karl Pop-
per, objectivity in teaching can be considered a “regulative principle,”
something toward which one should strive but which one can never
attain. (Corngold & Waddington, 2006, p. 6)
The “ideology of neutrality” that dominates current thought and practices

in schools (and in teacher education) is sustained by theories of knowledge and
conceptions of democracy that constrain rather than widen civic participation in
our society and functions to obscure political and ideological consequences of
so-called neutral schooling, teaching, and curriculum. These consequences include
conceptions of the learner as passive; democratic citizenship as a spectator project;
and ultimately the maintenance of status quo inequalities in society.
Education for (Dangerous) Citizenship
Schools have always been about some form of social or citizenship education—
about helping students to become good or effective citizens—framed primarily
from an essentialist view of good citizen as knower of traditional facts, but there
have been attempts to develop a social reconstructionist view of the good citizen as
agent of progressive (or even radical) social change or from some other competing
view (e.g., Kincheloe, 2011). Given its fundamental concern with the nature of
society and with the meaning(s) of democracy, social studies education has always
been a contested domain, struggled over territory in the classroom and curriculum.
Next, we consider what a contemporary critical social studies/citizenship edu-
cation might mean, both in terms of the challenges it presents to school curriculum
and in terms of the pedagogy through which its approach might be actualized.
Social Control and Citizenship Education
Yes, citizenship—above all in a society like ours, of such authoritar-

ian and racially, sexually, and class-based discriminatory traditions—is
really an invention, a political production. In this sense, one who

suffers any of the discriminations . . . does not enjoy the full exercise
of citizenship as a peaceful and recognized right. On the contrary, it
is a right to be reached and whose conquest makes democracy grow
substantively. Citizenship implies freedom. . . . Citizenship is not
obtained by chance: It is a construction that, never finished, demands
we fight for it. It demands commitment, political clarity, coherence,
decision. For this reason a democratic education cannot be realized
apart from an education of and for citizenship. (Freire, 1998, p. 90)
The nature of citizenship and the meanings of citizenship education are

complex, as are their multiple and contradictory implications for contemporary
schooling and everyday life. The issues citizenship education presents are critical
and inexorably linked to the present and future status of public schooling and the
maintenance, strengthening, and expansion of individual and democratic rights.
In his classic book Democracy and Education, John Dewey (1916) opens
with a discussion of the way in which all societies use education as a means of
social control. Dewey argues that education as a social process and function has
no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind. In other
words, there is no “objective” answer to questions about the means and ends of
citizenship education, because those purposes are not things that can be discovered.
We must decide what the purposes of education and social studies education will
be; it is a normative or value-based problem.
Not surprisingly then, civics and citizenship education—which is generally
accepted as a primary purpose of the school curriculum—has always been a highly
contested curricular area. The tapestry of topics, methods, and aims we know as
social studies education has always contained threads of social reconstructionism
(e.g., Hursh & Ross, 2000; Stanley, 2006). Social reconstructionists in North
America, such as George S. Counts, Harold Rugg, and, later, Theodore Brameld,
argued that teachers should work toward social change by teaching students to
practice democratic principles, collective responsibility, and social and economic
justice. Dewey advocated the democratic reconstruction of society and aspects
of his philosophy inform some aspects of citizenship education. The traditional
patterns of social studies teaching, curriculum, and teacher education, howev-
er, reflect little of the social reconstructionist vision of the future, and current
practices in these areas are more often focused on implementing standardized
curriculum and responding to high-stakes tests than developing and working
toward a vision of a socially just world (Gabbard & Ross, 2008; Mathison &
Ross, 2008; Vinson & Ross, 2003). Indeed, in North America, self-described
social studies “contrarians” who advocate the “transmission” of “facts” and reject
pluralism in favor of jingoistic nationalism and monoculturalism (e.g., Leming,
Ellington, & Porter-Magee, 2003) seem to be have the upper hand in most
schools and classrooms, despite spirited resistance (Ross & Marker, 2005a; 2005b;
2005c).
Undoubtedly, good intentions undergird North American citizenship educa-
tion programs such as Expectations of Excellence, CIVITAS, and National Standards
for Civics and Government. And yet, as Vinson (2006) points out, too often their
oppressive possibilities overwhelm and subsume their potential for anti-oppression,
especially as states, the national government, and professional education associa-
tions continue their drive to standardize, and to impose a singular theory and
practice of curriculum, instruction, and assessment (e.g., The National Governors
Association’s Common Core State Standards Initiative).
Making Dangerous Citizens? The Tucson Mexican American Studies Program
The Mexican American studies program at Tucson (Arizona) High Magnet School
provides a vivid example of the oppressive and anti-oppressive possibilities of civics
and citizenship education (as well as an illustration of how education functions
as normative social control). In response to a 1974 racial desegregation order,
Tucson schools established an African American studies program and later added
Mexican American studies to the curriculum. The Mexican American studies pro-
gram included course work about historical and contemporary Mexican American
contributions, social justice, and stereotypes. Students examined U.S. history from
a Chicano perspective, reading highly acclaimed works such as Rodolfo Acuña’s
Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, in addition to classics such as Paulo
Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Lacey, 2011; Reinhart, 2011). Studies conducted
by the Tucson schools have shown that Mexican American students in the program
scored higher on statewide tests (AIMS), were twice as likely to graduate from
high school, and three times as likely to go on to college as Mexican American
students who did not participate (Reinhart, 2011).
Early in 2010, Arizona passed anti-immigration legislation, which was widely
condemned as undermining basic notions of fairness by politicians and commenta-
tors on the Left and Right as well as by religious, business, and law-enforcement
leaders (Nichols, 2010). Less well known was the passage of another law, written
by Arizona schools chief Tom Horne, which targeted Latino/a and other students
in the state’s public schools. The law (known as House Bill 2281) banned schools
from teaching ethnic studies. And in January 2011, Horne, who was by then Ari-
zona’s attorney general, declared the Mexican American studies program in Tucson
schools “illegal” stating it violated the law’s four provisions, which prohibit any
classes or courses that:
1. Promote the overthrow of the United States government;

2. Promote resentment toward a race or class of people;
3. Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; or

4. Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as
individuals. (Horne, 2010; House Bill 2281, 2010)
Despite the solid curriculum and academic success of the program, Horne described
the program as “propagandizing and brainwashing,” less about educating than
about creating future activists. If the program was not immediately scrapped,
Horne said, the Tucson school district would lose 10 percent of its funding, which
amounted to $15 million.
The New York Times reported that students asked teachers if they were now
considered terrorists since Horne described them as wanting to overthrow the
government. If not terrorists, the state of Arizona declared these students, and their
teachers, enemies of the state—dangerous citizens—for studying the history of the
United States from a Chicano perspective, a perspective that makes it impossible
to ignore the historical and contemporary manifestations of racism, imperialism,
as well as social, economic, and political inequalities. Indeed, what Horne and the
Arizona legislature did was make it illegal for students in Arizona to examine the
key elements of capitalism: social relations, people and their struggle with nature
to produce and reproduce life and its meanings, human beings seeking rational
knowledge in order to survive, and individuals and groups fighting for freedom
(Gibson & Ross, 2009).
Social Control and the Rewriting of History in Texas (and Florida)
In another example from the United States, the 2010 revision of the Texas state
curriculum standards was judged by historians as undermining the study of his-
tory and social sciences in schools by misrepresenting and distorting the historical
record of U.S. society (e.g., stressing the superiority of capitalism, questioning the
secular state, and presenting conservative philosophies in a more positive light).
The Texas curriculum standards are important not just to the education of students
who reside there, but to the whole of the United States, because Texas is such a
huge market for social studies and history textbooks that its curriculum standards
are a template for the content textbook publishers produce for all U.S. schools.
The Texas curriculum standards outline the content of history and the social
sciences for kindergarten through secondary school and present an ideologically
conservative vision of history and society. Historian Eric Foner (2010) notes:
Judging from the updated social studies curriculum, conservatives want

students to come away from a Texas education with a favorable impres-
sion of: women who adhere to traditional gender roles, the Confederacy,
some parts of the Constitution, capitalism, the military and religion.
They do not think students should learn about women who demanded
greater equality; other parts of the Constitution; slavery, Reconstruction
and the unequal treatment of nonwhites generally; environmentalists;
labor unions; federal economic regulation; or foreigners. (para. 3)
The curriculum revisions approved by the elected Texas Board of Educa-

tion include removing mention of key events, documents, and people related to
the women’s rights movement (e.g., Declaration of the Seneca Falls Convention,
John and Abigail Adams, and Carrie Chapman Catt). Thomas Jefferson (author
of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States) was
removed from a list of people who inspired 18th and 19th-century revolutions
and replaced by the religious and conservative figures St. Thomas Aquinas, John
Calvin, and William Blackstone.
As examples of “good citizenship” for third graders, the new curriculum deletes
African American abolitionist Harriet Tubman. And the “role of religion”—but not
the separation of church and state—receives emphasis throughout. For example,
religious revivals are now listed as one of the twelve major “events and eras” from
colonial days to 1877. Curriculum revisions also include a reduction in the discus-
sion of slavery (the trans-Atlantic slave trade is even renamed “Triangle Trade”); the
Double-V Campaign of World War II (in which African Americans demanded that
victory over the Axis powers be accompanied by the end of racial segregation and
discrimination in the United States) was deleted from the curriculum.
In economics, Texas students will now study the free-market economic theo-
ries of Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek and be required to understand
the “benefits,” but none of the deleterious effects, of capitalism, which has been
renamed the “free enterprise system.” The New York Times quoted one conserva-
tive member of the Texas Board of Education as saying, “Let’s face it, capitalism
does have a negative connotation, you know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ” as a justification for
the name change (McKinley, 2010). The kindergarten curriculum deletes food,
shelter, and clothing from its list of “basic human needs.” And, third graders tak-
ing geography no longer need to identify the Amazon or the Himalayas, and so
on (Foner, 2010).
The new Texas social studies curriculum is so distorted that the American
Historical Association (AHA) condemned its “arbitrary selections and deletions”
and noting among other things, that the Texas curriculum discounts “the impor-
tance of human activity in North America before the British colonization of the
Atlantic Coast” and “omits the key elements of Indian, Spanish, African, and
Mexican people’s presence and actions” thus resulting in a historical narrative that
cannot be described as accurate (AHA, 2010).
Lastly—and adding evidence to recent claims that rationality is under assault
and that the United States is awash in public stupidity—the Florida legislature
has attempted to “raise historical literacy” by mandating the “teaching of facts” in
the social studies curriculum. Indeed, Florida’s elected officials have gone so far as
officially banning historical interpretation in public schools, effectively outlawing
critical thinking, with the passage of the Florida Education Omnibus Bill, which
specifies that
American history shall be viewed as factual, not constructed, shall be

viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable. . . . The history of the
United States shall be taught as genuine history. (Craig, 2006)
Of course, as Westheimer (Chapter 6) points out, it matters not to the Florida’s

politicians that historians almost universally regard history as exactly a matter of
interpretation.
Dangerous Citizenship
So what to do?
In these circumstances, progressive educators must pursue, as obviously some
already do, an agenda dedicated to the creation of a citizenship education that
struggles against and disrupts inequalities and oppression (DeLeon & Ross, 2010;
Ross & Queen, 2013). Classroom practice must work toward a citizenship educa-
tion committed to exploring and affecting the contingencies of understanding and
action and the possibilities of eradicating exploitation, marginalization, powerless-
ness, cultural imperialism, and violence in both schools and society. Freire, as
illustrated in the quotation above, like Dewey, teaches us that citizenship education
is essential to democratic education, and that democratic education is essential to
a free and democratic society. In this same vein, Chomsky’s assertion that “a fun-
damental need of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry,
for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions”
challenges the foundational core of public schooling, which we have seen is geared
toward social control. As Chomsky points out, it follows from this assertion that
“a decent society should maximize the possibilities for these fundamental human
needs to realized” in an effort to create a society in which “human beings do not
have to be forced into the positions of tools, of cogs in a machine” (Achbar &
Wintonick, 1992).
Students must know that birth, nationality, documents, and platitudes are
not enough. They must understand that the promises of citizenship—that is, for
example, freedom—and the fulfillment of its virtues, are unfinished, and that they
remain an ongoing, dynamic struggle. And they must come to act in a variety
of creative and ethical ways, for the expansion and realization of freedom and
democracy, the root of contemporary notions of citizenship, is in their hands, and
it demands of them no less than the ultimate in democratic and anti-oppressive
human reflection and human activity.
Contemporary conditions demand an anti-oppressive citizenship education,

one that takes seriously social and economic inequalities and oppression that result
from neoliberal capitalism and builds upon the anti-oppressive possibilities of estab-
lished and officially sanctioned approaches. Some new and potentially exciting
directions and alternatives exist, however, within the recent scholarship surrounding
Freirean and neo-Freirean pedagogy, democratic education, and cultural studies.
Against the problematics just described, we propose an admittedly idio-
syncratic notion: “dangerous citizenship.” The pedagogical power of “dangerous
citizenship” resides in its capacity to encourage students and educators to chal-
lenge the implications of their own education or work, to envision an education
that is free and democratic to the core, and to interrogate and uncover their own
well-intentioned complicity in the conditions within which various cultural texts
and practices appear, especially to the extent that oppressive conditions create
oppressive cultural practices, and vice versa. Too often citizenship education implies
“docile” and “conforming,” spectatorial behavior and thought, a setting imposed
and reinforced by controlling images, power-laden and reproductive sociopedagogy.
The practice of citizenship, critical citizenship, or social justice–oriented citi-
zenship, requires that people, as individuals and collectively, take on actions and
behaviors that bring with them certain necessary dangers; it transcends traditional
maneuvers such as voting and signing petitions, etc. For citizenship today, from
this perspective, requires a praxis-inspired mindset of opposition and resistance, an
acceptance of a certain strategic and tactical stance. Of course, the implication
here is that dangerous citizenship is dangerous to an oppressive and socially unjust
status quo, to existing hierarchical structures of power.
Dangerous citizenship embodies three fundamental, conjoined, and cru-
cial generalities: political participation, critical awareness, and intentional action.
Its underlying aims rest upon the imperatives of resistance, meaning, disruption,
and disorder.
Political participation implies partaking in the “traditional” rights and respon-
sibilities of democratic citizenship. It does not intend, however, and should not be
read to intend any sort of complacency or comfort relative to the dominant status
quo. In fact, political participation might ironically insinuate nonparticipation. At
its most simplistic political participation suggests such activities as (1) acting on the
feasibilities of the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, the press, and so on; and
(2) undermining the actions of corporate-state government relative to, for example,
abusing personal privacy and to contradicting the principles of justice, freedom,
and equality (e.g., consider marches, demonstrations, petitions, etc.).
The second key component, critical awareness, builds on such constructs as
Paulo Freire’s (1970) conscientização. Overall, its point and purpose is to enable the
range of interested stakeholders to understand: (1) how things are; (2) that things
can be different; and (3) how things might or should be. It is grounded, in part,
within Freire’s conception of “reading the world” and Marx’s construction of “class
consciousness,” among other critical views (see Lukács, 1967).
The third and easily most complicated factor, intentional action, clearly could
connote a range of useful activities. Intentional action refers most directly to those
behaviors designed to instigate human connection, true engagement with everyday
life, meaningful experience, communication, and change—behaviors that forcefully
challenge passivity, commodification, and separation.
The challenge is, What kind of pedagogies can be employed in support
of dangerous citizenship? And, since we will not likely find inspiration for these
pedagogies within the walls of the coercive and controlling institutions we call
schools or in schools of education, Where do we look? Below, we explore sources
of inspiration, imaginaries, that might be used to create insurgent pedagogies—
pedagogies that attempt to maximize the possibilities that education can fulfill the
fundamental human needs for creative work, creative inquiry, and free creation
without the limiting effects of coercive institutions.
Pedagogical Imaginaries for Insurgent Pedagogies
As rigid, coercive, and hierarchical institutions in service of neoliberal capitalism,

schools are not environments in which pedagogical imaginations are fostered or
encouraged, though many creative teachers overcome the circumstances of their
work (e.g., Ross & Queen, 2013). We have been pedagogically inspired by a wide
range of theoretical and social practices outside the realm of education per se.
One example is Foucault’s use of the parrhesia, or speaking openly and
truthfully with the use of rhetoric, manipulation, or generalization. Parrhesia is
a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation to

truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through
danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through
criticism (self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a specific rela-
tion to moral law through freedom and duty. More precisely, parrhesia
is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship
to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty
to improve or help other people (as well as himself ). In parrhesia, the
speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion,
truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life
and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of
self-interest and moral apathy (Foucault, 2001, pp. 19–20)
Employing insurgent pedagogies may not be a life-threatening proposition, but it

is certainly a risky one and there is no doubt that governments, school boards, and
teacher education programs do much to discourage “truth-telling” in the classroom.
Another example is the work of Abraham P. DeLeon and a small cadre of
educators who have done much to bring anarchist ideas to bear on educational
practice (Anster, DeLeon, Fernandez, Nocella, & Shannon, 2009; DeLeon, 2008;
2010; chapter in this book). As DeLeon points out there is a historical presence of
anarchism in educational practice (Avrich, 2005; Gribble, 2004), but the subversive
potential of anarchism in the classroom includes infusing teaching and learning
with the spirit of revolt, using DIY techniques of social action, and conceptual-
izing the work of teaching as that of an agent infiltrating “the capitalist training
grounds that public schools represent”:
[A]narchists who want to provide a counter-narrative within these

spaces, or, to perform epistemological sabotage, can utilize this type of
strategy. Deconstructing state exams, questioning the textbook, provid-
ing alternative histories and voices and openly discussing resistance are
a beginning, but it also must move to actually showing students how
to resist. (DeLeon, 2010, p. 6)
As DeLeon points out these practices come with great risk “as the public
school classroom is filled with students who represent varying levels of political
ideologies and indoctrination [and] must be done carefully if one is interested in
keeping their employment” (p. 6). DeLeon also points to the need to construct
anarchist pedagogical actions “within the context of community action combined
with individual pursuits” (p. 6).
There are myriad other examples of post-Left/insurrectionary anarchism that
reflect the tenets of dangerous citizenship. Politically inspired performance artists
described in The Interventionists: User’s Manual for the Creative Disruption of Every-
day Life (Thompson & Sholette, 2004) are exemplary role models of dangerous
citizenship and have much to offer teachers interested in creating pedagogies of
resistance:
• Artists producing work that encourages individual mobility and free-

dom (Ruben Ortiz-Torres);
• Artists who produce actions that occur within the public sphere
(Surveillance Camera Players);
• Artists who deploy aesthetic strategies in other discourses including
anthropology and urban geography (e.g. simulating “dirty bombs,”
recreating germ warfare tests) (subRosa; Critical Art Ensemble); and
• Artists who produce tools and clothing to augment the wearers’ sense
of personal autonomy (The Yes Men, Center for Tactical Magic).
Social movements to preserve the commons such as Occupy and Standing Man
(Taksim Square in Istanbul) are rich models for thinking about how to appropri-
ate public education spaces for common rather than capitalist interests (Holmes,
2013).
In the following sections we explore de Certeau’s (1984) understanding of la

perruque and the Situationist International’s techniques of dérive and détournement
as imaginaries for pedagogies that might foster dispositions and behaviors consis-
tent with the conception of dangerous citizenship. We present these techniques as
frameworks for intentional actions that might be reconfigured as insurrectionist
pedagogies. But there are many sources that can serve as inspiration for the cre-
ation of pedagogies that aim to engender dangerous citizenship; thus, we are not
presenting a program to be carried out in all circumstances, but rather attempting
to provoke pedagogical imaginations.
La Perruque as Insurrectionist Pedagogy
La perruque is the worker’s own work disguised as work for his [sic]
employer. It differs from pilfering in that nothing of material value
is stolen. It differs from absenteeism in that the worker is officially
on the job. La perruque may be as simple a matter as a secretary’s
writing a love letter on “company time” or as complex as a cabinet-
maker’s “borrowing” a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living
room. Under different names in different countries this phenomenon
is becoming more and more general, even if managers penalize it or
“turn a blind eye” on it in order not to know about it. Accused of
stealing or turning material to his own ends and using the machines
for his own profit, the worker who indulges in la perruque actually
diverts time (not goods, since he uses only scraps) from the factory
for work that is free, creative, and precisely not directed toward profit.
In the very place where the machine he must serve reigns supreme, he
cunningly takes pleasure in finding a way to create gratuitous prod-
ucts whose sole purpose is to signify his own capabilities through his
work and to confirm his solidarity with other workers or his family
through spending his time in this way. With the complicity of other
workers (who thus defeat the competition the factory tries to instill
among them), he succeeds in “putting one over” on the established
order on its home ground. Far from being a regression toward a mode
of production organized around artisans or individuals, la perruque
reintroduces “popular” techniques of other times and other places into
the industrial space (that is, into the Present order). (de Certeau, 1984,
pp. 25–26)
Mr. Hand: Am I hallucinating here? Just what in the hell do you

think you’re doing?
Jeff Spicoli: Learnin’ about Cuba and havin’ some food.
Mr. Hand: Mister Spicoli you’re on dangerous ground here. You’re

causing a major disturbance on my time.
Jeff Spicoli: You know, I’ve been thinking about this Mr. Hand. If
I’m here and you’re here, doesn’t that make it our time?8
La perruque represents what could be the most fundamental and subversive

mode of pedagogical resistance. But in order to grasp its utility, its import, sev-
eral convictions must first be considered. Schooling must, for instance, be seen
as “our time” and not simply a managed or enculturating time, unquestioned
labor-work, controlled by and supportive of the authorities (though frequently this
is the case). Moreover, the rationale for enacting la perruque must be consistent
with promoting democracy, collectivity, and authenticity and opposed to oppres-
sion. Third, la perruque must be about capabilities and solidarity, that is, it must
empower teachers and students to chase their interests, desires, skills, and abilities
while simultaneously encouraging them to connect and form communities with
one another—within and across classrooms and within and across schools, etc.
What matters most, then, is that here students and teachers enact a program
aimed at counteracting the neoliberal status quo. Thus, for example, representations
that posit particular views of, say, the good teacher or good student or good school,
or that privilege certain constructions or relationships of race, ethnicity, class, gender,
sexuality, language, and religion (etc.) must be vigorously and critically challenged.
Teachers and students should pursue their own everyday lives in schools, therefore,
as schools make sense only within the everyday lives of teachers and students.
To illustrate, la perruque–inspired instruction might create school “assign-
ments” that attack school assignments. If schools have a homework policy, for
instance, teachers and students might create projects in which they critically exam-
ine homework’s positive and negative aspects. They might develop “tests” in which
essays ask students to critique standardized testing. They might use “their” time to
critique and create their own content standards. Of course, teachers and students
might simply use their time to do things other than mandated schoolwork, per-
haps operating directly against formal dictates. (We are not necessarily advocating
any particular techniques, but merely offering samples of what might be done.
We encourage teachers and students to develop their own situated pedagogies. We
note, too, that this section might lead one to think of the actions of student Eddie
Pilikian [played by Ralph Macchio] in the movie Teachers [Hiller & McKinney,
1984] as he succeeds in videotaping the many absurdities that occur at his school
in the name of education.) What is at stake, at minimum, is who controls school
time and to what ends, who gets to decide what education is, what forms of
teaching and learning matter, and what, finally, it actually means to matter. For
we are not suggesting that teachers and students “waste” time or that they engage
in unimportant activities.
What these actions do, though, is clarify how la perruque might be used as
an insurgent pedagogy and within the demands of democracy, authenticity, the
collective good, and anti-oppression. Teachers, students, and schools would be
playing with their stereotypical images, whether as good, or bad, or mediocre, or
hardworking, or lazy, or whatever. Schools, teachers, and students typically seen
as good, hardworking, and mainstream might now be seen as radical and bad,
perhaps even as failing. Those viewed as failing would be able to claim that they
are hardworking (they are doing homework and taking tests, after all) and as suc-
cessful as those against whom they are usually held up to as competitors. Ideally,
all would come to challenge the mechanisms of what counts as a “good education”
in the neoliberal age, especially its potentially negative consequences, and to ques-
tion the evidence upon which such images are produced and disseminated and the
motives of those who perpetuate them.
Further, teachers and students would begin seeing their broad and intimate
relationships with one another, across classrooms, schools, and districts, and that
under dominant circumstances some are unfairly held up while some are unfairly
held down (i.e., because of economics, power, race, ethnicity, neighborhood, lan-
guage, religion, and so forth). Such work would be radically democratic as it
would reside primarily in the hands of students and teachers themselves and thus
dangerous to the status quo. It could be anti-oppressive to the extent that it frus-
trated Freire’s conception of banking education and that it negated the five faces
of oppression as outlined by Young (1992), namely, exploitation, marginalization,
powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence (Vinson, 2006). It would be
authentic, as it would reflect the lived experiences of teachers and students and as
it took their individual and collective wants, needs, desires, interests, backgrounds,
and subjectivities as uniquely legitimate.
Dérive and Détournement as Insurrectionist Pedagogy
In the mid-twentieth century, Guy Debord and other members of the Situation-
ist International (SI) advocated techniques not yet extensively explored for their
conceivable and critical pedagogical significance, yet of special interest given their
promise vis-à-vis the controlling and enforcing propensities of standards-based edu-
cation and its companion, high-stakes testing.9
The first, the dérive, literally “drifting,” implies “a mode of experimental
behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: it is a technique of tran-
sient passage through varied ambiances” (Situationist International, 1981, p. 45).
According to Debord:
In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their

usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and
leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the
terrain and the encounters they find there. The element of chance is
less determinant than one might think: from the dérive point of view
cities have a psychogeographical relief, with constant currents, fixed
points and vortexes which strongly discourage entry into or exit from
certain zones. (Debord, 1981, p. 50)
For the SI “psychogeography” referred to “the study of the specific effects

of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions
and behavior of individuals” (Situationist International, p. 45).
On the second technique, détournement, literally “diversion,” which is short
for: détournement of preexisting aesthetic elements or the integration of present
or past artistic production into a superior construction of a milieu. (Situationist
International, p. 45–46).
Détournement involves a quotation, or more generally a reuse, that “adapts”
the original element to a new context, the theft of aesthetic artifacts from their
contexts and their diversion into contexts of one’s own device. In short, a détour-
nement is a variation on a previous media work, in which the newly created one
has a meaning that is antagonistic or antithetical to the original.
Examples of détournement can be found scattered across the landscape of
popular culture. For example, culture jamming in the form of conceptual artist
Barbara Kruger’s (1987) black and white photographs with overlaid captions such
as “I shop therefore I am” and Adbusters magazine’s “Subvertisements” aimed to
disrupt and subvert corporate advertising (Adbusters spoof ads, n.d.; Discussion,
n.d.; Lasn, 2009).
Artist and punk rocker Frank Discussion is known for his adaptation of Situ-
ationist tactics and the development of “antistasiology” or the study of resistance
(Antistasiology, n.d.). Discussion subverts or derails events by intervening with an
out of place element in the physical world, aimed at raising critical consciousness
and critiquing society. For example, Discussion created and distributed five thou-
sand copies of “Bored With School,” a broadside against school and work, which
was made to look like an official statement from the elected chief of the Arizona
Department of Education (Discussion, 1981). His “Bush spells out ‘War is Peace’
policy” is a détournement of a CNN.com news report that brilliantly illustrates the
doublespeak of contemporary politicians and the mainstream media (Discussion,
n. d., War is Peace).
In the early 1980s, Discussion and his band, Feederz, détourned an image of
Ronald Reagan for the cover of the album Let Them Eat Jellybeans!, which was one
of the earliest compilations of punk rock/art rock in North America (Let Them
Eat Jellybeans!, 1981). More recently Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of
Medicine followed suit by adapting the Barack Obama “Hope” poster for the cover
of their album Audacity of Hype (Biafra, 2009).10
Together, dérive and détournement sprang from Debord and his colleagues’
“dreams of a reinvented world,” a world of experiment and play. According to
Greil Marcus (1989):
These means were two: [jointly] the “dérive,” a drift down city streets
in search of signs of attraction or repulsion, and “détournement,” the
theft of aesthetic artifacts from their contexts and their diversion into
contexts of one’s own device. . . .
[Ideally] to practice détournement—to write new speech bal-
loons for newspaper comic strips, or for that matter old masters, to
insist simultaneously on a “devaluation” of art and its “reinvestment”
in a new kind of social speech, a “communication containing its own
criticism,” a technique that could not mystify because its very form
was a demystification—and to pursue the dérive—to give yourself up
to the promises of the city, and then to find them wanting—to drift
through the city, allowing its signs to divert, to “detourn,” your steps,
and then to divert those signs yourself, forcing them to give up routes
that never existed before—there would be no end to it. It would be to
begin to live a truly modern way of life, made out of pavement and
pictures, words and weather: a way of life anyone could understand
and anyone could use. (pp. 168, 170)
As techniques of resistance aimed toward the enforcement elements of neolib-

eral education and high-stakes testing, what might dérive and détournement mean?
What might they look like? How might they be applied? And how might they
work?
Applied to schooling and high-stakes testing, the dérive, the more difficult
of the two, demands first a reunderstanding of the geographical shifts brought on
by changes in gaze-based technologies and advanced state capitalism. Dérive is a
social act, and might include students and teachers who would move communally,
cooperatively, drifting as it were through buildings, courses, curriculum, but also
through cyberspace, virtual space, hyperspace, through the various architectures of
contemporary schooling, as they were attracted or repelled, as their emotions and
behaviors were piqued.
Perhaps the most recent and best example of dérive is from China’s “Jasmine
Revolution” (named in homage of the Middle East uprisings) where, on February
20, 2011, anonymous tweets from a blogger (Jason Ng aka Shudong) produced
public gatherings in more than a dozen cities (2011 Chinese pro-democracy pro-
tests, 2011). The protests did not escalate beyond large roaming crowds, such as
the one that formed at a McDonald’s restaurant in Wangfujing, Beijing’s major
retail shopping district. Yet, journalists reported an “ambiguous revolutionary atmo-

sphere” even though the crowds were not actually protesting (Demick & Pierson,
2011). What turned into regular Sunday strolls became a highly effective psy-
chological operation against the Chinese government. These dérives, where people
simply come out and pschogeographically walk, circumvent the bans on public
protest in China, but they brought on serious responses from China’s massive
security apparatus, which included the arrest of more than thirty pro-democracy
activists (including prototypical dangerous citizen Ai Weiwei, an internationally
known artist, cultural critic, and dissident whose work blurs the boundaries of art
and politics), as well as censorship, stepped-up security measures, and the ban-
ning of the jasmine flower.11 By March 2011 dérives were taking place at fifty-five
locations in forty-one cities, all of them popular gathering spots such as Starbucks
in Guangzhou and in front of the statue of Mao Zedong in Chengdu (Boxun,
2011; “Jasmine Revolution” Beijing Wangfujing assembly, heavily guarded, 2011).
Taking their lead from China’s Jasmine Revolution, student drifters might,
for instance, freely enter or exit schools (both physical and virtual) as they were
encouraged or discouraged to do so, and they would seek simply to experience, to
disrupt, or to play. They would surf Web sites, confronting relevant images, come
and go, utilize monitors and Webcams for “travel,” compelled toward or away
from various zones, from, say, “official” image bases, from control, and from the
enforcing effects of standardization schemes.
Conceivably, albeit in the extreme, they could drift in and out of—even
hack into—testing locales and interrupt them, create with them, toy with them,
occupy them. They could, moreover, enter and exit classrooms, schools, central
offices, government domains, and media positions where high-stakes testing is
enacted and where, in the end, controlling images are most oppressively enacted.
All as a means of resistance.
Consider too the lessons to be learned by civic educators from Wikileaks
(http://wikileaks.org/)—the nonprofit media organization that enables indepen-
dent sources to leak information, including state secrets (e.g., Afghan War Diary;
Iraq War Logs; and hundreds of thousands of U.S. State Department cables), to
journalists.
Wikileaks is not the one-off creation of a solitary genius; it is the

product of decades of collaborative work by people engaged in apply-
ing computer hacking to political causes, in particular, to the principle
that information hoarding is evil. (Ludlow, 2010)
Wikileaks, and hacktivist culture in general, are based upon the “hacker ethics” of
(1) all information should be free; and (2) mistrust of authority and the promo-
tion of decentralization (Levy, 1984), two ideas that must be seriously engaged
with in any educational endeavor that claims to promote democracy and freedom.
With respect to détournement, the implications for resistance are perhaps

clearer, especially within the contexts of surveillance, and spectacle. Consider, for
example, this plausible newspaper headline:
PRESIDENT OBAMA, SECRETARY DUNCAN

ANNOUNCE “RACE TO THE TOP”
Plan Emphasizes Paying Teachers Based on Student Test Scores
In and of itself, this seems (or may seem to some) innocuous, even positive, in
that the administration will be devoting billions of dollars to schools, seeking to
ensure that data collection tells us whether improvements are actually happening,
and tying student achievement to assessments of teachers. Suppose, however, that
as a mode of resistance the headline is juxtaposed next to a poster illustrating what
we know about the history of paying teachers for student performance, which is
that pay-for-performance gains are mostly illusions:
• In England, when payment-for-results was finally dropped in the

1890s, the overwhelming judgment was that it was unsound pol-
icy. Cynics referred to schools as “grant factories” and children as
“grant-earning units.”
• Payment-for-results appeared briefly in Canada in 1876, causing
conservatives to rejoice because it made teachers and students work
harder to avoid failure. The Canadian experience showed that test
scores could be increased quickly, so long as the subject matter could
be narrowed and measured. But, as in England, the system caused
teachers to focus their energies on students who were most likely
to succeed, helping them cram for examinations while ignoring the
others. In 1883, a public outcry ended the experiment abruptly.
• Nearly a century later in the United States, a “performance contract-
ing” experiment in Arkansas produced only scandal, and the lack
of results ultimately doomed performance contracting and it was
declared a failure. Like the earlier English and Canadian experi-
ments, performance contracting once again showed how financial
incentives failed to produce expected gains, while at the same time
generating damaging educational effects.
As a second example, imagine this newspaper headline:
HALF OF STATE’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS DON’T

MAKE THE GRADE IN READING AND MATH
Schools Rated Poorly Could Lose Students or be Closed 12
Suppose, further, an accompanying chart with the names of schools or districts in

one column and mean standardized test scores in a second column, perhaps with
pass-fail cutoff scores indicated.
Now consider recent (mind-boggling but true) news reports that within a
particular state funding has been provided to equip school system administrators
with smartphones at a cost of thousands of dollars, while because of budget cuts
at the school level parents have been asked to donate supplies, including toilet
paper, as a means to save money that might otherwise have to be diverted from
instruction. (According to some reports, some schools actually have engaged in
a system of bartering donated supplies, again, including toilet paper, in order to
obtain necessary educational material.) Now, reimagine the image. The headline:
HALF OF STATE’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS DON’T

MAKE THE GRADE IN READING AND MATH
The chart? Column One: names of schools or districts. Column Two: number of
rolls of donated toilet paper (with appropriately arbitrary pass-fail levels reported).
As with the first case, both meaning and significance have been changed.
At the heart of détournement rests the notion that in all instances either the
image is altered to “fit” the context, or the context is altered to “fit” the image.
Such processes—or pedagogical strategies—enable students, teachers, and others
to confront and combat the enforcing/enforcement properties of high-stakes test-
ing as image.
What they require, though, are access to and facility with those technolo-
gies that make such enforcement possible, as well as an understanding—a critical
consciousness—of controlling images, surveillance, and spectacle. Joined with dérive
(and la perruque as well as parrhesia, sabotage, etc.), détournement provides an
untapped mode of situated and critical resistance.
Conclusion
Neoliberal education reforms have had a devastating effect on teaching and learning
in schools, laying waste to humanistic approaches to education, reducing educa-
tion to the immense accumulation of test scores, and undermining the principle
that public schools should be operated in the public interest. There is no tinker-
ing toward utopia. Subversive resistance from within schools is a dangerous but
necessary undertaking. We believe schools can be sites of liberation (as opposed to
training camps for the neoliberal economy), but engaging in this work to transform
schools puts teachers at risk and students at risk, for good reason.
The pedagogical practices inspired by la perruque, dérive, and détournement

as presented here are not absolutes or final statements on what the practice of
dangerous citizenship is or could be, but as quotidian and incremental praxis, a
tentative set of steps toward reestablishing the place of living and authenticity
against alienation, passivity, antidemocracy, conformity, and injustice. For in the
end, standardized education and high-stakes testing is not the whole story, but
merely a piece of the bigger story, one in which we and our children are author
and character, subject and object, player and played on. Perhaps this is our true
test. If so, then the stakes are high indeed.13
Notes
1. See, for example: FairTest’s “Testing and Resistance Reform News” (http://fairtest.
org/news/other); Substance News (http://www.substancenews.net/); Susan Ohanian’s Web site
(http://www.susanohanian.org/); Rethinking Schools (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/); and
The Rouge Forum Web site (http://www.rougeforum.org/).
2. For more on the Common Core see the chapter in this book by Ross, Mathison,
and Vinson.
3. See http://commoncore.pearsoned.com/.
4. This section is adapted from Ross’s keynote address to the 6th Annual Conference
on Equity and Social Justice: Testing Our Limits: Teaching and Learning with Courage and
Conviction, State University of New York, New Paltz, March 3, 2013.
5. Watch video of Yertle The Turtle here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=
player_embedded&v=9FFfbSWbLWw.
6. http://www.sd52.bc.ca/sd52root/%5D.
7. View a BCTF television commercial from this campaign here: http://bctf.ca/
publications/NewsmagArticle.aspx?id=17420.
8. Student Jeff Spicoli to teacher Mr. Hand in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, after
Jeff orders a pizza delivered to his social studies classroom (Heckerling & Crowe, 1982).
9. The published works of Guy Debord and other members of the Situationist Inter-
national are widely available online. The Bureau of Public Secrets (http://bopsecrets.org/)
and the library at nothingness.org (http://library.nothingness.org/) are excellent resources.
10. For additional examples of détournement see Ross (2010, 2011).
11. Videos of the Wangfujing strolls are available on the Internet; see for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkBceA-WEmQ.
12. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran this headline on August 13, 2003: “Half of Pa.
public schools don’t make the grade in math and reading—Under new U.S. law, schools
rated poorly could lose students.” Retrieved from http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/2
0030813schoolreport0813p1.asp.
13. This is a revised version of an article that appeared in: Ross, E. W., & Gibson,
R. (Eds.). (2013). Education for revolution. Works & Days / Cultural Logic. Parts of this
chapter were previously published as Ross, E. W., & Vinson, K. D. (2011). Social control
and the pursuit of dangerous citizenship. In J. L. DeVitis (Ed.), Citizenship education and
critical civic literacy: A reader (pp. 155–168). New York: Peter Lang.
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6
Teaching Students to Think About Patriotism
Joel Westheimer
Nine out of ten Americans agree either completely or mostly with the statement
“I am very patriotic” (Doherty, 2007). More than seven out of ten high school
students report that they would be offended by someone carrying on a conversa-
tion while the national anthem was being played (Hamilton College Patriotism
Poll, 2003). It might be simple to conclude from statistics like these that there is
a great deal of harmony surrounding notions of patriotic attachment and that this
high level of accord would extend to the ways patriotism is taught in schools. But
patriotism is never simple. Although a great many people describe themselves as
patriotic, when asked how a patriotic citizen should act or what values a patriotic
citizen holds, the easy consensus disappears (Westheimer, 2007). Some believe that
patriotism requires near-absolute loyalty to government leaders. Others see patriotic
allegiance as a way of being loyal and committed not to the government but rather
to democratic ideals on which the nation was founded such as equality, compas-
sion, and justice. Still others advocate a healthy skepticism toward governmental
policy decisions generally but prefer a “closing of the ranks” during times of war
or national crisis. Indeed, there are as many ways to express one’s commitment to
country as there are ways to show one’s commitment to loved ones or to friends.
If we can’t agree on exactly what being patriotic means, we can agree on how
complicated the issues surrounding it have become. Politicians, members of the
media, authors, critics, and religious leaders have all shaped various ideas about
patriotism and its importance to national unity and sought to advance particular
notions of patriotism over others.
But nowhere are the debates around these various visions of patriotic attach-
ment more pointed, more protracted, and more consequential than in schools. The
period following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks made this especially
clear. In Madison, Wisconsin, the parent community erupted in fierce debate over
127
128 Joel Westheimer
a new law requiring schools to post American flags in each classroom and to lead
students in either pledging allegiance each day or playing the national anthem. In
Detroit, Michigan, a student was repeatedly suspended, first for wearing a T-shirt
with an upside-down American flag, and then for wearing a sweatshirt with an
antiwar quotation by Albert Einstein, before the ACLU filed a civil liberties suit
resulting in the student’s reinstatement. And in Virginia, House Bill 1912, which
would have required schools to notify parents any time a child declined to recite
or stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, passed the House of Delegates with a 93–4
vote. (The bill was ultimately defeated in the State Senate.) As these and many
other such stories make clear, patriotism is highly contested territory, especially
when it comes to the daily activities of the nation’s schoolchildren. And it always
has been. As far back as the 1890s, education policymakers realized that public
schools could serve as a “mighty engine for the inculcation of patriotism” (Balch,
1890, as cited in O’Leary, 1999, p. 175). More than a century later, patriotism
and its role in the school curriculum remains a matter of great debate.
What should we teach students about patriotism? What rituals—if any—will
best prepare them to participate in the political life of their community and the
nation? Since public schools in a democratic society have a particular obligation
to provide students with opportunities to think deeply about issues of public
importance, it seems fitting to ask how we might encourage students to think
about patriotism.
Thinking about Patriotism
Consider for a moment the different answers you might get if you asked several
people to describe gravity—but one of them was on Earth, one was on the Moon,
and another was floating in space. Their location and circumstance would affect
their definition. So it goes with rather more vague concepts such as patriotism:
the definition depends on the context. It would be markedly different to think
about teaching patriotism to high school students living in a one-ruling-party dic-
tatorship, for example, than to a similar group of students living in a democracy.
Note that this is not necessarily true for all subjects in the school curriculum. It
seems plausible that a good curriculum that taught multiplication, fractions, or a
foreign language—perhaps with some adjustments for cultural relevance and suit-
ability—would serve equally well in most parts of the world. But if you stepped
into a school at a moment of patriotic flourish, would you be able to tell whether
you were in a totalitarian nation or a democratic one?
Both the totalitarian nation and the democratic one might have students sing
a national anthem. You might hear a Hip-Hip-Hooray kind of cheer for our land
emanating from the assembly hall of either school. Flags and symbols of national
pride might be front and center in each school. And the students of each school
might have a moment of silence for members of their respective armed forces
Teaching Students to Think about Patriotism 129
who had been killed in combat. But what would be unique about the lessons on
patriotism in the democratic nation? What should schools in the United States
ask students to consider that schools in China, North Korea, or Iran would not?
In the book Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools,
I wrote about the differences social theorists describe between authoritarian and
democratic patriotism (Westheimer, 2007). While either might employ familiar
rituals to foster a sense of belonging and attachment, authoritarian patriotism asks
for unquestioning loyalty to a cause determined by a centralized leader or leading
group. Democratic patriotism, on the other hand, derives from caring about the
people, principles, and values that underlie democracy such as political partici-
pation, free speech, civil liberties, and social equality. In a democracy, political
scientist Douglas Lummis (1996) argues, patriotism reflects the love that brings a
people together rather than the misguided love of institutions that dominate them.
Authoritarian patriotism, he notes, “is a resigning of one’s will, right of choice,
and need to understand to the authority; its emotional base is gratitude for having
been liberated from the burden of democratic responsibility” (p. 37).
Pedagogical efforts to relieve students of the “burden of democratic respon-
sibility” is something we might expect in countries where the government’s pri-
mary political goals include unquestioning loyalty to the ruling party’s policies.
We would not be surprised to learn, for example, that North Korean children are
taught to abide by an “official history” handed down by President Kim Jong-un
and his single-party authoritarian regime. A school curriculum that teaches one
unified, unquestioned version of “truth” is one of the hallmarks of totalitarian
societies. One would reasonably expect this not to be the case in U.S. schools.
But patriotism in U.S. classrooms does not always easily conform to democratic
goals and ideals. Tensions abound.
Entertaining competing versions of history or exploring political convictions
at odds with current government policy might represent the greatest threat to
authoritarian patriotism while simultaneously constituting one of the more impor-
tant goals of education for democratic patriotism. In U.S. schools, a democratic
patriotism might be developed, at least in part, through lessons in the skills of
analysis and exploration, for example, or free political expression and independent
thought. Although schools in the United States have often supported democratic
dispositions in just such ways, increasingly, independent thinking has come under
attack (e.g., Bigelow, 2013). If being a good American citizen requires thinking
critically about important social assumptions, then that very foundation of citizen-
ship is at odds with recent trends in educational policy.
No Child Left Thinking
In the decade following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center, dozens of school boards, districts, and state and federal-level policies were
130 Joel Westheimer
enacted that sought to restrict critical analysis of historical and contemporary

events in the school curriculum. In June 2006, the Florida Education Omnibus
Bill (H.B. 7087e3) included legislation specifying the following:
American history shall be viewed as factual, not constructed, shall be

viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable. . . . [T]he history of the
United States shall be taught as genuine history. (Craig, 2006)
Other provisions in the bill mandate “flag education, including proper flag
display” and “flag salute,” and require educators to stress the importance of free
enterprise to the U.S. economy (Craig, 2006). But I am concerned in particular
here with the stated goal of the bill’s designers: “to raise historical literacy” with a
particular emphasis on the “teaching of facts.” For example, the bill requires that
only facts be taught when it comes to discussing the “period of discovery” and the
early colonies. Florida is perhaps the first state to ban historical interpretation in
public schools, thereby effectively outlawing critical thinking. Of course, historians
almost universally regard history as exactly a matter of interpretation and, indeed,
it is the competing interpretations that make history so interesting. Yet a growing
body of legislation and school policy seeks to teach students a set of supposedly
immutable and incontrovertible facts. The mandated adherence to an “official story”
embodied in this piece of legislation and others like it have been widely derided
by historians and educators alike. But the impact of these laws should not be
underestimated. Especially since Florida is not alone.
Nebraska’s State Board of Education specified that high school social studies
curriculum should, “include instruction in . . . the benefits and advantages of our
government, the dangers of communism and similar ideologies.” They specify that
the curriculum should include “exploits and deeds of American heroes, singing
patriotic songs, memorizing the Star Spangled Banner and America, and reverence
for the flag” (Board Minutes, 2001; Nebraska Board, 2011). This drive to engage
schools in reinforcing a unilateral understanding of U.S. history and policy shows
no sign of abating and, in fact, has more recently taken on new fervor as witnessed
in the Florida legislation. The form of history now being pursued in schools is
often monolithic, reflecting an “America right or wrong” stance, what philosopher
Martha Nussbaum warns is “perilously close to jingoism” (2002, p. 29).
The federal role in mandating that students cease critical analysis of historical
events was significant as well. In 2002, as preparations for the Iraq war were nearing
completion, the U.S. Department of Education announced a new set of history
and civic education initiatives that the president hoped will “improve students’
knowledge of American history, increase their civic involvement, and deepen their
love for our great country” (Bush, 2002, p. 1599). We must, he emphasized, teach
our children that “America is a force for good in the world, bringing hope and
freedom to other people” (p. 1600). Similarly, in 2004, Senator Lamar Alexander
(former U.S. secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan) finalized the
American History and Civics Education Act. In defending his new legislation,
Alexander warned that students not be exposed to competing ideologies in his-
torical texts but rather be instructed that our nation represents one true ideology.
In other words, Americans, while representing diverse backgrounds and cultures,
are all part of a unified American creed or a common set of beliefs. According to
Alexander, this legislation puts civics back in its “rightful place in our schools, so
our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American” (National
Coalition for History, 2003). For proponents of this view of history—and indeed of
schooling itself—“what it means to be an American” is more answer than question.
I focus on history teaching here, but the trend is not limited to history or
the social studies. In many states, virtually every subject area is under scrutiny for
any deviation from one single narrative: one of knowable, testable, and purportedly
uncontested facts. An English teacher in a recent study undertaken by colleagues
and myself told us that even novel reading was now prescriptive in her state rubric,
meanings predetermined, vocabulary words preselected, essay topics predigested.
A science teacher put it this way: “The only part of the science curriculum now
being critically analyzed is evolution by natural selection.”
As many have observed, the kinds of high-stakes testing mandated by No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race To The Top legislation has further pushed
to the margins those educational efforts that seek to have students grapple with
tough questions about society and the world in which they live, and specifically
with contested and situated ideas. At times this results in an even more worrisome
outcome: rather than an unquestioning stance to history or civics or literature or
science, some students do not receive education in these subjects at all. A myopic
drive for math and literacy training to the exclusion of social studies, arts, and
extracurricular programs has made it difficult to think about the strengths of our
democratic society and the challenges it faces at all educational levels.
A study by the Center on Education policy (Jennings & Renter, 2006)
found that 71 percent of districts reported cutting back time on other subjects to
make more space for reading and math instruction. More and more children who
perform poorly on standardized tests of math and reading are forbidden to enroll
in classes in art, science, social studies, or even attend recess. Social studies was
the part of the curriculum that was most frequently cited as a place where these
reductions took place. A few years ago, historian David McCullough told a Senate
committee that because of NCLB, “history is being put on the back burner or
taken off the stove altogether in many or most schools.” An increasing number
of students are getting little to no education about how government works, the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the evolution of social movements, and U.S. and
world history. As Peter Cambell, Missouri State Coordinator for FairTest noted,
“the sociopolitical implications of poor black and Hispanic children not learn-
ing about the Civil Rights movement, not learning about women’s suffrage, not
132 Joel Westheimer
learning about the US Civil War, and not learning about any historical or con-
temporary instance of civil disobedience is more than just chilling. It smacks of an
Orwellian attempt not merely to rewrite history, but to get rid of it” (Campbell,
2006). To be sure, the implications Cambell describes are not limited to poor black
and Hispanic children. Any child being denied knowledge about these historical
events and social movements misses out on important opportunities to link his or
her patriotic attachments with quintessentially American experiences of struggles
for a better society for all.
Let’s Talk Facts
The most common critique of educators who seek to teach students to think
and to interpret information is that they have no respect for facts. They are soft,
feel-good pedagogues more interested in process than in knowing the right answers
to questions. These tendencies are vilified as unfit for a rigorous standards-based
education. Somehow, critics have become convinced that those who say they want
students to think for themselves simply do not care whether students can read,
write, or perform addition or subtraction. This is plainly nonsense. We all want
students to learn to read and write. Nobody wants students to be numerically illit-
erate. You will not find a membership drive for the group called “Teachers against
kids learning how to add.” But many educators want children to know more than
formulas. They want the knowledge that students acquire to be embedded in the
service of something bigger. It is not enough for children to learn how to read;
they also have to learn to know what is worth reading and why. In other words,
they need to learn how to think.
Proponents of “factual” history also exhibit a rapid loss of interest in facts
when established historical particulars call into question the “one true story” sug-
gested by, for example, the Florida legislation I described earlier. Indeed, the his-
tory of the nation’s most well-known and revered patriotic symbols and rituals are
no exception. Although millions of schoolchildren recite the Pledge of Allegiance
every day, far fewer know many facts about its author. Francis Bellamy, author
of the original 1892 pledge (which did not contain any reference to “God”), was
highly critical of many trends of late-19th-century American life, most notably
unrestrained capitalism and growing individualism. He wanted America to reflect
basic democratic values, such as equality of opportunity, and he worked openly
to have his country live up to its democratic ideals. Emma Lazarus wrote the
poem that became the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me
your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Katharine
Lee Bates, an English professor and poet at Wellesley College, wrote the lyrics to
“America the Beautiful,” including the words “America! America! God mend thine
every flaw!” Bellamy, Lazarus, Bates, and many like-minded reformers throughout
America’s history asserted their patriotism by strongly proclaiming their beliefs in

democratic values such as free speech, civil liberties, greater participation in poli-
tics, and social and economic equality.1 In particular, all echo the quintessentially
American belief in critique.
Yet schools have become increasingly oriented away from the kinds of think-
ing these historical figures advocated and toward pedagogical models of efficiency
that discourage deeper consideration of important ideas. The relentless focus on
testing means that time for in-depth critical analysis of ideas is diminished. Social
studies scholar Stephen Thornton (2005) notes that by “critical thinking” school
officials too often mean that students should passively absorb as “truth” the criti-
cal thinking already completed by someone else (p. 85). Current school reform
policies and many classroom practices too often reduce teaching and learning to
exactly the kind of mindless rule following that makes students unable to make
principled stands that have long been associated with being American. The hidden
curriculum of post-NCLB classrooms is how to please authority and pass the tests,
not how to develop convictions and stand up for them.2
Teaching about Patriotism
There are many varied and powerful ways to teach a democratic form of patrio-
tism aimed at improving people’s lives. Longtime teacher Brian Schultz’s inspiring
efforts with his 5th grade class in Chicago’s Cabrini Green included having his
students conduct research on improving conditions in their own neighborhood,
especially with regard to broken promises to build a new school. His students
studied historical approaches to change and, rejecting passivity, demonstrated a
deep attachment to their community and the people who inhabit it. Bob Peterson,
a one-time Wisconsin Elementary Teacher of the Year, works with his students at
La Escuela Fratney in Madison to examine the full spectrum of ideological posi-
tions that emerged following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Through
poetry, historical readings, and current events, Peterson allows students to explore
political events surrounding 9/11 and their impact on American patriotism. El
Puente Academy in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, ties
the entire school curriculum to concerns students and teachers have for the com-
munity. As Héctor Calderón, El Puente’s principal, declares, “Williamsburg reads
like a ‘Who’s Who of Environmental Hazards.’ ” Students at El Puente study
these toxic presences not only because they are concerned about the health of the
natural environment, but also because these hazards directly affect the health of
the community to which they are deeply committed.3
The curricular approaches to teaching about patriotism described above and
in dozens of other examples I have seen in schools across the nation share char-
acteristics that can help guide educators toward a democratic form of patriotic
134 Joel Westheimer
instruction that I have discussed in this article. First, teachers. administrators and
policymakers must be willing to have students ask questions rather than absorb
pat answers, to think about their attachments and commitments to their com-
munities and the broader national and global communities to which they belong.
Second, they must provide students with the information (including competing
narratives) they need to think about patriotism in substantive ways. Third, because
these schools and programs are rooted always in local contexts, readers interested
in guidelines for instilling democratic patriotism in their schools will have to work
within their own specific surroundings and circumstances. It is not possible to
teach a democratic form of patriotism without attention to the environment in
which it is being taught (which is what makes standardized testing so difficult to
reconcile with in-depth thinking about patriotism).
Patriotism as an Invitation to Action
To return to my earlier question: What makes a classroom in the United States

different from one in an authoritarian state? Democracy is not a spectator sport.4
For a democratic patriotism to properly flourish in American schools, educators
must work to convey to students that they have a contribution to make and that
their contribution is important. At the exit of a Canadian War Museum, which
is dedicated to a critical history of war, nationhood, and national allegiances is
the following inscription:
History is yours to make. It is not owned or written by someone else

for you to learn. . . . History is not just the story you read. It is the
one you write. It is the one you remember or denounce or relate to
others. It is not predetermined. Every action, every decision, however
small, is relevant to its course. History is filled with horror and replete
with hope. You shape the balance. [History] is your rage, your sym-
pathy, your understanding.
I suspect many readers could imagine teaching students to think about patriotism
by beginning a discussion with just such a quotation.
Since teaching patriotism requires attention to context and since questions
rather than answers are at the heart of efforts to foster a democratic kind of
patriotic commitment, I conclude with a few questions for all of us who spend
time in schools. How would you get your school—teachers, students, parents, and
administrators—to think deeply about patriotism and its potential to strengthen or
weaken American democracy? Consider your school context (population, location,
history, and community). Is your school in Langley, Virginia, or in the Mission
District of San Francisco? Dubuque, Iowa, or Athens, Louisiana? What do students
1. Ask questions rather than providing answers. Democratic patrio-

tism requires analysis, diligence, debate, and deliberation. A ques-
tioning orientation is what simultaneously encourages thinking and
protects against authoritarian tendencies.
2. Provide answers too. Students need facts, but they need facts
associated with multiple perspectives. In the same way that rules,
while useful, sometimes need to be broken, facts need to be ques-
tioned. The earth, after all, was once thought to be flat.
3. Consider context. Patriotism will not look the same in Idaho as it
does in Maine. It will not look the same on September 20, 2001,
as it does on January 1, 2021.
Figure 6.1. Teaching Students to Think about Patriotism
in your schools already think? What do they know? Most importantly, what do
they and their parents think they know about patriotism and American ideals?
Who would they now consider patriotic Americans? Was Martin Luther King a
patriot? Rosa Parks? Timothy McVeigh? Michael Moore? How about Francis Bel-
lamy or Pete Seeger? Was Hull House founder and Noble Peace Prize winner Jane
Addams a patriot (Theodore Roosevelt called her “the most dangerous woman in
America”)? Now, how would you get them to think about their assumptions? How
would you best create opportunities for critical engagement with expressions of
patriotism? What would you do?
Notes
1. Many of the examples cited here can be found in Peter Dreier and Dick Flacks,
“Patriotism and progressivism,” Peace Review, (December 2003), p. 399.
2. For a discussion of the relatively new psychiatric diagnosis of Oppositional Defi-
ant Disorder (ODD), increasingly applied to children who “argue with adults” or “defy
rules,” see Westheimer (2009).
3. Schultz’s experiences in Chicago are described in Brian D. Schultz, “ ‘Not satisfied
with stupid band-aids’: A Portrait of a Justice-Oriented, Democratic Curriculum Serving
a Disadvantaged Neighborhood,” Equity & Excellence in Education, 40(2), pp. 166–176.
More about La Escuela Fratney Two-Way Bilingual Elementary School can be found in J.
Westheimer, ed., Pledging Allegiance, pages 185–186, and in Bob Peterson’s chapter, “LA
Escuela Fratney: A Journey Toward Democracy,” in M. Apple and J. Beane, Democratic
Schools: Lessons in Powerful Education (Heinemann, 2007), ch. 2. Also see for example,
136 Joel Westheimer
Robert Stevens, “A Thoughtful Patriotism,” from the collection of 9/11 curriculum on the
Web site of the National Council for Social Studies (www.socialstudies.org). And Educa-
tors for Social Responsibility has a number of excellent curriculum examples under the
umbrella title “Reflecting on 9/11” on their New York City chapter Web site: www.esr-
metro.org/reflectingon911.html. See also, Facing History and Ourselves: www.facinghistory.
org; Rethinking Schools: www.rethinkingschools.org, especially lesson plans by Bill Bigelow;
National Education Association: www.neahin.org. Links to other curricula and classroom
materials can be found at www.democraticdialogue.com/patriotism.
4. The late Lotte Scharfman, former president of the League of Women Voters,
was a refugee from Nazi Germany who devoted her life to helping citizens gain access to
democratic processes. She is widely credited with coining the phrase,“Democracy is not a
spectator sport.”
References
Bigelow, B. (2013, July 18). Indiana’s anti–Howard Zinn witch-hunt. Zinn Education
Project. Retrieved from http://zinnedproject.org/2013/07/indianas-anti-howard-zinn-
witch-hunt/.
Board minutes. (2001, November 1–2). Lincoln, NB: Nebraska State Board of Education.
Bush, G. W. (2002). Remarks announcing the Teaching American History and Civic
Education Initiatives. Public papers of the Presidents of the United States, George
W. Bush, Book 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Campbell, P. (2006, October 18). Ballot initiatives, democracy, and NCLB.
Transform Education blog. Retrieved from http://transformeducation.blogspot.
com/2006_10_01_archive.html.
Craig, B. (2006). History defined in Florida legislature. Perspectives on History. Retrieved
Doherty, C. (2007). Who flies the flag? Not always who you might think: A closer look
at patriotism. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://
pewresearch.org/pubs/525/who-flies-the-flag-not-always-who-you-might-think.
Hamilton College. (2003). Hamilton College patriotism poll. Clinton, NY: Author. Retrieved
from http://www.hamilton.edu/Levitt/surveys/patriotism.
Jennings, J., & Renter, D. S. (2006). Ten big effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on
public schools. Washington, DC: Center for Education Policy. Retrieved from http://
www.cep-dc.org/displayDocument.cfm?DocumentID=263.
Lummis, C. D. (1996). Radical democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
National Coalition for History. (2003, June). Senator Alexander’s “American history and
civics education” bill passes Senate. Washington Update, 27. Retrieved from http://h-
net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=APSA- CIVED&month=0306&week=
e&msg=csi48jqlbWWjuaTGrUMEIQ&user=&pw=.
Nebraska State Board of Education. (2011). Social studies documents, section 79-724.
Retrieved from http://www.education.ne.gov/ss/Documents/Section79-724.pdf.
Nussbaum, M. (2002). For love of country: Debating the limits of patriotism. Boston: Beacon
Press.
O’Leary, C. (1999). To die for: The paradox of American patriotism. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Thornton, S. J. (2005). Incorporating internationalism into the social studies curriculum.
In N. Noddings (Ed.), Educating Citizens for Global Awareness (pp. 81–92). New
York: Teachers College Press.
Westheimer, J. (Ed.) (2007). Pledging allegiance: The politics of patriotism in America’s schools.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Westheimer, J. (2009). Unfit for mature democracy: Dissent in the media and the schools.
In M. Gordon (Ed.), Reclaiming dissent: Civics education for the 21st Century (pp.
66–85). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
7
Ecological Democracy
An Environmental Approach to Citizenship Education
Neil O. Houser
Preparing the young for membership in society is a central function of education.

For better or worse, education influences human perspectives, actions, and relation-
ships. As John Dewey observed nearly as century ago, “Any education given by a
group tends to socialize its members, but the quality and value of the socialization
depends upon the habits and aims of the group” (1916/1966, p. 83). Given the
nature of the problems we currently face, it is important to ask what habits and
aims influence education today and to assess their impact on the good of society
and the health of the planet.
Social studies, an important component of education in general, involves
the preparation of citizens for membership in society.1 As declared in the 1916
National Education Association (NEA) report on the social studies, “The keynote
of education is ‘social efficiency’ ” and “the conscious and constant purpose [should
be the] cultivation of good citizenship” (p. 9). Civic educators have long sought
to identify the challenges of life in society, the kinds of citizens needed to cope
with these challenges, and ways to help students become these citizens.
Today, citizenship education remains the primary aim of the field. Much
consideration is given to the preparation of citizens who can address the personal
complications of everyday life as well as the broader problems facing our society
and world (Evans, 2004; Hahn, 1991; Houser & Kuzmic, 2001; Ross, 2006;
Stanley, 2001). As noted in the 2010 National Council for the Social Studies
Curriculum Standards:
The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop

the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public
139
140 Neil O. Houser
good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an inter-

dependent world. . . . Because civic issues . . . are multidisciplinary in
nature, understanding these issues and developing resolutions to them
require multidisciplinary education.
A case can be made that we have failed in this fundamental task. In spite of
our best efforts, contemporary societies seem ill-equipped to cope with the issues
of our age. The problem is not merely that the general population has failed to
learn from its mistakes, or that the forces of prejudice are stronger than realized, or
even that capitalist greed and the corporate agenda may have finally overwhelmed
our democratic ideals. While all of these are important factors, responsibility lies
with academics as well. We, too, have apparently been unable or unwilling to
accurately assess our existing situation.
This chapter argues for the need to seriously incorporate ecological thought
into citizenship education. The search for societal improvement remains impera-
tive. However, I argue that this endeavor should be conducted within, rather than
outside or beyond, a broader ecological context. First, I identify the challenges
we face and review the literature in ecological philosophy. This literature reveals
deep connections between our current social and environmental dilemmas. Next, I
explore why these problems, compelling as they may be, remain difficult for many
to understand and accept. Finally, I focus on how citizenship educators might begin
to address these pressing issues.
Socioenvironmental Concerns and Relationships
Significant social and environmental factors are becoming increasingly problematic,

and hence increasingly familiar. Many are now aware of the alarming environmen-
tal statistics reported in popular sources such as Al Gore’s (2006) An Inconvenient
Truth. We have also witnessed rising social tensions in the United States and the rest
of the world. Within the last decade alone we have seen rapid population growth;
excessive patterns of production and consumption; aggressive corporate globaliza-
tion; devastating conflicts in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East; catastrophic
terrorism in Spain, Great Britain, and the United States; contentious military
involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq; soaring costs of food, oil and healthcare; loss
of manufacturing jobs in industrialized nations; and vitriolic intolerance among
religious fundamentalists. Nor are these tensions isolated among the poor. Today,
some of the wealthiest nations on earth rank among its leaders in terms of violence,
stress and anxiety, substance abuse, divorce, and suicide.
No longer are these experiences remote to most Americans. Natural disasters
such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Tohoku
tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, and the devastating tornadoes that hit Joplin,
Ecological Democracy 141
Missouri, in 2011 and Moore, Oklahoma, in 2013 have become household topics
of conversation. Such events, in conjunction with escalating economic crises such
as the rising costs of oil, food, and healthcare, have focused national attention not
only on the weather but also on related issues of population growth, atmospheric
accumulation of carbon dioxide, corporate arrogance and greed, and the inequitable
treatment of poor and minority citizens by self-serving politicians and indifferent
government officials.
Few credible scientists doubt whether a lethal combination of social and
environmental factors threatens not only our way of life but the very health of
the planet. Yet, in spite of the evidence, widespread denial and confusion persist
regarding the nature and causes of this critical situation. At the heart of the problem
is a basic misunderstanding regarding the relationship between humans and the
environment. Regrettably, many U.S. citizens, including some of our most promi-
nent politicians, continue to believe that global warming is a vast international
“hoax” designed to destroy the American way of life.2
What is the nature of the human-environment relationship? What insights
can be gained from the literature in ecological philosophy? In spite of a dominant
discourse that seems to suggest otherwise, human communities and natural envi-
ronments are deeply interconnected. Whether at the biological level of the planetary
ecosystem or at the social and political levels of communities and nations, the
actions of some cannot help but affect the circumstances of others. Nearly a cen-
tury ago, classic social psychologist George Herbert Mead (1934/1962) discussed
the profound reciprocal relationships between organisms and their environments:
When a form develops a capacity, however this takes place, to deal

with parts of the environment which its progenitors could not deal
with, it has to this degree created a new environment for itself. The
ox that has a digestive organ capable of treating grass as a food adds
a new food, and in adding this it adds a new object. The substance
which was not food before becomes food now. The environment of
the form has increased. The organism in a real sense is determinative
of its environment. The situation is one in which there is action and
reaction, and adaptation that changes the form must also change the
environment. (p. 215)
Gradually extending his thesis to humans, Mead went on to explain that

as a person adjusts to a certain environment, the person changes as well. In the
subsequent adjustment of the individual, the broader community is also affected.
Although the effects may be slight, personal alterations invariably lead to modifica-
tions in the social environment “and the world is accordingly a different world”
(Mead, 1934/1962, p. 215). Reciprocally, different worlds necessitate further
adjustment, no matter how slight, of those who dwell within them.
142 Neil O. Houser
Along similar lines, Michaels and Carello (1981) demonstrate how the coevo-
lution of an organism and environment can form a distinctive ecological niche:
An animal’s wings, gills, snout, or hands describe that animal’s environ-

ment. Likewise, a complete description of a niche describes the animal
that occupies it. For example, if we specify in detail the niche of a fish
(its medium, its predators and prey, its nest, etc.), we have in a way
described the fish. Thus, just as the structure and functioning of an
animal describes the environment, the particulars of the environment
imply the structure and activities of its animal. (p. 14)
This is a remarkable observation. The environment literally helps define the organ-
ism, and the organism literally helps define the environment. If this is the case,
to care for one’s environment truly is to care for oneself.
Dewey and Bentley (1949) theorized about the nature of reciprocal organ-
ism-environment relationships. Rather than isolated mechanical moments, such
relationships are dynamic processes continued indefinitely in time and space. For
Dewey and Bentley, they are “transactional” aspects of an inseparable whole. Such
assertions seemed to anticipate later ecological claims that life and society must be
understood as vast interdependent systems of systems (Capra, 1996; Maturana &
Varela, 1980). Drawing on the literature in ecological philosophy, Capra observes
the following:
The view that values are inherent in all of living nature is grounded
in the deep ecological, or spiritual, experience that nature and self are
one. This expansion of the self all the way to the identification with
nature is the grounding of deep ecology. (1996, pp. 11–12)
Deep ecologist Arne Naess shares a similar perspective:
Care flows naturally if the self is widened and deepened so that protection
of free Nature is felt and conceived as protection of ourselves. . . . Just
as we need no morals to make us breathe . . . if your “self ” in the wide
sense embraces another being, you need no moral exhortation to show
care. . . . You care for yourself without feeling any moral pressure to
do it. . . . (If life) is experienced by the ecological self, our behavior
naturally and beautifully follows norms of strict environmental ethics.
(cited in Fox, 1990, p. 217)
Compared with other academic traditions, the history of ecological philoso-

phy is brief. Following the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, Western polit-
ical leaders generally believed civilization was on the right track. The Enlightenment
had initiated a new individualistic humanism unfettered by social responsibility

beyond a basic regard for life, liberty, and property, and the Industrial Revolution
had firmly established principles of efficiency, productivity, and the manufacture of
material goods. Occasional environmental concerns were dismissed as sentimental
naiveté. Remarkable achievements in technology and industry assuaged incipient
fears and served to justify continued production and expansion.
Then the unthinkable happened. In spite of the best efforts of the “greatest”
minds of the 20th century, the world was at war. Twice within a single generation,
the most powerful scientific, military, and technological forces in the industrialized
world engaged in all-out warfare. The effects were catastrophic. When the fighting
ceased near the middle of the century, Europe and Japan lay in ruins. Political and
business leaders pondered what had gone wrong, and the victims of the aggression
were left to cope with the results.
Fortunately, political and business elites were not the only bystanders to
consider the implications of this massive human aggression. These unprecedented
events reinforced the need to strive for international peace and justice while cata-
lyzing the emergence of new intellectual disciplines concerned with the impact of
human activity on the physical environment. A highly persuasive argument within
the emerging ecological tradition was Aldo Leopold’s (1949) “egalitarian ecosystem
ethic,” which asserted that “anything is right when it tends to preserve the integrity,
stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise”
(pp. 224–225). While aspects of this position continue to be debated, Leopold is
commonly credited with having introduced the plight of the biotic community
to academic consciousness.3
During the 1950s and ’60s, Western societies became increasingly aware of
abuses perpetrated in their names but without their consent, and environmental-
ists’ reactions became more nuanced and assertive. Writers such as Rachel Carson
(1962) raised public consciousness about the meaning and importance of the eco-
system, and ecological philosophers suggested that the Western orientation toward
endless material progress was a major source of environmental distress. Author and
activist Edward Abbey (1968) put the problem plainly: The question isn’t whether
the earth will survive, but whether people will.
In the meantime, previously deposed business and political interests, encour-
aged by Cold War politics and radical capitalist ideology, gradually regrouped.
Modifying their methods if not their motives, Western leaders added the develop-
ment of massive weapons systems and sophisticated communications capabilities
to the growing corporate agenda. These activities, combined with ongoing envi-
ronmental destruction and rapid growth of the human population, further fueled
the environmental debate.
Arne Naess (1973) distinguished between what he called “shallow” and “deep”
ecological movements. He characterized shallow ecology as a short-term anthro-
pocentric approach focused on symptoms rather than underlying causes. Deep
144 Neil O. Houser
ecological reform was different. It offered an alternative way of viewing the world.
From this perspective, both human and nonhuman life was considered inherently
valuable beyond human utilitarian purposes (Mackie, 1998). Naess maintained
that the diversity of life contributes to its inherent value, and that humans have
no right to interfere with this richness except to satisfy vital needs. He argued
that the flourishing of nonhuman life requires a smaller human population and
that economic and technological policies must thus be changed.4 Naess held that
ideological change is ultimately required—a shift toward appreciating quality of
life rather than continuing to strive for quantitatively higher standards of living.
Deep ecologists believe social domination and environmental degradation
have coevolved (Bookchin, 1990; Leopold, 1949; Merchant, 1994; Shepard, 1982;
Spretnak, 1997; Warren, 1997). They generally agree that “anthropocentrism, the
view that humans are the origin and measure of all value, is the root to all ecologi-
cal destruction” (Mackie, 1998, p. 13). Devall and Sessions (1985) proposed two
crucial norms of deep ecology. First, we should strive for “self-realization,” a sort of
spiritual growth or unfolding leading from narrow, competing egos toward greater
identification with others. Beginning with family and friends, self-identification
should gradually be extended to incorporate local communities, humanity in gen-
eral, and eventually even the nonhuman world. Second, we should adhere to the
“biocentric ethic,” which asserts that “all things in the biosphere have an equal
right to live and blossom and to reach their own individual forms of unfolding
and self-realization within the larger Self-realization” (p. 67).5
The capitalist economic system has contributed significantly to the coevolu-
tion of social domination and environmental degradation. During the mid-1800s,
European intellectuals expressed growing concern about rapid soil depletion and
large-scale transfer of nutrients (via the export of food and fiber) from rural to
urban areas in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States (Foster, 1999).
Marx viewed these events as part of the broader capitalist process of removing
laborers from the sources of their livelihood and concentrating the wealth gained
through their exploitation in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals. He argued
that the displacement of nutrients contributed to a growing metabolic rift between
people and the earth, which he saw as yet another step in the alienation of people
from the sources of their being (Foster & Clark, 2004).
The metabolic rift has steadily grown. Since the mid-1800s, European and
North American countries have increasingly siphoned the resources of Asia, Africa,
and South America, creating massive social and environmental imbalances. Foster
and Clark (2004) use the term ecological imperialism to describe the process in
which powerful industrial countries move resources and labor from the “periph-
ery” to the “center.” They argue that unsustainable growth at the center of the
system, enabled through ecological degradation of the periphery, is “generating a
planetary-scale set of ecological contradictions . . . [that are] imperiling the entire
biosphere” (2004, p. 198). As always, the poor, people of color, women, and
indigenous populations bear the brunt of the burden.
But how does ecological imperialism work? Are all resource-rich developing
countries really as corrupt and inept as highly industrialized Northern and Western
nations are led to believe? In a fascinating account of his career as chief economist
of a major U.S. consulting firm, John Perkins (2004) explains how U.S.-based
corporations have secured inflated loans from international lending institutions
(such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) for countries that are
clearly incapable of repaying them. According to Perkins, his job was to
encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that pro-

motes U.S. commercial interests. . . . In turn, they [would] bolster
their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants,
and airports to their people. . . . First, I was to justify huge interna-
tional loans that would funnel money back to MAIN and other U.S.
companies . . . through massive engineering and construction projects.
Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received those
loans . . . so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and
so they would present easy targets when we needed favors, including
military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources.
(pp. xiv, 17–18)
Beginning with the 1951 overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the demo-

cratically elected prime minister of Iran, Perkins cites numerous cases in which
U.S. agencies have undermined, exploited, or outright replaced international leaders
for economic gain. Regarding the consequences of these actions, Perkins asserts:
Today we see the results of this system run amok. Executives at our
most respected companies hire people at near-slave wages to toil under
inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops. Oil companies wantonly
pump toxins into rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals,
and plants, and committing genocide among ancient cultures. The
pharmaceutical industry denies life-saving medicines to millions of
HIV-infected Africans . . . Out of every $100 worth of oil torn from
the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the money
most, those whose lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams,
the drilling, the pipelines, and who are dying from lack of edible food
and potable water. . . . All those people . . . are potential terrorists. Not
because they believe in communism or anarchism or are intrinsically
evil, but simply because they are desperate. (2004, xiv, xxiv)
Such insights have begun to prompt new ways of thinking about our social
and environmental responsibilities. For instance, the concept of the “ecological
footprint” (Wackernagel & Rees, 1996; Global Footprint Network, n.d.) focus-
es attention on the impact of personal choices and national policies upon the
146 Neil O. Houser
environment (Wackernagel & Rees, 1996), and the idea of “ecological debt” pro-
vides an alternative to conventional economic thought by suggesting that debts
may also be owed by the “center” to the “periphery” for the exploitation of labor
and the destruction of vital natural resources (Foster & Clark, 2004).
Thus, the latter half of the 20th century has seen a gradual awakening of
critical consciousness regarding connections between humans and the environment,
and deep ecologists have taken a lead. In spite of individual differences, deep
ecologists generally agree that: (1) anthropocentrism strongly influences ecological
destruction; (2) both the physical symptoms and underlying philosophical causes of
environmental degradation must be addressed; (3) there is an inherent value in the
richness and diversity of all living organisms on earth; (4) humans have no right
to interfere with the richness and diversity of life except to satisfy vital needs; (5)
environmental stability will require substantive changes in our political, economic,
and technological perspectives and policies; (6) ecological health will ultimately
require an ideological shift toward quality of life rather than quantitatively higher
standards of living; (7) transcendent “self-realization” and the “biocentric ethic”
are important goals toward which we should strive; and (8) only a revolution or
paradigm shift from the social-industrial paradigm to a socioecological worldview
can save the planet from further destruction (Mackie, 1998).
In a sense, deep ecology offers a redefinition of the relationship between
humans and the environment, and thus a redefinition of humanity itself. Good-
lad (2001) observes that human domination has alienated us not only from one
another but also “from other life forms, from our natural heritage, and so from
the very essence of what it means to be human” (2001, p. 72). Alternatively,
Thomashow (1995) suggests that an ecological worldview could lead “to new ways
of understanding personal identity” and to the development of an “ecological iden-
tity” capable of impacting human-environment attitudes and relationships (p. 2).
Not surprisingly, ecological philosophers envision a role for schools. Theobald
and Tanabe (2001) argue that failure to address tensions between economics and
the environment persists in U.S. schools largely because the power to determine
economic activity has shifted from a democratic electorate to powerful transnational
corporations. Driven by the profit motive, a growth imperative, and an adversarial
competitive orientation, corporate culture is antithetical both to the principles of
democracy and the sustainability of the environment (Foster & Clark, 2004; Per-
kins, 2004; Theobald & Tanabe, 2001). Ecological philosophers call on educators
to explore critical alternatives for our continued survival.
Why These Problems Are Difficult to Understand and Accept
Understanding a problem is an important first step in addressing that problem.

So why are the relationships between humans and the environment so difficult
to understand? Why do countless educated people continue to deny fundamental
connections between humans and the earth? Part of the challenge involves the
habitual ways we view the world. According to Capra (1996), there are profound
inconsistencies between our perceptions of the world and the nature of the world:
The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we
come to realize that they cannot be understood in isolation. They
are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and
interdependent. For example, stabilizing world population will be
possible only when poverty is reduced worldwide. The extinction of
animal and plant species on a massive scale will continue as long as
the Southern Hemisphere is burdened by massive debts. Scarcities of
resources and environmental degradation combine with rapidly expand-
ing populations to lead to the breakdown of local communities and to
the ethnic and tribal violence that has become the main characteristic
of the post–cold war era. Ultimately these problems must be seen as
just different facets of one single crisis, which is largely a crisis of percep-
tion. It derives from the fact that most of us, and especially our large
social institutions, subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview,
a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated,
globally interconnected world. (pp. 3–4; emphasis added)
Thus, Capra asserts that modern mechanistic and hierarchical views of the
world are misconstrued. He insists that the world can more accurately be under-
stood as a vast web of organic systems based on horizontal rather than hierarchi-
cal interconnections and interdependencies. For Capra, the prevailing mechanistic
view of an organic world constitutes a serious “crisis of perception.” He goes on
to describe the evolution of this crisis:
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries . . . the notion of an organic,

living, and spiritual universe was replaced by that of the world as a
machine, and the world machine became the dominant metaphor of
the modern era. . . . Galileo banned quality from science, restricting
it to the study of phenomena that could be measured and quanti-
fied. . . . Descartes created the method of analytic thinking, which
consists in breaking up complex phenomena into pieces to understand
the behavior of the whole from the properties of its parts. . . . The
conceptual framework . . . was completed triumphantly by Isaac New-
ton, whose grand synthesis, Newtonian mechanics, was the crowning
achievement of seventeenth-century science. (pp. 19, 20)
Of course, the mere existence of analysis and hierarchy is not the problem.
The difficulty is not with their presence but with their prevalence. Because many of
our current imbalances have developed slowly over a period of centuries, there is a
148 Neil O. Houser
widespread lack of awareness of their existence, much less their problematic nature.
In the meantime, heavy reliance on dualistic thinking has emphasized isolation
and competition at the expense of connectedness and community. Unfortunately,
there is but a short distance between dualistic thinking and hierarchical thinking,
and hierarchical thinking has provided an intellectual foundation for domination
and control.
Although modernist views have been highly problematic, novelist/provoca-
teur Daniel Quinn (1992, 1996) suggests that our difficulties may extend farther
back than many have imagined. Among other things, Quinn explores the processes
by which ancient agriculturists, once a tiny fraction of the human community,
gradually expanded and imposed their ways of life upon others. Initial attempts to
accommodate a growing population—the inevitable consequence of an expanding
food supply—led to increasingly aggressive efforts to acquire additional land and
resources. In turn, these additional resources supported the growing population.
The inexorable need for further resources eventually led to the development of
totalitarian agricultural practices (Quinn, 1996). Like other totalitarian entities, this
new and growing “culture” utilized specialized mechanisms to eliminate its com-
petition, including the annihilation of competing perspectives and lifestyles. What
began as a novel way of life gradually evolved into a dominant worldview based
on principles and practices of acquisition, expansion, consumption, and control.
After thousands of years of expansion, this acquisitive agricultural worldview
has finally prevailed on every continent—north, south, east, and west. While other
cultural distinctions may persist, few remaining members of the human community
have been able to resist adopting the basic premises of totalitarian agriculture. With
time and repetition, an orientation anathema to human sustainability has become
not merely the prevalent way of life, but the only way of life acceptable to its pro-
ponents. Totalitarian agriculture continues to expand, passing from generation to
generation through mechanisms of social transmission and cultural invasion. The
supreme irony, for Quinn, is that the destruction of alternative cultural perspectives
has left us with only “one right way to live”—and such uniformity is the single
greatest threat to the community of life (Quinn, 1992, p. 205).6
The sheer historical expanse of this evolutionary process offers further insight
as to how it is possible for current problems to be so recognizable yet so difficult
to understand and accept. Contemporary perspectives are often supported by ideal
assumptions that have become so ingrained as to have become institutionalized,
and hence invisible to their adherents. Unseen historical influences can hinder
the development of awareness needed for effective personal, social, and political
change. Although many of our problems are the result of conscious indiscretions
(Houser et al., 2013), others involve a genuine lack of awareness (Anyon, 1979;
Baldwin, 1988; Freire, 1970; McIntosh, 1989). Unfortunately, the institutionalized
mechanisms of social and environmental domination are among the factors about
which many remain unaware.
Part of the problem with any system of thought is that it can prevent its
adherents from seeing their actions for what they are, rendering “invisible” the
conceptual foundations of the issues they face. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann
(1966), authors of The Social Construction of Knowledge, explain that humans often
construct explanations that legitimize their own perspectives while discrediting the
views of others.7 With the passage of time, these explanations come to be seen as
objective facts rather than social constructions. This is the process of “reification”:
Reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as

if they were something else than human products—such as facts of
nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reifica-
tion implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of
the human world. (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 89)
Once subjective beliefs are construed as “objective reality”—as simply “the

way things are”—further examination is naturally considered pointless. As long as
no serious threat challenges the perception that existing beliefs are objectively real,
it is possible to act confidently and unreflectively on the basis of these assumptions.
Unfortunately, current issues do pose a serious threat—a threat that challenges the
very core of our thinking.
A defining moment in Robert Pirsig’s (1974) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance occurred when the protagonist, a troubled philosophy student at
the University of Chicago, realized that the chairman of his committee, brilliant
though he may have been, failed to perceive construction as construction. In the
poststructural idiom, he failed to recognize human authorship as “text,” perceiving
it instead as objective reality. Failure to recognize construction as construction is
a liability of absolute thinking in general. Unfortunately, many absolute thinkers
hold influential positions in business, politics, and even academe.
Human ecologist Paul Shepard (1982) argues that such thinkers have been
“arrested in adolescence” with regard to their socioenvironmental development.
Often cloistered in privilege, many appear remarkably unconcerned with global
conditions that have compelled countless others to begin questioning their most
fundamental beliefs. Part of the problem is that critical reflection entails more
than just intelligence. It also requires honesty, empathy, and a capacity to think
systemically. Clearly, there are still powerful individuals who continue to act with
great confidence on the basis of narrow views and unexamined assumptions.
What Social Studies Educators Can Do to Help
What does all of this suggest for the social studies? What does it mean for the
preparation of citizens capable of addressing the problems of today? Although the
150 Neil O. Houser
challenges may be significant, I believe it is imperative that citizenship education be

located within a broader context of environmental sustainability. A comprehensive
examination of the curriculum and instruction is beyond the scope of this chapter;
however, it is possible to begin to consider what it might mean to integrate the
social studies with an ecological consciousness.
As previously noted, the field has long focused on the development of citizens
who understand society in order to improve society. During the first half of the
20th century, growing concerns with the dominant ideologies of business, cultural
uniformity, narrowly materialistic life styles, and top-down educational approaches
centered attention on the need for social change and educational reform. This was
a primary thrust of the progressive movement, embodied in the efforts of John
Dewey, Charles Beard, and Harold Rugg, and immortalized in George Counts’
(1932) plea: Dare the school build a new social order? Although progressive efforts
were hampered during the Red Scare, World War II, and the early phases of the
Cold War, proponents of social and educational improvement persisted, and new
forms of advocacy emerged during the civil rights movements of the 1960s and ’70s.
Eventually, new disciplines such as anthropology, gender and cultural studies,
and even the arts were added to the conversation, creating a multiplicity of voices
within the social studies. Today, literature in the field addresses issues as diverse as
the role of discourse in democratic societies (Cherryholmes, 1980; Giroux, 1988),
the merits of social critique and critical reflection (Ellsworth, 1992; Hahn, 1991;
Noddings, 2004; McIntosh, 1989), use of the arts in social education (Eisner,
1991; Houser, 2005), the role of care in civic society (Noddings, 1992, 2004),
and the importance of diversity in complex communities (Banks, 1987; Bickmore,
1999; Greene, 1988; Nieto & Bode, 2007; Sleeter & Grant, 2003). Further issues
include problems of liberal democracy (Parker, 1996, 2002; Ross, 2006), the threats
of multinational corporations and media conglomerations (Foster & Clark, 2004;
Herman & Chomsky, 1988; McChesney, 1999; Perkins, 2004), the need for a
sense of possibility and hope (Freire, 1992; Giroux, 1988), civic education in a
postcolonial era (Cary, 2001; Kincaid, 1988), and postmodern analyses of power
and knowledge embedded in modern consciousness (Gruenewald, 2004; Shinew,
2006; Vinson, 1999).8
Informed by countless perspectives, social studies educators have continued
to search for better ways of promoting societal improvement through citizenship
education. Yet, in spite of important curricular and pedagogical advances, the field
has remained decidedly anthropocentric in nature. Of course, the problem is not
simply that social studies focuses on society. This makes perfect sense. Rather, the
problem is that most of the work in the field tends to conceive of society as if
humanity were separate from the world in which we live. The vast majority of
the extant scholarship precludes serious attention to the reciprocal relationship
between humans and the earth, thus contributing to the crisis of perception that
plagues modern society.9
Again, where does this leave us? How can citizenship education incorporate
ecological consciousness without diverting valuable attention from social and cul-
tural conditions that remain far from resolved? To address this critical question,
I want to offer an illustrative example, a sort of thought experiment based on
existing work in civic education.
Drawing on a wide body of literature, Walter Parker has identified four
conceptions of democratic citizenship, including: (1) liberal democracy, (2) par-
ticipatory democracy, (3) associative democracy, and (4) multicultural democracy.
Grounded in Enlightenment-era principles, liberal democracy is portrayed as a polit-
ical stance that celebrates “individual liberty, popular sovereignty, law, and equality
before the law” (Parker, 1996, p. 189). The primary aim of liberal democracy is to
secure rights and freedoms for the individual. Parker suggests this does not go far
enough. Societies are more than collections of individuals, and any organization
that focuses exclusively on its individual components cannot adequately address its
larger systemic needs. Parker’s concern is that liberal democracy promotes extreme
individualism at the expense of the common good. The problem is that “indi-
vidualism’s reliance on representative government is so complete that active citizen
participation in the civic culture becomes superfluous” (1996, p. 189). Citizens
become isolated and insulated from the daily processes of democratic life (Barber,
1984; Hess, 1979; Parker, 1996; Phillips, 1993).
A second conception is participatory democracy (Parker, 1996), which is akin to
what Barber (1984) has called “strong” democracy. Unlike weaker liberal approaches
that leave the work of democracy to elected officials, strong participatory democracy
calls on all citizens to engage in meaningful civic activity. While members of a partici-
patory democracy understand the need for competent representatives, they recognize
that this is but a fraction of the work that is required to maintain a healthy society.
Advocates of a strong participatory democracy envision self-governing communities
of citizens “made capable of common purpose and mutual action by virtue of their
civic attitudes and participatory institutions” (Barber, 1984, p. 117).
The third conception is associative democracy. Instead of viewing democracy as
a finished achievement, here it is seen as a lived social phenomenon, as an evolv-
ing complex of social relations enacted in everyday life. According to Dewey, “A
democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated
living, of conjoint communicated experience” (1916/1966, p. 87). For Dewey,
the measure of a democratic community involves the abundance and diversity of
shared interests existing within a particular group as well as the extent to which
those interests are communicated and exchanged with others outside that group:
In any social group whatever . . . we find some interest held in common,

and we find a certain amount of interaction and cooperative intercourse
with other groups. From these two traits we derive our standard. How
numerous and varied are the interests which are consciously shared? How
152 Neil O. Houser
full and free is the interplay with other forms of association? . . . In

order to have a large number of values in common, all the members
of the group must have an equable opportunity to receive and to take
from others. There must be a large variety of shared undertakings and
experiences. Otherwise, the influences which educate some into masters,
educate others into slaves. (Dewey, 1916/1966, pp. 83, 84)
Since interpersonal associations continue to evolve, Parker (1996) refers to Dewey’s

associative democracy as “creative” democracy. Democracy is not so much a finished
product, says Parker, as a creative social process adapting to evolving concerns and
conditions. Associative democracy is creative by nature.
Finally, multicultural democracy utilizes and extends each of the previous con-
ceptions (Fraser, 1993; Parker, 2002; West, 1993). This form of democracy seeks to
ensure personal rights and freedoms while advocating strong civic participation and
acknowledging that democracy is an important mode of associated living. How-
ever, multicultural democracy goes even farther, striving to address the “juncture
of democracy and diversity” (Parker, 1996, p. 192). Multicultural democracy seeks
to affirm a broader cross-section of people and ideas, and to ensure full and equal
enfranchisement among all individuals and groups in the commonwealth (Parker,
2002). This conception advocates the development of critical consciousness while
nurturing the capacity to care for others and to engage in rational moral delib-
eration (Freire, 1970; Gutmann & Thompson, 1996; hooks, 1984; West, 1993).
Multicultural democracy asks: “Who is and is not participating and on whose
terms?” and “How wide is the path?” (Parker, 1996, p. 192).
Multicultural conceptions of democracy not only allow but advocate social
and cultural differences. While diversity is not always easy, it is vital to the pres-
ervation of complex communities (Deloria, 1999; Greene, 1988; Nieto, 2000).
According to Parker:
A new sense of citizenship needs to be forged, one that embraces

individual difference, group difference, and political community all
at once. In order to do this, democrats will not be able merely to
replace liberalism’s excessive self-interest with a new politics of group
self-interest. That would be no gain. Pluralism itself needs to be refor-
mulated. . . . The perilous challenge is to recognize individual and group
identities without etching them in primordial stone, and to unite them
in a democratic moral discourse that is capable of embracing more
than mere “rights talk.” Here is Dewey’s vision of a larger public that
embraces the little publics. (1996, pp. 193, 194)10
Parker’s taxonomy has been useful to many educators, including myself. Because
it integrates and expands existing possibilities, it lends itself to further adaptation
regarding the synthesis of ecological consciousness and civic education.
Returning to the idea of a thought experiment, what if a fifth democrat-

ic conception were to emerge from the previous four? We might call this idea
ecological democracy.11 Such an approach would strongly consider the merits of
personal freedom, social equality, and popular sovereignty in liberal democracy,
while questioning its problematic tendency toward individual minimalism at the
expense of community identification and civic participation. With regard to strong
or participatory democracy, ecological democracy would affirm the importance of
popular involvement in policy deliberation and community activism. With respect
to associative democracy, this approach would seriously study the notion of democ-
racy as a creative mode of daily social interaction. Finally, ecological democracy
would pay close attention to the vital commitments of multicultural democracy
to critical consciousness and the inherent value of plurality in complex societies.
However, while ecological democracy would consider each of these important
principles, such an approach would go even farther. Resisting modernist anthropo-
centric assumptions, an ecological approach to democracy would acknowledge the
transactional nature of organism-environment relationships between humans and
nonhuman life. Students of ecological democracy would recognize that humanity
is not located outside, beyond, or above, but within the environmental matrix that
supports and contains us. Informed members of an ecological democracy would
realize that the health of the environment is central to the health of the organism
just as the health of the organism is central to the health of the environment.
Since each organism constitutes the environment of other organisms, the ecological
democrat would understand that to care for life is to care for one’s self and that
to care for oneself is to care for life.
How would ecological democracy work? What would it entail? For obvious
reasons, such an approach would have to function as a representative system. Both
the nature of the “constituency” (the entire web of life) and the sheer logistics of
contemporary society would necessitate such an approach.
With regard to the issue of representation, good delegates are effective pre-
cisely because they understand and care about their constituents. They watch,
listen, and learn from the community so they can advocate effectively for its needs,
including the needs of those who cannot formally represent themselves. Similarly,
human representatives in an ecological democracy would need to learn from their
“constituents” through empathetic observation and genuine appreciation of the
communities they serve. In the case of ecological democracy, the constituency
would be even larger, more inclusive, and more vulnerable than other democratic
populations. Here, work for justice and equality would be reinforced by the broader
effort to ensure continuation of the entire community of life.
Like participatory and associative notions of democracy, ecological democ-
racy would be understood as more than a political system. Rather, it would be
seen as a thoroughly participatory mode of living. While ecological sensibilities
would certainly inform governmental structures, they would also influence the
creative processes of social interaction. Formal political activity would be recognized
154 Neil O. Houser
merely as the beginning rather than the end of civic responsibility. Utilization of
representative processes, while necessary, would not replace the broader exercise
of democratic living. Unlike anemic liberal minimalism, informed members of
an ecological democracy would appreciate the need to engage in all aspects of
democratic life. They would recognize the importance of personal involvement in
creating a more just and sustainable society and world.
Again, ecological democracy would embrace the entire web of life. Acknowl-
edging the centrality of diversity in complex communities, citizens would learn to
appreciate social and biological plurality in the most generous sense of the term.
While continuing to address basic societal needs, participants would question the
artificial separation of humanity from the rest of the community. Since human
being involves care for others, “human development” would include increased
appreciation of human plurality and an enlarged capacity to care for the entire
community of life. Ecological democracy would prepare citizens not only for the
complexities of diverse human interaction, but also for the vital relationships that
exist between people and the earth. This would be the ultimate expansion of the
“circle of we” (Houser, 2009, p. 315).
To conclude the thought experiment, let us consider a specific example of
civic education in practice. In a recent report, Westheimer and Kahne (2004)
described two social studies programs in detail. The first emphasized “civic partici-
pation” as the essence of good citizenship, while the second focused on the merits
of working for “social justice.” The program emphasizing civic participation did
indeed help students understand the value and processes of social participation
(e.g., related to community meetings and service activities). However, it did not
help them consider causes and solutions of many important structural problems.
Conversely, the program focusing on “social justice” helped students recognize
instances of injustice in their lives, understand the systemic causes of these experi-
ences, and take action designed to address those causes. It also helped them learn
that “the personal is political, that personal experiences and behavior both result
from, and are indicators of, broader political forces” (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004,
p. 259). However, this program was not particularly effective in helping students
learn how to work together to achieve the changes they envisioned. The authors
conclude that effective civic participation for social justice will require explicit
attention to both of these aims.12
What if these aims were combined and included in our program designed to
teach about ecological democracy? What if students were taught to identify unjust
social and environmental conditions in their own lives and the lives of others, to
analyze structural causes and systemic connections underlying those conditions,
and to work collaboratively to address these factors in order to create a more just
and sustainable society and world? Such an approach would integrate and extend
Parker’s (1996, 2002) democratic taxonomy, synthesize the civic participation and
justice-oriented perspectives of Westheimer and Kahne (2004), and challenge the

pernicious human-environment dualism that has led us to the brink of disaster.
Nor would such an approach diminish the importance of traditional social
studies disciplines. Rather than displacing the disciplines, serious examination of
the connections between humans and the environment would require an even
deeper understanding of the historical processes, geographical relationships, eco-
nomic principles, and political arrangements that impact our lives. As new ideas
such as the “ecological footprint” and “ecological debt” are added to the familiar
mix of “supply and demand,” “gross national product,” and “national debt,” there
will be an even greater need for original thinking to help the young interpret and
appreciate the world we inhabit.
In sum, an ecological democracy would strive to understand, appreciate, and
advocate for the entire web of life. This would represent the ultimate expansion
of the circle of we. Such thinking is not merely sentimental naiveté or postmod-
ern fantasy, any more than ancient speculations concerning heliocentric planetary
systems were the ravings of lunatics, or the concerns of thoughtful citizens and
serious scientists are part of a vast international “hoax.” Rather, such thinking
draws on ancient wisdom (Deloria, 1999; Quinn, 1996; Shepard, 1982; Some,
1994), solid scientific analysis (Capra, 1996; Dewey & Bentley, 1949; Maturana
& Varela, 1980; Michaels & Carello, 1981), and exemplary scholarship in social
psychology, ecological philosophy and civic education (Dewey, 1916/1966; Evans,
2004; Leopold, 1949; Mead, 1934/1962; Naess, 1973; Parker, 1996, 2002) to
imagine a more just, democratic, and sustainable world.13
The problems we face are substantial, but citizenship education is prob-
lem-centered by nature. Civic educators understand that the examination of dif-
ficult issues can be a delicate matter requiring thought and sensitivity. In spite of
the difficulties, this is what we have always done. We have pushed ourselves and
our students to become better citizens of our society and world. Perhaps never
before has there been a greater need to understand the challenges we encounter
or to imagine creative alternatives for a brighter future.14
Notes
1. The concept “citizen” can be problematic, denoting membership and exclusion.

My intent is more closely aligned with the idea of the community-, global-, or cosmological
citizen than with the notion of national citizenship as traditionally defined.
2. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, former chair of the U.S. Environment and Pub-
lic Works Committee, calls global warming a vast international “hoax” (Inhofe, 2005). Inhofe
received nearly $290,000 from oil and gas companies (including ExxonMobil) for his 2002
reelection campaign, and almost $450,000 from similar entities during the 2008 campaign
finance cycle. See: Opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00005582.
156 Neil O. Houser
3. For example, debate continues over the claim that all things in the biosphere
(such as cancer or AIDS) have the right to live and to blossom.
4. Global population reduction is often misconstrued as requiring starvation, dis-
ease, and other active forms of destroying human life. There is a significant difference
between inducing a decrease in the existing population and choosing not to replenish losses
caused by natural attrition at our current rates of reproduction. Warren Thompson’s (1929)
four-stage demographic transition model provides one of many positive alternatives.
5. Several variations of deep ecology have emerged. Two of these are social ecol-
ogy (Bookchin, 1990) and ecological feminist philosophy (Merchant, 1994; Warren, 1997).
Although similar in many ways, social ecology has concentrated on general connections
between human oppression and human domination of the environment, while ecological
feminist philosophy has paid specific attention to the coevolution of male domination of
women and human domination of the earth, noting their mutual reinforcement throughout
history.
6. Scholars such as Karen Armstrong (2007) and Paul Shepard (1982) assert that
the development of monotheism has contributed to the difficulty in understanding and
accepting natural connections between humans and the environment.
7. This is related to Friedrich Engels’s notion of “false-consciousness” and Jean-Paul
Sartre’s concept of “bad faith.”
8. Gruenewald (2004) warns against the normalization of environmental educa-
tion. Over time, “adjectival” or “hyphenated” educations (such as special-education and
multicultural-education) have been subjected to the sort of “disciplinary activity” in which
marginalized agents are neutralized—and neutralize themselves—through sustained efforts
to achieve normality (Foucault, 1977). School normalization occurs through curricular and
pedagogical alignment with mainstream, market driven standards and practices. As align-
ment is achieved, alternative approaches begin to reinforce the problematic assumptions
and approaches that necessitated their development in the first place. I envision tangible
risks in attempting to incorporate ecological education into mainstream social studies, just
as the social studies have been normalized in our attempts to gain legitimacy within the
culture of accountability and reform (Houser et al., 2013).
9. This claim is based on a comprehensive review of every issue of Theory and
Research in Social Education, Social Education, and The Social Studies published between 1996
and 2008. The review included a survey of titles and abstracts as well as in-depth analysis
of each article that addressed explicit relationships between social education and ecologi-
cal responsibility. Even when environmental issues were raised (e.g., in geography-related
discussions of natural resources), humans were frequently cast in proprietary roles, and the
physical environment was often treated as little more than a precious commodity. Notable
exceptions exist within the field, but this scholarship is typically published in other venues
(e.g., Bowers, 2001).
10. Banks (2008) advocates the development of a “delicate balance of cultural,
national, and global identifications and allegiances” (p. 303). He embraces Nussbaum’s
(2002) view of cosmopolitanism, which conceptualizes the global citizen as one “whose
allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings . . . [without] giv(ing) up local
identifications, which can be a source of great richness in life” (pp. 4, 9). Although he
may share similar sentiments, Dobson (2003) rejects the term cosmopolitan, which he sees
as excessively nationalistic and anthropocentric in nature.
11. The term ecological democracy has been used elsewhere (e.g., Faber, 1998; Mor-
rison, 1995), but the concept presented here is my own.
12. Westheimer and Kahne (2004) resist the idea of personal responsibility as the
sole emphasis of citizenship education. They argue that apolitical emphasis on the individual
can actually undermine “community,” which is, after all, the primary unit of analysis for
the social studies.
13. See Mackie (1998) for a fascinating account of his efforts, as a first-year high
school teacher, to integrate environmental education in the social studies curriculum.
14. I would like to thank Steven Mackie for his insight, creativity, and courage, all
of which helped inspire my own inquiry into the realm of ecological philosophy.
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(Eds.), Race identity, and representation in education (pp. 11–23). New York: Routledge.
Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for
democracy. American Education Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269.
8
Native Studies, Praxis, and the Public Good
Four Arrows (WAHINKPE TOPA)
I believe it is time to think indigenous and act authentic even at the price of
rejection. To disagree with mainstream expectations is to wake up, to under-
stand what is happening, to be of service to a larger whole. You may even
begin to work on behalf of our lands, water and air.
—Manu Aluli-Meyer, Ho‘oulu: Our Time of Becoming
Social Studies and Native Studies
In the context of social studies in general and Native studies in particular, Dr.
Meyer’s words in the opening quote call for a radical change in mainstream cur-
riculum and pedagogy, a change that particularly embraces ecological perspectives
inherent in Indigenous1 wisdom. There are some good examples of Native studies
curricula in North America, such as those produced by District 22’s Aborigi-
nal Education Department in Vernon, British Columbia, which offer students
an opportunity to understand the holistic worldview of local First Nations, using
resources developed by the tribe’s elders and teachers. Even this, however, falls
short, and most schools throughout Canada, the United States, and Mexico do
not come close to truly realizing Indigenous perspectives, let alone to teaching or
applying them in learning and life (Cook-Lynn, 1997; Kidwell, 2005). This chapter
presents guidelines for changing this situation, but goes beyond recommendations
for enhancing the relatively small amount of material given to Native studies. I
am recommending instead what is essentially a partnership between Indigenous
and Western perspectives throughout the social studies curriculum. I submit that
the current ecological crises in our world, not to mention levels of violence and
161
162 Four Arrows (Wahinkpe Topa)
unhappiness, show that the Eurocentric approach without these perspectives will
continue to fail the widely accepted purpose for teaching social studies as per the
National Council for the Social Studies definition of the subject:
Social studies is the integrated study of the social sciences and humani-
ties to promote civic competence. Within the school program, social
studies provides coordinated, systematic study drawing upon such
disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history,
law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology,
as well as appropriate content from the humanities, mathematics, and
natural sciences. The primary purpose of social studies is to help young
people make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as
citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent
world. (National Council for Social Studies, 1994, p. 1)
Note that although “Native studies” is not included in the listed disciplines, it has
bearing on each and every one of the disciplines in ways that would significantly
enhance learning.
Thus, this chapter offers a way for both social studies and Native studies
to better prepare students to engage the global problems facing us all and the
specific problems facing Indigenous Peoples whose vastly contrasting worldviews
may hold the keys to transformational education. In addition to more authentic
Native studies units for non-Indian students and more culturally relevant cur-
riculum for Aboriginal children,2 I propose integrating Indigenous perspectives,
values, and activism into all of the social studies disciplines listed above for all
students. I invite all social studies teachers and students to bring the Indigenous
into teaching and learning so as to rediscover the legacy of people who have lived
in one place long enough according to the laws of nature to at least know how
to live life in balance.
I have personally been doing this for my entire teaching career as a social
studies teacher in middle and high school, as a teacher of social studies methods
at Northern Arizona University, and now while teaching doctoral candidates in
educational leadership and change at Fielding Graduate University. For instance,
a student of mine has written a dissertation showing how Indigenous storytelling
and values effectively enhanced “expert knowledge transfer” at Intel Corporation.
I also recently co-authored a text that used Indigenous wisdom to analyze Western
neuroscience’s interpretations about human nature (Four Arrows, Cajete, & Lee,
2011). We found that the Indigenous perspective not only offered much-needed
clarifications of research studies, but pointed out significant errors about human
nature relating to the Western lens through which scientists interpret brain activity.
Such a critical analysis of Western values, deceptions and educational mis-priorities
is largely missing in the best “anti-oppressive” education literature.
Native Studies, Praxis, and the Public Good 163
My proposal for indigenizing the entire social studies curriculum is also

supported by a number of scholars and visionary thinkers. For example, on the
back cover of John Perkins’s book, Shape Shifting (1997), Dr. Edgar Mitchell,
ScD, Apollo astronaut, and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, writes,
“Only a handful of visionaries have recognized that Indigenous wisdom can aid
the transition to a sustainable world.” Noted curriculum studies scholar Patrick
Slattery says in his classic text, “Curriculum development in the postmodern era
must include attention to the wisdom embedded in Native American spirituality”
(1998, p. 79). In “Indigenous Knowledges in Education: Complexities, Dangers
and Profound Benefits,” Kincheloe and Steinberg say:
Some indigenous educators and philosophers put it succinctly: We

want to use indigenous knowledge to counter Western science’s destruc-
tion of the Earth. Indigenous knowledge can facilitate this ambitious
21st-century project because of its tendency to focus on relationships of
human beings to both one another and to their ecosystems. Such an
emphasis on relationships has been notoriously absent in the knowledge
produced in Western culture over the past four centuries. (p. 137)
In addition to these non-Indian educators, a group of Natives from the

National Indian Education Association have endorsed the “Interdisciplinary Man-
ual for American Indian Inclusion,” which also proposes to indigenize the Western
curriculum. This manual states in its preface that
[t]he type of inclusion we address in this manual goes beyond merely

including Indian students in public schools, or including Indian-related
content in a math lesson. In our view, American Indian inclusion is
something that should permeate an entire educational system. (Rein-
hardt & Maday, 2005)
The subtitle of the Kincheloe and Steinberg article reveals an opposing view,
suggesting that this idea has “dangers and complexities.” One complexity has to do
with the debate in “Indian country” about what should be shared outside Native
communities and who can share it. The late Vine Deloria Jr. noted that those of
us who feel it is important to share Indigenous traditional knowledge in order to
“save the world” are like missionaries seeking “converts in a larger intercultural
context” and yet this is “contrary to every known tenet of any tribal tradition”
(1992, p. 35). Although I carefully address this concern and offer ways to help
assure a maximum benefit for all with a minimum risk to further misappropria-
tion and colonization of First Nations, my side of the debate is clear. I believe
that if done respectfully and in accordance with the requirements and guidelines
offered by Indigenous scholars, teaching non-Indians the values and knowledge
paths of Indigenous cultures as best we can is a vital consideration for our collec-
tive survival on this planet. I have spent many years as an educator proving that
sharing knowledge and values that are held in common by a great variety of unique
Indigenous cultures with non-Indian students can significantly benefit everyone. I
maintain that partnering Indigenous and Western learning to the extent possible is
an urgent undertaking for the times we are facing. Thus, I offer such requirements
and guidelines for helping non-Indian teachers move beyond marginal “Native
studies” coursework toward the integration of authentic Aboriginal perspectives
into all the social studies subjects, an “ambitious 21st century project” for sure.
The Ecological Crises
It is no surprise that the misfortunes of Indigenous Peoples ultimately stem from

the misguided nature of the conquerors’ own schooling, especially as relates to
“social studies.” The irony is that a Christianized, Eurocentric curriculum, with its
direct and indirect claim of superiority over other races, cultures, spiritual beliefs,
and Nature itself, is now creating serious problems for everyone. Continued dis-
missal of Indigenous values, values honed from centuries of attunement with the
cosmos and Mother Earth, has brought us to the brink of near-extinction. Every
major life system on our planet is at a tipping point. Forest and ocean vegetation
is losing the ability to absorb sufficient carbon dioxide. Fresh water sources are
precarious. Coral reefs may die out within a decade. Ocean fisheries are at risk
of depletion in the near future. The loss rates in biodiversity are unprecedented
(Global Biodiversity Outlook, 2010). In 2011, a team of twenty-eight distinguished
scientists identified nine planetary life-support systems vital for survival that are
close to boundaries beyond which their destruction is irreversible, explaining that:
• Ocean acidification is now significantly higher than preindustrial

levels;
• Climate change impacts are worse than imagined;
• More than one-fourth of the world’s river systems no longer reach
the ocean;
• Extinction rates are up to one thousand times higher than at any
time in recorded history, with one hundred extinctions per mil-
lion species per year causing 30 percent of all mammal, bird, and
amphibian species to be threatened with extinction in this 21st
century;
• There is too much nitrogen and phosphorous production destroying
soil fertility and causing increasing numbers of dead zones in our
oceans;
• There is overwhelming and continuing loss of rain forests;

• Chemical pollution is widespread, with nearly one hundred thou-
sand human-made chemical compounds in use.
A blistering report published in February 2012 by the National Commit-

tee for Responsible Philanthropy says that the environmental movement is losing
because of a failure of funders to recognize grassroots activism, with only small
percentages of funding for social and ecological injustice (Hanson, 2012). Such
a report touches on, but misses the deeper causes of environmentalism’s failure.
The problem is not a lack of financial funding for the more important issues and
activists, but a lack of “spiritual funding” that builds a sense of respect for inter-
connections with all. At issue is a loss of understanding why Indigenous Peoples
refer to the concept of “education” as simply being “how Mother Earth shows us
the way to live.”
Before I describe more precisely what I mean by indigenizing the entire social
studies curriculum beyond specific Native studies units, I feel it is important to
cover two important subjects. The first is “anti-Indianism.” I think it is impor-
tant for you, the reader, to grasp how this phenomenon can prevent you from
possessing level of commitment needed to truly indigenize your curriculum and
teaching approach. Second, there are some important requirements for non-Indian
teachers that will not only help assure success with the implementation, but will
help prevent many concerns Indigenous Peoples have about who teaches what.
Anti-Indianism
This loss of understanding what Indigenous People mean by education is promoted

and sustained by an “anti-Indianism” that is deeply ingrained in most current West-
ern curriculums. Although other minority groups suffer prejudice and structural
inequalities, we must realize that among the several specific reasons for anti-Indi-
anism, there is a deeper, unique explanation that sets anti-Indianism apart from
other forms of racism and prejudice. Axtel puts it succinctly when he argues that
American Indians have provided the European invaders a continual enemy against
whom to defend the latter’s contrasting values in ways that assure the status quo.
Without Indian targets and foils, even the New England colonists might
not have retained their Chosen People conceit so long or so obdurately.
The Indians were so crucial to the formation of the Anglo-American
character because of the strong contrasts between their cultures and
that of the intruders, which the English interpreted largely as native
deficiencies. . . . For example, while English society was divided into
“divinely sanctioned” strata of wealth, power and prestige, Indian
society fostered an “unnatural” contrast of democratic individualism

in the people. (1987, p. 983)3
Thus, European ethnocentrism, contrasting with the holistic, tolerant, and

nonmaterialistic views held by Indians, helped make Indians a sort of cultural
contrary that rationalized campaigns of genocide. This is why the United States
still honors Christopher Columbus with a national holiday. It is why U.S. schools,
like those throughout Europe and North America, continue to ignore or deny
evidence that the American form of democracy was largely inspired by the Iroquois
Confederacy (Johansen, 2006, pp. 45–66).
This culturally ingrained “cultural contrary” is pervasive. For example, those
groups who are largely responsible for contemporary educational policy and social
studies curriculum maintain it, for instance, the conservative owners and edi-
tors of textbook companies, “National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS),
American Historical Association, and Organization of American Historians, as
well as the effects of Christian fundamentalists” (Crocco & Thornton, 1999).
The attitude continues with teacher education (Amos, 2011) and with K-12’s
inability to cultivate open-minded considerations about “white privilege.” One of
my doctoral students explains clearly, “Whites are so completely socialized into
Eurocentric values that they are unaware of the extent to which they use these
values as normative.”
Such anti-Indian beliefs and policies have been nurtured by anti-Indianism
in the media. Anti-Indian bias in the movies should become obvious with only
little critical reflection and research by social studies students. Even the sympathetic
portrayal of Indians in a movie such as Dances with Wolves (1990) relegates positive
qualities to the past in ways that still promote the non-Indian hero.
Children’s literature, such as Little House on the Prairie, has also helped create
an unconscious prejudice against the Indigenous in the minds of many children.4
Learning to recognize the “whitewashing” of primary and secondary textbooks
should be an important target for critical social studies assignments, whether in
anthropology, history, or economics. I remember a McGraw-Hill text for California
second graders on the history of the Chumash Indians that asked the question,
“What did the California missionaries do for the Indians? The answer key stated,
“They provided them with food and shelter.” Native studies literature is similarly
incorrect. For instance findings of a major study looking at forty-five children’s
books about the Nahua/Mexica/Aztec People found
the characteristics of colonized Nahua/Mexica/Aztec children’s books

to consist of incorrect information, reinforced stereotypes, and rac-
ist characterizations such as the Nahuas being extinct or violent
“savages,” having practiced human sacrifices, and the application of
Western concepts such as “God,” “King,” and “Lord,” to describe the

Nahua culture . . . with other findings showing how the books reveal
no understanding of the effects of 500 years of colonization on the
(People). (Yaochihuatzin, 2011)
Another significant way mainstream education maintains the anti-Indian/

cultural contrary attitude relates to the popular anti-Indian academic publications
in higher education that continue to dismiss of anything positive about Indigenous
ways, present or past. McKenna, a professor of Native Studies and consultant to
numerous Indian tribes and federal agencies, categorized this policy of dismissal
as follows in an article for the Journal of American Indian Education in 1981. His
words apply still:
Academics generally have little interest in Indians. Scholars can be

divided into three categories: (a) Those who are overtly racists. An
example is John Greenway, a folklorist at the University of Colorado.
Greenway posed the question, “Did the United States destroy the
American Indian?” and answered, “No, but it should have.” (b) Those
who exclude Indians from academic life. To Illustrate, witness the rejec-
tion of the application of the American Indian Historical Society for
participation in the International Congress of Historical Sciences; and
(c) those who neglect to include the Indian in scholarly presentations.
For example, the revisionist historian, Colin Greer, in an otherwise
excellent collection of works of ethnicity in America, makes no men-
tion of American Indians. (1981, pp. 22–23)
A number of university professors seem to have dedicated their careers to

work that polarizes the “good” dominant cultures against the “bad” Indigenous
ones. Such popular texts by academics set the tone for education curricula (Four
Arrows, 2006). For example, James Clifton, an anthropologist, argues in his book
The Invented Indian that “acknowledging anything positive in the native past is
an entirely wrongheaded proposition because no genuine Indian accomplishments
have ever really been substantiated (1990, p. 36).”5 Robert Whelan, director of a
free market think tank and author of Wild in the Woods: The Myth of the Peaceful
Eco-Savage (1999), also dismisses any positive contributions of Indigenous Peoples
from around the world. He writes, “Indigenous peoples of the earth have noth-
ing to teach us about caring for the environment” (p. 23). UCLA anthropologist
Robert Edgerton, in Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony
(1992), writes that the problems in “primitive societies” prove the superiority of
Western culture. Most recently, Steven Pinker’s latest book, The Better Angels of our
Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011), continues the anti-Indian propaganda
that essentially supports current wars and antiterrorism policies by offering poor
scholarship about the “warlike Yanomamo” and using stories about Indigenous
violence against European colonists to make the case (once again) that we are far
better off now than in pre-state societies.
Such arguments can and must be challenged appropriately and effectively in
ways that relate to social studies curriculums (and, as we shall see, all do relate in
one way or another.). One way to help students question the anti-Indian claims is
to study the narratives of past and present Aboriginal Peoples. For instance, to help
decide whether it is likely that Smohalla Indians of the Columbian Basin Tribes
trashed their environment, one might consider these words spoken by a Smohalla
representative complaining about European attitudes in the 1880s:
You ask me to plow the ground! Shall I take a knife and tear my
mother’s breast? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom
to rest. You ask me to dig for stone! Shall I dig under her skin for
her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again.
You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it, and be rich like
white men! But how dare I cut off my mother’s hair. (1992, p. 46)
As for the arguments touting significant pre-contact warfare among Indig-

enous Peoples, I suggest that social studies teachers and students study the asser-
tions carefully and compare them with more substantial research, which is easily
accessible. For example, research presented in Yale’s Human Resource Area Files, an
internationally recognized database in the field of cultural anthropology founded
in 1949 to facilitate worldwide comparative studies of human behavior is easily
accessible online. I also recommend visiting the Web site PeacefulSocieties.org for
similar research. In these places, and in others, people will learn that most human
societies prior to the rise of monarchies and monotheism were relatively peaceful.
For example, Leavitt’s (1977) research found war absent or rare in 73 percent of
hunting and gathering societies and in nearly half of those employing some form
of agriculture.
Of course, there are reasons that modern education continues to ignore
or dismiss Indigenous knowing. Johan M. G. van der Dennen offers one in his
doctoral dissertation and subsequent nine hundred–page book, The Origin of War:
The Evolution of a Male-Coalitional Reproductive Strategy (1995):
Peaceable preindustrial (preliterate, primitive, etc.) societies constitute a

nuisance to most theories of warfare and they are, with few exceptions,
either denied or “explained away.” In this contribution I shall argue
that the claim of universal human belligerence is grossly exaggerated;
and that those students who have been developing theories of war,
proceeding from the premise that peace is the “normal” situation, have
not been starry-eyed utopians. (p. 2)
Anti–Indian Education Legislation
A growing number of schools in Mexico, the United States, and Canada are turning
anti-Indianism into policymaking and legislation. Some overtly claim that to focus
on truths relating to Indigenous histories, oppression, contributions, and values
that are contrary to Western ideas disrupts national solidarity or promotes harm-
ful welfare policies. Such sentiments were used to pass a recent Arizona law that
essentially bans ethnic education. Section 15-112 specifically prohibits any courses
that “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals”
(Arizona Revised Statutes, 2012). In implementing this law, the superintendent of
the Tucson Unified School District ordered teachers to stop using Bill Bigelow’s
book, Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, one of the few scholarly texts
that has been used for more than twenty years to teach the truth about Columbus
and his legacy. The district also banned Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil
Rights Movement, by Arturo Rosales, Paulo Freire’s text Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
and a number of others. This is not surprising considering Arizona’s law allowing
for the profiling of suspected illegal immigrants crossing the border. What social
studies students and educators do not likely know, however, is that most of the
illegal immigrants are Mexico’s Indigenous farmers, forced out of the country by
free trade laws.
Other states in the United States are following Arizona’s lead. On March 3,
2011, Georgia’s House of Representatives passed the “Illegal Immigration Reform
and Enforcement Act” (2011) by a vote of 113–56. It too allows police to verify
immigration status of “suspects” but goes farther than Arizona’s law by punishing
people who transport or harbor illegal immigrants, imprisoning people who use
forged identification to get a job, and prohibiting illegal immigrants from attend-
ing Georgia universities.
In effect, the increased discrimination against “illegal immigrants” and the
prohibitions against legal Mexican students learning about their histories of oppres-
sion are tied to a policy of anti-Indianism that actually started in Mexico long
ago. A process of “de-Indianization” in Mexico has essentially managed to get
the people to renounce their own cultural Indigenous identity. Buillermo Bonfil
Batalla writes, “The Spanish colonizers were able to convince the colonized of
their own inferiority” (1996, p. 59) until the population stopped considering itself
Indian. Dr. Mario Garza, board chair of the Indigenous Cultures Institute, who
says, “This de-Indianization continues today as an increasing number of Mexican
Americans prefer to identify as “Latino” or “Hispanic,” Eurocentric labels that
totally ignore our indigenous heritage” (n.d.). (It is not likely that seven thousand
Spanish conquerors inseminated a large enough number of Indigenous women to
have created a population where the Indigenous Peoples are so diluted as to not
claim their heritage.)
Unfortunately, Canadian social studies education and policy have not done
much better in attending to Indigenous perspectives. In 2003, a study of 520
first-year university students from throughout Canada showed that two-thirds of

respondents could not recall discussing current Native issues in elementary or high
school. Eighty percent said they didn’t learn enough about Aboriginal Peoples to
equip them as responsible citizens. Only 17 percent could offer an example of how
Native culture contributed to Canada and fewer than 10 percent could name one
fact about the federal Indian Act that governs life on Canada’s Aboriginal reserves.
The report also revealed that 80 percent of the Canadian students expressed dis-
satisfaction with the education they obtained regarding Aboriginal Peoples in their
elementary and secondary schooling.6 These students call directly for an improved
pedagogy, based on honesty and respect. Unfortunately, in 2012, a national report
revealed not only that there is insufficient education for non-Indian students,
but also that there is no organized federal plan for education of its First Nation
children in either reserve or Canadian schools. In a news article entitled “First
Nations education gets poor grade from federal panel” (2012), a quote from the
panel’s chair says that in spite of the desires of many people, there is no system
of support for Indian education. “There isn’t, in fact, a First Nations education
system in Canada” (Canadian Press, Feb. 2012).
Indigenizing Social Studies
The Proposal
The role of such anti-Indian education does more than hurt Indigenous Peoples;
as I have said, it is hurting all of us. Social studies teachers have the responsibility
to research and discuss reasons why by asking: (1) What was it about the values
of our Indigenous ancestors and neighbors that made their unconquered societies
more peaceful, more happy and more sustainable?;7 and (2) What exists in Western
paradigms and Eurocentric education that has contributed to our collective loss
of understanding about ways to live in balance on this planet? After describing
the state of the world in 2010, the World Watch Institute’s text State of the World
2010 concluded that a different culture, more relevant traditions and a holistic
approach to education are needed to reverse our ecological crises. My proposal that
social studies instructors begin the process of interjecting Indigenous perspectives,
those that are authored initially by respected Indigenous voices, into all social
studies subjects answers this need. This plan would help assure a comprehensive
understanding of traditional Indigenous values and an opportunity to reflect on
contrasting Western values more critically. This can be done in all social studies
topics. Whether studying LGBTQ issues, democracy, history, civics, economics,
anthropology, or science, a consideration of Indigenous perspectives will have the
double benefit of finally teaching a comprehensive understanding of Indigenous
cultures and values while using the significant contrasts to foster critical reflection
beyond superficial thinking that commonly occurs.
Non-Indian Teacher Requirements
I realize the sensitivity and controversy that will likely face a proposal to indigenize
the entire social studies curriculum, especially in light of the non-Indigenous fac-
ulty who will be largely responsible. Aboriginal nations rightfully have concerns
about non-Indian intellectuals attempting to teach Indigenous philosophies. What
knowledge is to be presented? Will it be more personal, invented, or whitewashed
anthropology? Will it appropriate Indigenous rights? Remembering that Indigenous
knowledge is always spiritual knowledge, what right does a non-Indian have to
teach the spiritual traditions of Indigenous Peoples when one does not speak the
language and has no true stake in Indian politics and suffering? These are impor-
tant questions. Even well-intentioned teachers might wind up marginalizing and
silencing the very people whose appropriated ideas they attempt to share.
There are no easy answers to these concerns. Indian Country itself is divided
on who can share what with non-Indians. In an era when anti-Indianism and
structural inequalities are becoming more and more oppressive, the ideas presented
here may indeed be potentially dangerous to the sanctity of Indigenous knowledge.
Respected Indigenous scholars such as Elizabeth Cook-Lynn and Marie Battiste are
concerned that Indigenous knowledge will be “contaminated by colonialism and
racism” (Battiste, 2008, p. 422). They insist on the Native voice and on ethical
protection and rights relating to who can offer tribal knowledge. Most of us, and
I include myself, would prefer that Native studies be taught only by Indigenous
instructors who were raised according to the old ways and know how to teach
their own traditional knowledge. However, time is of the essence. The fact is that
most social studies and even Native studies teachers are non-Indian. In fact, most
teachers in schools on reservations and reserves are non-Indian. While we all work
to change this situation, I appeal to the Lakota prayer, “Mitakuye Oyasin,” which
reminds us that we are all related. As a mixed-blood Indigenous scholar who is
authorized to “pour the water” and lead inipi ceremonies by virtue of my having
met all of the requirements in the Lakota “Declaration of War against Exploiters
of Lakota Spirituality,” unanimously passed by five hundred representatives on June
10, 1993, I continue to stand by my proposal, provided the following stipula-
tions respecting Indigenous values are honored by non-Indian teachers in order to
minimize many of the aforementioned concerns.
Non-Indian teachers must:
1. Be willing to be attacked for teaching about Aboriginal Peoples

and cultures no matter how well you do it.
2. Use good, triangulated scholarship and critical thinking to counter
anti-Indian academics and whitewashed textbooks.
3. Work to counter “New Age” appropriation of Indigenous
knowledge.
4. Understand and accept that you teach in a school that is a product

of colonialism, realizing that what and how you teach is essentially
a political position.
5. Realize that you can never really know everything important about
Indigenous wisdom.
6. Appreciate that a sense of the sacred is inseparable from Indigenous
knowledge paths, and this is likely compromised when teaching
“outside the circle,” especially if you have no social or emotional
commitment to the knowledge and values. So work on developing
this commitment.
7. Remember that Native spirituality is infused into all knowledge
and is not a religion per se.
In addition to these stipulations, Ronald Grimes also offers a list. It comes

from a discussion he initiated in several forums involving a number of Indigenous
and non-Indian students and faculty at Harvard University about who should
be able to teach Native American “religions.” This discussion resulted in a list of
what is desirable and/or permissible if non-Natives teach about Indigenous cultural
understandings (1995). The list includes:
• The sanctity, privacy, feelings and rights of those studied must be

respected.
• The topic is taught critically and contextually and in dialogue those

involved.
• Teachers should work outside of class as change agents to help rectify
imbalances.
• There should be multiple interacting voices including all impacted

by the topic.
• Native speakers and authors must be prioritized in learning.
• Constant attention to the limits of one voice is important.
• Native views are allowed to challenge the dominant worldview and

values.
• Any research of Indigenous Peoples should be shared with them.
• Presentations in class should be comparative and cross-cultural.
• European American teachers should admit their mistakes publicly.

• Extra care must be exercised when studying sacred rites in current

use.
• Knowledge is for the sake of decision and action.
• Teachers are always respectful of students.
• The teacher does not try “to be Indian.”
A Curriculum Partnership
Of course, there is much to value in Western culture and it would be wrong to

suggest that Indigenous cultures and perspectives should be the primary focus for the
social studies disciplines per se. Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolution biologist, refer-
ring to Hopi and Kogi creation stories about a partnership between red and white
cultures, concludes, “When the White Brother’s inventive genius comes together
with the Red Brother’s deep wisdom, we will develop an appropriate technology that
does not violate the Earth, but restores it and permits all creatures to live in health”
(Sahtouris, n.d.). Such is the opportunity for social studies teachers I suggest here.
This integration of Indigenous perspectives into the various social studies
disciplines does not mean classes should not still study the important contempo-
rary Indigenous topics per se that should be addressed in Native studies and social
studies. It is important to expose and stand against the continuing assaults facing
the nearly four hundred million Indigenous people around the world today. There
are so many of course, but awareness and activism must be a part of indigenizing
curriculum. (One starting place is at http://indigenousissuestoday.blogspot.com/).
Indigenizing social studies also includes incorporating Indigenous perspectives relat-
ing to evaluation, grading, classroom discipline, government standards, teaching
and learning styles, among others. Some of this work will support more dialogic
approaches to social studies as per the table below, which is from Hammond and
Gao (2002, p. 235):
Table 8.1 Dialectic versus Dialogic Approaches to Social Studies Teaching
Dialectic Dialogic
Teacher Holds power, knows all, Shares power, shares experience,
controls space creates space
Student Listens, follows instructions, Contributes, makes proposals, a
just a student scholar
Learning Focus Fixed, fragmented, transmitted Emergent, connected to the
whole, created
Educational System Protect the status quo, Create the future, encourage
encourage competition collaboration
In Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education (Four

Arrows, 2013), I offer detailed ways that can help educators to indigenize educa-
tion. Here, the space permits me only to introduce concepts that the social studies
teacher and students can apply to current social studies coursework using their
own creative interpretations and applications. The following ideas can be used to
study any contemporary subject matter in any discipline.
I have placed the concepts and affiliated goals into seven main categories.
VITALIT Y
The idea of “vitality” is foundational to Indigenous knowledge paths (Hampton,

1995). Vitality, when integrated into any subject area, can make whatever material
you are teaching more relevant and meaningful. Ideas associated with this con-
cept that can be used to indigenize various social studies subjects include making
connections to personal health and wellness and to responsibility for community
health. It includes getting input from elders about how to live a full and generous
life. And it relates to discussions about the degree to which fear or fearlessness
impacts the subject area. For any social studies topic, bringing in such “vitality”
will make coursework relevant and vibrant.
NATURE, PL ACE, AND CYCLES
Here, teachers and students address two questions: (1) How can we better use
the natural world, including nonhuman “teachers,” as resources for better under-
standing this topic?” and (2) “In what ways does this topic impact life systems on
Earth?” By bringing these concepts into coursework, the virtues exemplified in the
natural world such as determination, patience, and courage can be identified in
the histories or topics required about how social studies teachers using Indigenous
approaches in their teaching will constantly look at topics in light of fortitude,
courage, patience, honesty, humility, and generosity. Where does it exist? Where
was it missing?
NATURAL DEMOCRACY
Whether addressing law, anthropology, economics, government, civics, or history,

keeping the Indigenous understanding of “natural democracy” in mind and how it
contrasts with current forms of “illusionary democracy” (“the best democracy mon-
ey can buy”) can well serve the stated objectives of social studies and lead to more
authentic democracies. Various aspects of this theme include discussions about gift
economies; social/ecological justice; diversity; service; critical inquiry; consensus;
distribution of wealth, sustainability and ecological justice, etc. Understanding the
nature of educational hegemony in textbooks and curriculum is essential.
TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE
Typically Western approaches to studying the relationship of society to technol-

ogy and science tend to separate and fragment parts of the whole. To bring an
Indigenous perspective to such material, the teacher merely needs to relate the
topic to change and flux in the world while searching for reciprocal relationships
that expand throughout the community to determine degrees of community well-
ness and ecological harmony. Incorporating mythological ideas such as Indigenous
stories of twin heroes to study the effects of technology or histories of science can
humanize ideas. Adding such Indigenous orientations as initiation; ceremony; sto-
ries; experience and context; body-heart-mind-spirit learning; subjectivity; readiness
to learn; visions and dreams; and an orientation to place will also give an entirely
different offering to students.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Indigenous approaches to conflict resolution emphasize humor; respect; language;

community reinstatement; interconnectedness; respect for cognitive dissonance;
and reciprocity. When a social studies class studies conflicts of any kind, whether
civil rights struggles, wars, labor union histories, etc., attempting to look at each
of these ideas in context will open new perspectives to the topic while teaching
usable skills to students. When the Indigenous idea of “bringing people back into
community” is seen as an option to punishment or conquering, students emerge
from social studies with dispositions and knowledge that are more likely to lead
to peace in the world.
CRITICAL THINKING AND PL ACE
Although it will require a kind of courage to implement, it is an educational

necessity to use the kind of critical observations common in Indigenous learning,
including being critical of one’s own uninvestigated assumptions. Red Cloud said
going forward is easy: “You just decide what to take and what to leave behind.”
(It is worth noting C. A. Bower’s new book, The Way Forward: Educational Reforms
that Focus on the Cultural Commons and the Linguistic Roots of the Ecological/Cul-
tural Crises (2012), in which he writes about the need for curricular reforms that
stem from the kind of contrasting perspectives between Indigenous and Western
cultures my proposal involves.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING
Many education books use the rhetoric of transformation, yet Indigenous coming
to know strategies are designed always and primarily for transformative learning,
engaging topics seldom considered in Western education, including spiritual

insights; the invisible world; synchronicity; and trance work. For example, in Primal
Awareness (Jacobs, 1998), I show how Indigenous versus Western beliefs relating
to fear, authority, words, and Nature impact natural and induced trance states to
determine whether positive or negative transformational learning occurs.
In addition to these categories of ideas for enhancing Western curricula by
integrating Indigenous values in the classroom, I offer a “pedagogy and procedures”
checklist for social studies teachers to use. For a detailed description of each of
these, along with examples for using them to teach Indigenous virtues in elemen-
tary grade coursework that follows typical state standards, see my text Teaching
Virtues: Building Character across the Curriculum (Jacobs, 2001, pp. 41–43). The
same concepts can be used to enhance the learning of all social studies topics
and, again, these are illustrated in Reoccupying Education (Four Arrows, in press).
1. Cooperative learning
2. Field experience
3. Intrinsic motivation
4. Student ownership of subject matter
5. Critical reflection
6. Intuitive work
7. Visualizations and dream work
8. Honoring student pace
9. Using song and music
10. Honoring place
11. Using natural world as teacher
12. Involving community
13. Doing activism and serving others
14. Remembering that everything is connected/related
15. Using humor whenever possible
16. Employing wellness/fitness considerations
17. Using peer teaching
18. Allowing for observation rather than participation
19. Using storytelling prolifically
20. Being aware of sustainability issues in the class, school, and home
environment
Although many of the above ideas for teaching “belong to the world,” I hope
for teachers and students to continually honor the fact that most stem from Indig-
enous Peoples in ways that contrast significantly with Western pedagogy. Without
the context of Indigenous worldviews implementation of any of these ideas will be
incomplete, but will still be more holistic in nature than when not used. Your goal
as a social studies teacher who is “indigenizing” both pedagogy and curriculum is
basically to make authentic and relevant connections to the students community
and place of dwelling in ways that use the curriculum to make a healthy world.
I close with the appeal for all teachers using these ideas to honor their source
as you attempt to implement them, and please work to assure that the disrespect and
the genocide against the Indigenous Peoples whose language and customs hold the
key to our survival finally end. “In the end, a Red pedagogy is about engaging the
development of a community-based power in the interest of a responsible political,
economic and spiritual society. That is, the power to live out active presences and
survivances rather than an illusionary democracy” (Grande, 2008, p. 250).
Notes
1. I will use the terms Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations, Native, and Indian as
all referring to groups of people who have essentially maintained their unique cultures in
one place since prior to colonization in ways that differentiate themselves significantly from
the dominant nation-states surrounding them.
2. Although the primary focus of this chapter is on a broader integration of Indig-
enous ways of knowing and values than typically exists in Native studies units, I do not
want to minimize Native studies or the urgent need to include improving the health of
Indigenous communities with activism. Although here I do not dwell on the many examples
of the tragic condition of many of them around the world, I do implore you to include
learning what they are as part of your work as a social studies teacher even if you do not
yet have a Native studies unit. For a visual/oral overview of the deplorable situation on the
Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation, a recent TED presentation by Aaron Huey offers a starting
place (Huey, 2012).
3. During a lucid moment, the founders of the United States adopted much of the
democratic ideals in creating its Constitution, and scholars have subsequently denied this fact
in order to return to using Indians as foils. For more on this, see Bruce Johansen’s chapter,
“Adventures in Denial: Ideological Resistance to the Idea that the Iroquois Helped Shape
American Democracy,” in my text, Unlearning the Language of Conquest, cited elsewhere.
4. See “Burning Down the House: Laura Ingalls Wilder and American Colonialism
by Wasiyatawin Angela Cafender Wilson,” in Unlearning the Language of Conquest (2006,
pp. 66–81.) See also Debbie Reese’s excellent Web site, “American Indians in Children’s
Literature,” a treasure cove of relevant information.
5. In response to Clifton’s work, Vine Deloria Jr. writes, “Clifton’s argument is that
the modern Indian point of view is wrong because Indians do not have the right to have a
point of view when scholars know reality to be different. Here, then, we have the crux of
the problem. Clifton et al. are simply fighting for the right to continue defining Indians
in whatever manner they see fit” (Mihesuah, 1998, p. 71).
6. Read about this report at http://www.turning-point.ca/?q=node/176.
7. Evidence for these three claims is presented in Four Arrows (2006).
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9
Marxism and Critical Multicultural Social Studies

Redux
Curry Stephenson Malott and Marc Pruyn
In this chapter, we ask you to consider not only the relevance and utility of
Marxist analysis and critique in this day and age, but also how these might fit
into and connect with revolutionary approaches to teaching and learning that
situate themselves within struggles for social justice and equity, and also against
the alienating nature of capital’s internal content (i.e., objectified abstract labor)
itself. Toward these ends, we first map out a brief history of social studies instruc-
tion in the United States, and then provide an alternative—a counternarrative, a
counterhegemonic pedagogy—that draws centrally on Marx’s insights regarding
the hidden mechanism of capital’s dehumanizing consequences. Almost a decade
ago we named this approach Critical Multicultural Social Studies (CMSS).1 Ulti-
mately, this essay represents an attempt to update our notion of CMSS, paying
closer attention to what Peter McLaren (2013) argues are aspects of Marx’s work
previously ignored in Marxist pedagogy.
The Relevance of Marxist Analysis and Critique
In declaring the death of Marxism, those on both the Left and the Right have
used the 1989 fall of Soviet communism as “evidence.” For example—in supporting
arguments made by progressive educator Stanley Aronowitz—Pinar, Reynolds, Slat-
tery, and Taubman (2000) argue that the failure of Marxist-oriented class struggle
has led to “history itself . . . undermin[ing] class analysis as a primary category of
social and educational analysis” (p. 295). Allman, McLaren, and Rikowski (2002),
181
182 Curry Stephenson Malott and Marc Pruyn
on the other hand, stress the relevance of Marx’s dialectical theory of class because
of the global proliferation of those entering the ranks of the working class, and
thus the commodification of human labor-power. These authors stress that they
have become skeptical of those on the left who “blame history or specific political
conditions pertaining at specific historical conjunctures” (p. 4) for their rejection
of Marxism. In another highly relevant essay, McLaren (2002) argues that “these
days it is far from fashionable to be a radical educator. To identify your politics
as Marxist is to invite derision and ridicule from many quarters, including some
on the left” (p. 36).
Supporting their Marxist analysis, McLaren and Farahmandpur (2001) look to
the objective conditions of today’s global reality, such as the fact that the income of
“the 225 richest people [in the world is] roughly equal to the annual income of the
poorest 47% of the world’s population” (p. 345). They argue that Marxism, rather
than being irrelevant, is perhaps more important now than ever. Citing Parenti’s
(2001) work, McLaren notes how the fall of Soviet communism has eliminated
socialist competition, allowing U.S. corporations to wage class war on the people
of the world more ruthlessly than ever before. This results in major reductions in
social spending, such as on education, and more people being forced to sell their
labor-power for more hours in today’s U.S. service economy in order to survive.
For example, between 1973 and 1994 the income of the richest 5 percent of the
U.S. population increased 5 percent, whereas the income of the poorest 5 percent
decreased by almost 2 percent, resulting in the top 5 percent receiving 46.9 percent
of income and the bottom 5 percent receiving 4.2 percent (Kloby, 1999, p. 37).
However, Allman et al. (2002), promoting today’s Marxist rejuvenation,
argue that analyses that focus exclusively on issues of distribution (i.e., poverty)
that describe the consequences of capitalism, such as social inequalities, can only
take us so far. What is more, a focus on the consequences of capital run the risk
of blurring the fact that social class is not a natural and inevitable category, but a
contested social relationship based on the commodification and appropriation of
human labor in the abstracted form of surplus-value. What is needed, the authors
contend, is not just a description of the rampant injustices inherent in capitalist
society, but a dialectical understanding of capitalism, which takes us to its heart:
that is, to the substance of capital, abstract labor.
Before we explore what Marx demonstrates resides at the heart of capital
(i.e., objectified or abstract labor), it is important to note that when we argue that
issues of exchange are just the most superficial and thus misleading characteristics of
capitalism, we are essentially alluding to the observation that capitalism is not just
a flaw within today’s global society, but it is the defining characteristic of bourgeois
society—what separates it from all previous and future forms of social organiza-
tion. Consequently, when we argue against capital, we are taking a position against
bourgeois society in general, which has always celebrated itself for the revolutionary
role it played in liberating English peasants from their feudal lords. Showing that
Marxism and Critical Multicultural Social Studies 183
the surface appearance of bourgeois society and the surface appearance of capital
are essentially referencing the same phenomenon Marx (1857–58/1973) notes:
In . . . bourgeois society as a whole . . . [beneath] the surface pro-

cess . . . [the] apparent individual equality and liberty disappear. It is
forgotten, on one side, that the presupposition of exchange value, as
the objective basis of the whole system of production, already in itself
implies compulsion over the individual, since his [sic] immediate product
is not a product for him . . . hence the whole negation of his natural
existence is already implied. (Marx, 1857–58/1973, pp. 247–248)
For Marx, then, attempting to fulfill the ideal bourgeois society through social
justice campaigns, or advocating for a more equal distribution of wealth within
capital, as an end in itself, is a mistake because the equality and freedom it promises
is really inequality and unfreedom, as suggested in the above quote. Again, that
Marx’s object of critique was not just capital, but bourgeois society as a whole, is
important because of its paradigmatic, revolutionary implications. If the struggle
to transcend bourgeois society and thus the consequences of capital is to succeed,
we must bring to the surface its internal logic and the substance of its value form,
most thoroughly explored by Marx (1857–58/1973; 1867/1967).
Underscoring the importance of these investigations, Peter Hudis (2012), in
his study of Marx’s alternative to capital, argues that it is all too easy to identify
issues of distribution and economic exploitation (i.e., poverty and inequality—
exchange relations) as capitalism’s most vulgar and dehumanizing characteristic or
contradiction. In other words, when our critique of capitalism is limited to the
exploitation of human labor power, solutions tend to be limited to issues of dis-
tribution, which leaves the social relations of production and bourgeois society, in
general, unchallenged. This is highly problematic for Marx because even if markets
and private property were abolished (which would be a remarkable achievement
indeed) and distribution or wages were equalized, the social relations of capitalist
production (i.e., the subsumption of concrete labor into abstract labor) would
remain unchallenged. Consequently, the dehumanizing self-estrangement (i.e.,
alienation) of capitalism would persist. The immiseration of capital is therefore
not just economic, but it is social and cultural. However, before we explore capital’s
value-form and Marx’s alternative to capital, and the possible supportive role of a
revolutionary education, we will explore capital’s internal logic, highlighting those
aspects that best explain capital’s tendency toward human suffering (Malott, 2011;
2012; 2013; Malott, Cole, & Elmore, 2013).
Competitive capitalism, once set in motion, operates by internal laws of
competitive accumulation. This perspective is based on the conclusion that the
internal logic of capital leads to perpetual, cyclical crisis (i.e., 1847, 1893, 1929,
1972, 2008), creating the revolutionary conditions for its own demise.
It is within this context of an emerging militant labor movement that led

the great American crusader for common schooling, Horace Mann, in pleas to
mill owners, to cite Bartlett, a mill owner himself, stating that capitalists with
great fortunes would be wise to invest in education as a form of “insurance on
their property . . . thereby educating the whole mass of mind and constituting a
police more effective than peace officers or prisons” (quoted in Urban & Wagoner,
2009, p. 120), because an educated worker is malleable and controllable whereas
an uneducated worker is potentially rebellious and quite dangerous. In other words,
education has played a significant role in maintaining the bourgeois social universe
of capital because it has been designed to create within workers a worldview and
interpretative framework centered around a belief in the inevitability, and ultimate
goodness and rightness, of capital grounded in a dependence on an authoritarian
leader and social structure. Again, our notion of CMSS, as argued below, becomes
an important part of the process of fostering the class consciousness needed for
the revolutionary overthrow of the basic structures of bourgeois society (i.e., global
capitalist power).
Viewing human societies as moving through stages of development challenges
us to view bourgeois society (i.e., capitalism) not as a permanent fixture/relation-
ship, but rather, as a stage in the development of human civilization, which first
emerged in England and subsequently spread around the world, leading to the
need for a global anticapitalist movement. This consciousness poses a revolutionary
challenge to the laborer (from the fast food worker to the adjunct professor and
charter school teacher) who is “nothing else, his whole life, than labor-power” and
all of her time is therefore dedicated to “the self-expansion of capital,” leaving no
time for “education, intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions
and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and mental activity” (Marx,
1867/1967, p. 264), and even for the necessary time to rest and rejuvenate the
body for another day’s work—that is, for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism
and for the abolition of class society, and eventually, the complete transcendence
of value production.
Put another way, the labor movement (or the semiautonomous actions of
workers), while historically important in slowing down the encroachments of
capital, cannot alter its internal logic, and, therefore, because capital cannot be
reformed, it must be overthrown. This conclusion does not mean that workers
have no agency or capacity for critical resistance. Rather, it suggests that while
capitalists may continuously develop new technologies of production and control
as a response to labor’s social movements, in part, the internal logic of capital and
the basic capitalist property relations between labor and capital remain consistent.
Again, labor’s historical struggle to end capitalism by removing ourselves as a class
from this negative, one-sided relationship is different from being able to transform
capital’s internal logic. That logic, we might say, operates independently of human
intervention—we can either consent to it, or resist it. Likewise, the bad things
capitalists do (i.e., increasingly driving down wages, consuming labor power) are
not necessarily the result of individuals born evil or greedy, but are the product of
social actors (i.e., capitalists and CEOs) fulfilling their institutional roles within
competitive capitalism (i.e., accumulators of surplus value by any means neces-
sary). Highlighting the destructiveness of capitalism, Marx (1867/1967) observes:
The capitalistic mode of production (essentially the production of

surplus value, the absorption of surplus-labor), produces thus, with
the extension of the working day, not only the deterioration of human
labor-power by robbing it of its normal, moral and physical, condi-
tions of development and function. It produces also the premature
exhaustion and death of this labor-power itself. It extends the laborer’s
time of production during a given period by shortening his actual
lifetime. (p. 265)
This destructive impulse not only remains consistent, but intensifies through capi-
tal’s stages of expansive development (even in the adjunct/temporary/part-time
heavy knowledge economy), the constant movement and restlessness of capitalism
leads to technological innovations, including new forms of social control. The
capitalist, as Marx demonstrates above, driven by the internal laws of capitalist
accumulation, habitually brings much suffering and harm to those who rely on a
wage to survive, and therefore remains responsible for his crimes against human-
ity and will therefore continue to be the justified target of working-class revenge
(Hill, 2012).
Explaining the emergence of capitalism historically, we can point to the legal-
ized and thus institutionalized creation of private property (i.e., the Enclosure Acts
in England that helped make the transition from feudalism to capitalism), which
forced into existence a landless class of former peasants (i.e., no direct access to
the means of production/land to reproduce their own existence) who, due to a lack
of alternatives, found themselves in a social context where they had to sell their
labor power for a wage to survive. These English and Scottish tribesmen became
the basis for the original industrial, global working class. The unequal relationship
between the purchasers of labor power (i.e., capitalists) and the sellers of labor
power (i.e., labor ourselves) stemming from capitalist property relations, from this
perspective appears to be the foundation of the capitalist mode of production.
The exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class is therefore a predict-
able consequence of the labor/capital relationship. However, identifying private
property as a necessary creation for establishing the production relation at the
heart of capital leaves unaddressed the substance of capital’s value form. Referring
to bourgeois society as a system, Marx (1857–58/1973) makes this point, noting
that “modern landed property . . . cannot be understood at all, because it cannot
exist, without capital as its presupposition, and it indeed appears historically as a
transformation of the preceding historic shape of landed property by capital so as

to correspond to capital” (p. 252).
In his numerous studies focused on unraveling the hidden logics of capital,
Marx often drew on noncapitalist forms of social organization (especially feudalism
and slavery) for comparative purposes. That is, by underscoring what capitalism
is not, we can come to better know what capitalism in fact is. Employing this
method in The Grundrisse, Marx (1857–58/1973) makes the following observation:
The free blacks in Jamaica content themselves with producing only

what is strictly necessary for their own consumption, and, alongside this
“use-value,” regard loafing (indulgence and idleness) as the real luxury
good; how they do not care a damn for the sugar and fixed capital
invested in the plantations, but rather observe the planters’ impending
bankruptcy with an ironic grin of malicious pleasure. . . . They have
ceased to be slaves, but not in order to become wage laborers, but,
instead, self-sustaining peasants working for their own consumption.
As far as they are concerned, capital does not exist as capital, because
autonomous wealth as such can only exist either on the basis of direct
forced labor, slavery, or indirect forced labor, wage labor. (pp. 325–326)
One of the most striking aspects of this passage is what might be interpreted
as Marx’s hinting at a postcapitalist society in his reference to former slaves as
autonomous and self-sustaining, which is fundamental for our Critical Multicul-
tural Social Studies. However, the notion of capital as “autonomous wealth” and
thus indirectly “forced labor” is of particular interest to our investigation here,
which Marx takes a few hundred pages to develop. In the following summary,
Hudis (2012) offers some insight into not only what Marx means by autonomous
wealth, but he also highlights the difficulty of comprehending this substance of
value (i.e., abstract labor):
Since value can only show itself as a social relation between one
commodity and another, it all too readily appears that relations of
exchange are responsible for value-production. So powerful is that
appearance that even Marx does not explicitly pose the difference
between exchange-value and value itself until quite late in the devel-
opment of capital. That Marx ultimately makes this distinction is of
critical importance, since it suggests that attempting to ameliorate the
deleterious aspect of value-production by altering the exchange-relation
is fundamentally flawed. Since exchange-value is a manifestation of
value, whose substance is abstract labor, the essential problem of
capitalist production can be addressed only by altering the nature of
the labor-process itself. (p. 151)
In other words, altering exchange-relations, that is, redistributing wealth to

workers directly through wage increases, or indirectly through taxation and social
programs (which of course would be a huge victory for labor), leaves production
relations intact, and thus the substance of value, abstract labor, unacknowledged
and thus unchallenged. In other words, Hudis (2012) argues, it is not capital’s
issues of distribution (i.e., poverty and inequality) that so offended Marx, but
the dehumanizing (i.e., alienating) nature of value production. Poverty and grow-
ing suffering, the severity and deadliness of which should not be diminished,
are consequences of the alienating nature of the social relations of production
within capitalism. That is, it is the universalization and generalization of labor
that creates the self-estranging conditions conducive to exploitation and grow-
ing impoverization. Highlighting this point, Marx (1857–58/1973) notes that the
wage worker is “posited as a person who is something for himself apart from his
labor, and who alienates his life-expression only as a means towards his own life”
(p. 289). Much earlier in his study, however, Marx (1857–58/1973) elaborates in
significantly more detail:
Circulation as the realization of exchange values implies: (1) that my

product is a product in so far as it is for others; hence suspended
singularity, generality; (2) that it is a product for me only in so far as
it has been alienated, become for others; (3) that it is for the other
only in so far as he himself alienates his product; which already implies
(4) that production is not an end in itself for me, but a means.
Circulation is the movement in which the general alienation appears
as general appropriation and general appropriation appears as general
alienation. (Marx, 1857, The Grundrisse, p. 196)
The key here is the insight that wage labor in bourgeois society does not
in itself satisfy human needs and drives, but is a means to satisfy the basic needs
of living. In other words, Marx objects to the alienation or self-estrangement of
capitalism (i.e., abstract labor, the substance of value) because it excludes the
possibility of the full, healthy, normal, cultural-social development of the human
being. Because abstract value represents the substance of capitalism, the only way
to transcend the alienation of capitalism is to transcend capitalism itself. Even if
markets and private property were abolished and wages were equalized, as suggested
above, alienation and dehumanization would continue if the social relations of
capitalist production represented by the existence of socially necessary labor time,
or the generalized standard separating thinking from doing, persisted. Working
toward a postcapitalist society that is humanized might include a critical education
against capitalism focused on imagining a world without abstract labor. This is the
foundation needed for a world of inclusion, or a world inclusive of humanization
and against dehumanization.
However, before we more centrally turn our attention to CMSS, we will

provide a brief summary of Marx’s conception of the alternative to capitalism
because it will help to flesh out exactly what abstract labor is, and it will more
concretely offer a very specific purpose for the critical education advocated for
below. Making the case that Marx’s “late writings” offer the most explicit vision
of a postcapitalist society, Hudis (2012) summarizes:
According to Marx, the amount of time engaged in material production

would be drastically reduced in the new society, thanks to technologi-
cal innovation and the development of the forces of production. At
the same time, labor, like all forms of human activity, would be freely
associated and not subject to the autonomous power of capital that
operates behind the backs of individuals. Here is the most important
determinant in Marx’s concept of the new society: social relations must
cease to operate independently of the self-activity of the associated
individuals. Marx will oppose any power—be it the state, a social
plan, or the market itself—that takes on a life of its own and utilizes
human powers as a mere means to its fruition and development. Marx’s
opposition to the inversion of subject and predicate constitutes the
reason for his opposition to all forms of value-production. It is also
what grounds his conception of socialism. Human power, he insists,
must become a self-sufficient end—it must cease to serve as a means
to some other end. He will project this concept even more explicitly
in his last writings, which contain his most detailed discussion of the
content of a postcapitalist society. (p. 182)
Hudis points to the Paris Commune of 1871 as the single most important
event in pushing Marx to revise and deepen his concept of a postcapitalist society.
Making this point, Hudis argues that “the Paris Commune led Marx to conclude,
more explicitly than ever before, that the state is not a neutral instrument that
could be used to ‘wrest’ power from the oppressors. Its very form is despotic” (p.
185). That is, because the new society will consist of freely associated producers
democratically “allocating social wealth” (Hudis, 2012), the means of achieving
this must therefore too be noncoercive, which, for Marx after 1871, was no longer
the state, but rather, the commune. However, the commune here is not social-
ism, but it could lead to it if it were allowed to survive and develop. We know
that this was not the case with respect to the Paris Commune of 1871, and we
know that it has never been since. That is, workers’ self-directed programs (i.e.,
revolutionary movements) have always been the primary targets of the capitalist
class’s military aggression. A postcapitalist society is therefore something that will
almost certainly have to be bitterly fought for in the streets, cites of production,
and schools across the world.
For Marx, a new society can only be born from the womb of a preexisting
one, therefore only gradually shedding the traces of the old social relations. In this
respect, Marx identified two phases of a new society. From the outset, however,
for Marx, the central defining feature of capitalist production must be abolished,
which is the subsumption of actual labor time with socially necessary labor time.
Socially necessary labor time, or a generalizable average dictated by technology
and consumer markets, is therefore distinct from actual labor time, and comes
to dominate concrete labor by serving as the universal standard allowing different
products of labor to be mutually exchangeable.
Hudis (2012) therefore summarizes Marx’s concept of a new society as being
based upon “the replacement of the dictatorship of abstract time with time as the space
for human development . . .” (p. 191). In a new society, a market where products
of labor are equally exchangeable ceases to exist because, “there is no substance
that renders different magnitudes qualitatively equal” (Hudis, 2012, p. 192). In
the highest stage of socialism, for Marx, individuals no longer learn to produce
for production, but that the development of the human species is an end in itself.
From here we can return to the question regarding CMSS and the potential role of
education in capitalist societies in transcending capital’s social relations themselves.
Critical pedagogy, at its finer and more relevant moments, represents an
educational subtradition designed to create learning experiences and understand-
ings to transcend capitalism. That is, Freire’s critical education for humanization
(1970) was informed by the Marxist understanding that the alienation of abstract
labor disconnects thinking from doing. Freire therefore stressed the importance
of students and educators being engaged in a lifelong practice of reflecting on
their consciousness and perpetually changing their practice as their understanding
develops and their commitments deepen. Critical education here is not merely
designed to help workers advocate for a higher wage, but to be engaged in the
process of becoming (in the Hegelian sense), leading workers, collectively, toward the
transcendence of capital. This critical pedagogy is therefore purposeful, and directed
by the educator while simultaneously designed to engage students as active learn-
ers and transformers of history. This is a revolutionary pedagogy; it is prescriptive
because it is directed (toward revolution), but it is democratic in that it is based on
a deep commitment to humanization. Offering an insightful connection between
Freire and Marx, the late British revolutionary educator Paula Allman (1999),
in Revolutionary Social Transformation: Democratic Hopes, Political Possibilities and
Critical Education, elaborates:
At the level of prescription, which suggests what educators “ought” to

do, [Freire] is unequivocal. This, in turn, links back to the essential
prescription that he shared with—and probably came to through his
readings of—Marx. Both of them think that it is our human voca-
tion to become more fully human. In Marx’s terms, this would mean
being at one with our “species being” or that which makes our species
distinct from others. According to this analysis of human ontology,
human beings are alienated from their human potential. Marx and
Freire urge human beings to engage in a revolutionary process that
would deliver human history into “human hands”—that is, making it
the critical and creative product of all human beings. (p. 92)
From the perspective that the most desirable way to abolish poverty and inequality
is by transcending capitalist production completely, including socially necessary
labor time, as Allman (1999) and Hudis (2012) allude, a directed, purposeful
critical education could not be more important. While supporting our unions
and advocating for more equally distributive policies are important and necessary
struggles, failing to come to understand the substance of value, abstract or indirect
labor, diminishes our vision and movement against human suffering and its root
causes or structures.
Marx begins Volume 1 of Capital (1967) with a discussion of commodities,
because “the wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production
prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities’ ” (p. 35). For
products of human labor such as food or human labor itself to become commodi-
ties, they must first have a “use-value”; that is, they must be of some use in terms
of maintaining or reproducing humanity. Because most of what humans need to
survive, such as clothing, food, and shelter, requires human labor to produce them,
human’s capacity to labor has “use-value”—and is in fact the internal content of
capital itself (Marx, 1857/1973; 1867/1967). Use-values, such as food, become
“exchange-values” when they are exchanged for another product, such as medicine.
Products become commodities when they are made for others and transferred to
others through an exchange (Marx, 1967; Allman, 2001). However, products do
not become commodities until they enter into the dialectical capital relation. That
is, the working class, the source of all wealth, is the opposite of the capitalist class,
whose wealth is dependent on the existence of an able and willing labor force.
In other words, labor and capital define each other. Capitalism could not exist
without a working class. The working class, on the other hand, is not dependent
on capital, and would cease to exist as the working class without capital, which
the goal of their historic struggle (Marx, 1967; Cleaver, 2000; Allman, McLaren,
& Rikowski, 2002). The basis of this relationship is the value inherent in the
ability of humans to labor.
Allman, McLaren, and Rikowski (2002) argue that the concept of internal
relations “is the key that unlocks the purported difficulty of Marx’s thought”
(p. 5). In Volume 1 of Capital (1967), Marx’s analysis of the material reality of
capitalist society led him to notice that the capital-labor dialectic represents the
internal relation of opposites, where the positive element (capital) benefits from
the relation, and the negative side (labor) is severely limited and often devastated
by the relation (Allman, McLaren, & Rikowski, 2002). As a result, capitalism is
based on the antagonistic relationship between two opposing forces, capitalists
and workers. Put another way, because capitalism becomes possible when people,
out of necessity, are forced to sell their own labor as a commodity in the market,
capitalism is defined by the existence of a capitalist class that purchases people’s
capacity to create more value than the minimum amount that is needed for them
to survive. The farther down wages are pushed and the more people are relegated to
the working class, the more unpaid labor hours will be accumulated in the hands
of the capitalist class (Allman, McLaren, & Rikowski, 2002, p. 15). The fact that
labor is purchased for a wage hides the profit that is actually accumulated through
this process (Allman, 2001; Marx, 1967; Merryfield, 2001).
What is more, capitalist education seeks to create larger pools of skilled work-
ers than there are jobs in order to weaken the working class through the creation of
competition and division and a “reserve army of labor.” This drives down the value
of human labor-power and thus generates increasingly large sums of surplus-value,
that is, capital, or what Marx called “dead labor” (Allman, McLaren, & Rikowski,
2002; McLaren & Baltodano, 2000).
Revolutionary Pedagogies for Social Justice and Equity
However, as previously suggested, the history of the development of capital is a

contested terrain. This is demonstrated, for example, by some of the consequences
of capitalism, such as labor movements vying for a larger share of the value they
create through their labor-power. The nondialectical way “the lads” in Willis’s
(1977) study of working-class youth understood capitalism, and their status as
workers, is also a consequence of capitalism. The role of revolutionary education
is therefore to assist students to better understand how capitalism works through
a multitude of pedagogical practices, such as “problem posing” (see Freire, 1970).
These practices are intended to enhance the liberatory tendencies among those
relegated to the working class through critically reflecting on one’s own experiences
and assumptions about self, the “other,” and the world. McLaren’s (2000) work on
“revolutionary pedagogy” and Allman’s (2001) work on “revolutionary education,”
for example, offer a framework to understand the role the working class plays in
reproducing itself through education. That is, Allman, McLaren, and Rikowski
(2002) argue that the tension that exists between teachers and students (see Willis,
1977, for example) is representative of how capitalists divide and conquer the work-
ing class. Because the work of teachers, reproducing future labor-power through
socializing their students into the capitalist system of production, is necessary
labor for the creation of surplus-value, Allman, McLaren, and Rikowski (2002)
consider teachers to be part of the working class. To redress this dilemma, they
argue that teachers need to better understand their own role in reproducing the
working class as their own labor-power is increasingly commodified (i.e., used to
produce value for others) as education is privatized, which is central to the process
of globalization (Rikowski, 2002).
Similarly, Marxist social studies educator Rich Gibson (2000), describing
what he considers to be the role of a radical educator, argues that workers such as
teachers, earning $45,000 per year (on average, and for example), are not capital-
ists, and are thus part of the working class. What is more, like Allman, McLaren,
and Rikowski (2002), Gibson (2000) argues that educators need to learn to ask
important questions such as “Where [does] value come from, and [what are] the
social relations that rise from struggles over value?” (p. 14). These questions, Gibson
contends, will facilitate the much-needed development, in students and teachers,
of a critical understanding of capitalist society with the potential of challenging
its internal relations.
Marxist educator Glenn Rikowski argues that McLaren’s recent work on
revolutionary pedagogy and its connection to teacher education has, “momentous
implications and consequences for the anti-capitalist struggles ahead” (McLaren &
Rikowski, 2001, p. 17), because it demands that teachers have a well-developed
understanding of the “inner dynamics” of capitalism in order to understand what
is happening to their students and themselves. McLaren argues that education is
central to the perpetuation of capitalism, because teachers play a pivotal role in
either developing or hindering students’ understanding of capitalism and their
relationship to it (Allman, McLaren, & Rikowski, 2002; McLaren & Rikowski,
2001). A revolutionary pedagogy can therefore assist students in uncovering and
challenging the root causes of capitalism such as the commodification of labor
(McLaren, 2000; Allman, 2001).
Social Studies
Social studies is the area of formal education that is explicitly dedicated to the
process of citizen formation, which determines the relationships governing society’s
useful labor, giving way to the particular form that society takes. Introduced by the
Committee on Social Studies in 1916, the social studies was from the beginning
a contested terrain between progressives, such as John Dewey and George Counts,
and conservatives, such as scientific efficiency proponents like David Snedden,
whose corporate-sponsored campaign successfully defined the official purpose of the
social studies (see Hursh & Ross, 2000; and Jorgensen’s chapter 1 in this volume).
The century-long “class struggle” within the social studies has been over what
type of citizens the social studies officially seeks to engender (Hursh & Ross, 2000;
Kincheloe, 2001; Ross and Vinson’s chapter in this volume). That is, should the
social studies perpetuate status quo inequalities, or should they actively work to
transgress the dominant social order for a society based on the free association of
humans in the reproduction of their world?
The social studies emerged during a high point in progressive thought in
the United States as a response to a history curriculum that was designed to mold
people to be “industrious” and “thrifty,” using the banking method of education
(Freire, 1970), which assumed that students were devoid of “valuable” knowledge
(Saxe, 1991). Conservatives were interested in reducing the cost of educational
assimilation in order to increase the pool of surplus workers needed to fill the
growing industrial economy (Kincheloe, Slattery, & Steinberg, 2000). Progressives
such as John Dewey, on the other hand, sought a more civics-oriented, democratic
alternative to replace and combat the conservative educational curriculum (Dewey,
1916; Hursh & Ross, 2000; Kincheloe, Slattery, & Steinberg, 2000; Saxe, 1991),
which, again, was part of the larger social struggle for equality and justice.
More recent educational theorists and activists, such as Peter McLaren and
Paula Allman, in continuing the progressive legacy of resistance and struggle, argue
that a dialectical understanding of self and society is necessary for knowing how
one is situated within the process of value production, which is key for engender-
ing democratic citizens ready to liberate themselves, and in the process, humanity,
from the labor/capital relation. Marx’s dialectic, according to Allman (2001),
pertains to the movement and development of the material reality of

capitalism, movements and developments that result from human beings
actively producing their material world and with it their conscious-
ness as well. Marx’s dialectic . . . is open and allows for reciprocity
wherein that which determines is also mutually determined or shaped
at the same time; and thus there is no outcome that is inevitable or
irreversible. (pp. 4–5)
Traditionally—and even today—however, social studies instruction, rather than

embracing a dialectical perspective, tends to be devoid of even the most basic
elements of dialectics (Kincheloe, 2001; Loewen, 1995; Ross, 2000a), which, we
argue, is a trend that must be reversed. Rather, the social studies are too often
geared toward fostering obedience to authority through the memorization of dis-
connected facts in the preparation of standardized tests based on the values and
beliefs of our white supremacist, sexist, homophobic capitalist society (Kincheloe,
2001; Loewen, 1995; Ross, 2000a, 2000b). Ultimately, “Traditional Social Stud-
ies Instruction” (TSSI) (Ross, 2000a) serves to create citizens who are willing to
sell their labor as a commodity in the market for a wage, thus producing surplus
value, which represents the great tragedy of labor; because it is surplus value, that
is, capital, that is used as a form of social control to oppress the working class.
Critical Multicultural Social Studies
We first coined the term “Critical Multicultural Social Studies” (CMSS) in 2001
as we worked within the Teacher Education Program (TEP) at New Mexico State
University (NMSU), teaching social studies pedagogy courses. In so doing, we drew
on radicals and progressives from social studies and history, such as Rich Gibson
(2000), James Loewen (1995), Valerie Pang (2004), E. Wayne Ross (2000a, 2001),
and Howard Zinn (2002, 2003); from multicultural education such as Antonia
Darder (1991, 2002), Rudolfo Chávez Chávez and Jim O’Donnell (1998), Peter
McLaren (1996), and Christine Sleeter (1996); and from critical pedagogy such
as Paulo Freire (1970, 2000), Henry Giroux (1992, 2001), Joe Kincheloe (2001,
2004), and Peter McLaren (1989, 2000) for this ongoing work of theoretical
conceptualization, pedagogical application, and systematic reflection, that is, the
praxis of CMSS. Based on this original, and now growing and developing work,
we will relate how CMSS currently resonates with us.
Based on this conceptualization, attempted implementation, and now reflec-
tion, CMSS to us is a student/community-based radical pedagogical approach that
strives for the fomentation of social justice by and among students, community
members and activists, teachers, administrators, and our society at large via the
social studies and history. Here we draw TEP students (and would have them
draw on their students) to the “alternative” social studies and history content of
Noam Chomsky (1999), James Loewen (1995), Howard Zinn (2002, 2003), and
folks like our sisters and brothers at Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.
org) and the Rouge Forum (www.rougeforum.org). This historic “reclamation” is
steeped in the uncovering of myths and misperceptions. Teachers and students
who engage in Critical Multicultural Social Studies can better understand their
own place in connection to history, to economics, to contemporary issues, and to
popular culture. If students have the opportunity to make connections to their
own lives and situatedness within structures of power, then they can potentially
claim—and, indeed, reclaim—their own learning. They might not only reclaim
their history, but they might also find the power to act and change their own
lives; both individually and collectively.
CMSS asks us to foster an understanding of how we can assist students in
understanding the notion of domination as it exists in the world today. It means
making the curriculum active, bringing it to life, and realizing our potential to
be social/pedagogical agents struggling for justice and equity. As the title of the
book by Howard Zinn (2002)—and a documentary based on Zinn’s life and
work (see, www.howardzinn.org)—reminds us, “You can’t be neutral in a moving
train.” Accordingly, especially as CMSS pedagogues, we have to recognize and be
honest about our politics, our cultural backgrounds, and our understandings of
the worlds we live in (both to ourselves and our students). We need to be active
participants within pedagogical contexts, creating spaces of and for social justice.
This redefines, we think, the notion of, “read the chapter, answer the questions at
the end of the chapter, and stay away from my desk” that some social studies (and
other) pedagogues (even university professors) sometimes fall into. CMSS asks us
to redefine our relationships with our students—or, actually, to create relationships
with our students; positive, trustful, and intellectual ones.
Critical Multicultural Social Studies asks us to deal with “controversial” themes
with our students, to engage them via these affirmative relationships, and to take
action around student/community-identified and student/community-defined issues
of inequality, inequity, and injustice. And we do this through an honest, open, and
unapologetic analysis of issues of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, etcetera, as these
issues pertain to our lives. When we reflect on critical and multicultural approaches
to the social studies, we think about ways to find contemporary examples (not just
from the past, which is so common in the social studies) and moments of oppression
within the community; having students link with that, and then become involved
in actually transforming society through exploring those instances of oppression.
The government—at the federal, state, local, and school district levels—is
often placed (or places itself ) as the omniscient arbiter of “truth” (content) and
sanctifier of acceptable pedagogical processes. Thus, certain content is allowed. For
example, Thomas Jefferson was swell and helped form the United States as a repub-
lic; and this republic was founded on principles that many have tried to emulate for
centuries since. And other content is not allowed. For example, Thomas Jefferson
was also a pedophile and rapist. Certain methodologies, in terms of pedagogy,
are allowed. For example, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) puts an emphasis on
memorization, pre-testing, testing, and post-testing (high stakes, norm-referenced
testing, no less; see Ross, 2004). Yet other pedagogical methodologies and ideolo-
gies are not. For example, connective, constructivist, humanist, or transformative
approaches to the teaching and learning enterprise are most usually a no-no and
unacceptable. From a CMSS perspective, it is vital that teachers and students use
their own authority and freedom in the classroom, as Hinchey (2004) reminds us,
to find their own truths, instead of having them dictated from on high.
Due to content and pedagogy filters such as No Child Left Behind, Race
to the Top, and Common Core State Standards, teachers are often given no other
option than to use whitewashed, racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, and just plain
inaccurate, textbooks (Apple, 1990; Loewen, 1995). Given this, what might a
pedagogue inspired by Critical Multicultural Social Studies do, beyond sitting
on a district textbook committee in order to vote for one of three poor choices
predetermined by big publishing? How might we work with an inaccurate, closed,
hegemonized, damaging curricular content, if there is no way to avoid doing so?
Well, we use critical pedagogy. We critique. And we turn to our students and our
school communities.
As Peter McLaren said during a lecture at UCLA during the 1990s, “A

critical pedagogue can use any text, any content as a starting point. For the text
or content is not the key, the critique is.” He was right. Both critical pedagogy
and CMSS espouse a form of radical/revolutionary critique, a way for students
(students/teachers) and teachers (teachers/students) (Freire, 1970) to analyze and
deconstruct dominant hegemonic forms within a framework of social justice and
equity, then to collectively construct a counterhegemony that creates a critical/
revolutionary space where students, teachers, and communities can continue to
work and challenge hegemony and oppressive forms and relations. Can we find
ways to deconstruct and critique these whitewashed, milquetoast, bias-laden,
pabulum-filled textbooks? Can we then reconstruct counterhegemonic ways of
reading our “words and worlds” (Freire & Macedo, 1985) and lived realities?
Can we align ourselves locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally with
struggles for social justice? Sure we can; even in the age of NCLB, Race to the
Top, and Common Core; perpetual Bush-Obama war (drone and otherwise); and
happy-go-lucky, world-stomping, neoliberalism. As a matter of fact, we are obliged
to. We need more mosh pits, Burning Man, and radical hip hop; more Occupies,
Idle No Mores, Arab Springs, Maple Springs, and #Wisconsins; and, more eloquent
Marxist/feminist youth like Malala Yousafzai, who stand up against both capitalism
and religious fundamentalism.
The other way to deal with biased and largely meaningless textbooks is to
turn directly to students, their parents, and the community for content. For the
various state “benchmarks” and “standards” that teachers are often now required to
follow under national regimes—as they slog through the official textbooks of their
districts—are vague, general, and have also gone through a similar dumbing-down,
lowest common denominator, white/male/wealthy/straight-ifying process. The end
result is that they are not only often biased and ill conceived, but also so wildly
vague and general. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be able to creatively fit more
progressive content into them; content that comes from students, parents, and
school communities—more authentic, connected, meaningful content that can be
a starting point from which to begin discussions of oppression, hegemony, social
justice, and counterhegemony.
The proposal is simple. Turn hegemonic textbooks against themselves and
valorize and incorporate the cultural capital, histories, and wisdom of our students
into our curricula (all the while being creative and subversive with the wishy-washy
curriculum standards toward the more important goal of making schooling, and
our students’ years in school, meaningful and empowering). In this way, we can
offer students multiple perspectives via our curricular content. We can use these
standardized textbooks if strategically necessary; if only to demonstrate to students
how easy it is to pass off one perspective as the only perspective. We can guide
our students in learning research skills via online sources (www.gnn.org or www.
rougeforum.org), alternative media (Basta ya!, Democracy Now!, Pacifica, www.
rabble.ca), brick-and-mortar and virtual libraries and universities, and mentor them
in the fine (and learnable) art of critique. They are already halfway there. Our
students are wonderful bullshit detectors. They know what rings “true” and what
stinks. They can spot a racist or homophobic teacher at a hundred yards—and we
need to be honest with ourselves, there are racists and homophobes among our
ranks. They know we are in the Middle East for the oil. Ask them. They are fine
nascent intellectuals in development. They, and their communities, are up to this
task. CMSS pedagogues need just to facilitate and encourage this work and these
kinds of classroom communities for social justice.
Toward a Marxist CMSS
Based on the discussion above of how today’s Marxist educators are talking about
the “essence” of capitalism—that is, the social production of value and commodi-
ties—we call for a Marxist CMSS to go beyond describing the consequences of
capitalism and join the struggle against the labor-capital relation. In other words,
we must also go beyond arguing for a simple redistribution of wealth and the
freeing of work from the constraints of capital, and instead work against the
commodification of human labor-power. That is, a Marxist CMSS must work
to completely destroy the capital relation (Hudis, 2000). In elaborating this, let’s
return for a moment to the description of today’s social studies instruction; the
reality of what is. We believe this would be a useful point of departure for the
outlining of a possible Marxist Critical Multicultural Social Studies.
In a discussion of today’s social studies, Marc Pruyn (2003) cites the official
“primary purpose” of the social studies offered by the National Council for the
Social Studies (NCSS): “To help . . . young people develop the ability to make
informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally
diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.” Pruyn argues, “Many in
the criticalist tradition of social education . . . would consider [this definition] tra-
ditional, even ‘conservative’ ” (p. 5, from original manuscript). As a criticalist who
draws inspiration and analytical tools from both Marxism and anarchism, Pruyn
(2003) makes the case that the social studies should not just develop “informed
citizens” but should also foster the development of “cultural/political social activists
who are encouraged to manifest their beliefs with the ultimate goal of fighting
oppression and furthering social justice” (p. 5).
E. Wayne Ross (2000; and in this volume) describes the social studies taught
today throughout the U.S. public school system as dominated by “Traditional
Social Studies Instruction” (TSSI), which he argues is based on such characteristics
as memorizing disconnected facts, preparing students for standardized tests, treating
learners as passive, normalizing white, middle-class culture and putting teachers
at the center of learning. As a result, Ross argues that because of conservative
teacher education programs, the institutional pressures schools place on teachers,

and the traditional curriculum, the social studies tend to teach a spectator-oriented
conception of democracy; one that helps to create “spectator citizens” unequipped
to participate actively in a democracy (p. 55). This description of TSSI does not
even foster the development of “informed citizens” as put forth by the NCSS.
Similarly, in Getting Beyond the Facts (2001), Joe Kincheloe argues that the
current body of research on the social studies suggests that classroom instruction
is more geared toward controlling student actions than engaging them in real
learning (p. 17). Both students and teachers of the social studies thus tend to
demonstrate a lack of interest in the topic. In his influential text Lies My Teacher
Told Me (1995), James Loewen reports that the social studies has consistently
been identified by students as the most boring subject in school, despite the fact
that students tend to do better in it than in other subjects. It is unique, argues
Loewen, in that college and university professors agree that the more high school
classes students have had in social studies, the more misinformed they become
about history, economics, and the like. Because social studies is often presented
from the distorted perspective of the ruling class, which commonly discounts the
struggles of the poor, girls/women, people of color, and queers, more oppressed
students, as one might expect, tend to do worse academically than less oppressed
students. For example, students of color tend to do worse than white students in
the social studies (Loewen, 1995). Moreover, based on Loewen’s analysis of U.S.
high school history textbooks, the social studies tends to present social problems as
already solved or about to be solved. Those problems are thus predictable; they are
flooded with blind, overoptimistic patriotism; and they are anything but dialectical.
In sum, U.S. history textbooks tend to keep students blind to the dialectical nature
of history. And their main message is to “be good” and not question authority,
because capitalism, although slightly imperfect, is the only viable economic system
the world always has and will ever have to offer (so goes the official line).
The notion that capitalism is our only option is the perspective of capitalists
themselves, not the perspective of the working class. What is more, today’s TSSI
serves the interests of maintaining the labor-capital relation by striving to engen-
der a citizenry not only able, but also willing, to work as wage laborers, therefore
producing that which oppresses us: capital. And capital does so by exploiting every
other form of oppression where and whenever possible—racism, sexism, linguisism,
homophobia—in a classic divide and conquer tactic. Where, then, can we, the
educational Left, turn for ideas about how to combat the root causes of capital-
ism, capitalist oppression, and other forms of authority and oppression that serve
capital? The critical social studies educators cited herein argue for a more equal
distribution of wealth and the development of an informed citizenry capable of
actively participating in a democracy. For example, Ross (2000), arguing against
the development of passive citizens through TSSI, holds that “citizens should have
the opportunity to inform themselves; take part in inquiry, discussion and policy
formation; and advance their ideas through political action” (p. 55).
In building on Ross, a Marxist CMSS would also work to foster the develop-
ment of a citizenry not only able to engage in debate and inquiry for social justice,
but against the labor-capital relation in particular; as well as all the subsequent,
dependent, and ancillary forms of oppression and authority that serve capital.
That is, it would work to empower a citizenry aware of the intricate workings of
capitalism and their particular location within the production process of value. To
reiterate, Gibson (2000), for example, argues that a Marxist social studies should
ask questions such as: “Where [does] value come from? What are the social rela-
tions that rise from struggles over value?” (p. 14). Gibson states that these are key
economic questions that have been erased by capital’s influence over the social
studies. These and other questions can play a fundamental role in the development
of a more radically/progressively Marxist social studies that recognizes both our
differences (multiculturalism), how these differences are purposefully exploited, and
how we might deal with this in our pedagogical search for economic and social
justice and equity (critical pedagogy); that is, we call on our sister and brother
pedagogues to consider a Marxist Critical Multicultural Social Studies.
Note
1. Elements of this chapter appeared in Curry Malott’s “Karl Marx, Radical Educa-
tion and Peter McLaren: Implications for the Social Studies,” in Teaching Peter McLaren:
Paths of Dissent, edited by Marc Pruyn and Luis Charles-Huerta (Westport, CT: Peter Lang,
2005) and “Critical Multicultural Social Studies: A Dialogue from the Borderlands,” by The
Borderlands Collective for Social Justice in Race, Ethnicity, and Education: Principles of Mul-
ticultural Education, edited by Valerie Ooka Pang and E. Wayne Ross (Greenwood, 2006).
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10
Prejudice, Racism, and the Social Studies Curriculum
Jack L. Nelson and Valerie Ooka Pang
I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories and
that liberty and equality were just around the bend. I wish I could say that
America has come to appreciate diversity and to see and accept similarity. But
as I look around, I see not a nation of unity but a division—Afro and white,
indigenous and immigrant, rich and poor, educated and illiterate.
—Thurgood Marshall, 1992
Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in

that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity,
their dignity and personhood.
—Coretta Scott King, April 1, 1998
The social studies curriculum is the primary location in schools for inquiry into
contemporary issues of prejudice. No other school subject has that civic mis-
sion. Social education provides information, evidence, ideas, and frameworks for
understanding and critically thinking about social knowledge, within the context
of civic responsibility. But social education that continues traditional, noncontro-
versial recitation of presumably settled historical information fails the responsibility
of civic education, a failing of social significance.
Prejudice and discrimination tear at the fabric of society and civilization.
Prejudice is an irrational preconceived judgment about people based solely on their
membership in a group; discrimination is a restrictive action based on prejudice.
Various forms of prejudice and discrimination are evident in contemporary society:
specific examples include racism and gender bias as well as discrimination based
on sexual orientation, age, religion, national derivation, disabilities, and economic
203
204 Jack L. Nelson and Valerie Ooka Pang
condition. These biases are specific forms directed at people based on skin color,
nationality, gender, or other perceived distinguishing characteristic. Prejudice denies
individuality and equality of opportunity when it supports discrimination that lim-
its individuals because of categories such as women or men, old or young, gay or
straight, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or Atheist, disabled or able-bodied,
and poor or rich. That discrimination is bigotry and should be addressed forth-
rightly in a society that claims equal protection under democratic laws, a civilizing
society.
There is not enough space in this chapter, or in a bookcase, to explore or
examine all forms of prejudice. In this chapter, we highlight racism and gender bias
as severe and persistent forms, where discrimination and bigotry are historically and
contemporarily noteworthy and significant, and where schools can serve a greater
public good by educating youth about them. A first principle of education is the
development of reasoned thought in the improvement of civilization; acting on
that principle requires critical examination of significant social issues Social studies
is where that reasoned and thoughtful examination should take place in schools;
prejudice is such an issue.
Following an extended discussion of racism are brief comments on gender as
another current example, with briefer comments about other forms of prejudice.
This, however, does not diminish their individual and social significance; it only
speaks to limits on space for this chapter. All forms of prejudice and discrimination
deserve strong focus and elaboration in social studies curricula.
Racism and Ideals of Justice and Equality: An Educational Challenge
As Thurgood Marshall notes, the United States has a set of ideals, but does not
actually have unity with liberty and justice for all. More than a half century after
the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate U.S. schools, current
scholarship shows that racism continues to be a compelling and dividing issue in
the North America (Banton, 2003; Barlow, 2003; Berbier, 2004; Campbell, Denes,
& Morrison, 2000; Cowlishaw, 2004; Darder & Torres, 2004; Doty, 2003; Guar-
jado & Guarjado, 1996; Pang & Ross, 2006; Smedley et al., 2003; Staiger, 2004;
Telles, 2004; Tsutsui, 2004; Fallace, 2011). The Brown decision was an important
legal decree, but subsequent social practice in the United States often flies in its
face. African American, Latino, American Indian, and Asian American and Pacific
Islander students still suffer severe academic inequalities, from overcrowded, poorly
funded schools to low graduation rates (Californians for Justice, 2001; Orfield &
Lee, 2005; Patterson, 2001; Pang, Han, & Pang, 2011).
Recently, in the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the
shooting death of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin, President Obama spoke
in personal terms about common experiences of African American males in the
Prejudice, Racism, and the Social Studies Curriculum 205
United States, noting three specific examples: being followed when they are in
a store, hearing car doors locked as they cross a street, and women nervously
clutching their purses when they enter an elevator where an African American
male is standing (Landler & Shear, 2013). The Zimmerman-Martin case restarted
a national discussion of racism in the United States—discussions that have often
dissipated quickly and have not yet resolved a highly divisive issue and a challenge
to society and to education.
Fallacies about biology and race drive racism and influence the values people
hold, the decisions they make, and how they treat others (Pang & Valle, 2004).
Racism is both overt and covert, as well as personal, institutional, and cultural
(Bennett, 1995), resulting in inequality of opportunities, goods, and services in a
society. Racism influences the personal interactions of people, social organizations,
and how people define what is desirable. Some may believe in deficiency models
where change in individuals must be undertaken rather than in institutional reform
(Campbell, Denes, & Morrison, 2000). And teachers may convey, in the visible
and the hidden curriculum, sets of values that rest upon prejudices rather than on
knowledge. Racism is often a subtext of those prejudices, even when the teacher
does not share racist views.
Racism is an unresolved issue of great current importance, certainly impor-
tant enough to be studied by students in schools. Staiger’s (2004) ethnographic
study shows continuing negative stereotyping by White students in an urban
magnet high school, “especially when schools avoid discussions about race” (p.
161). Basic principles and purposes of civic education and citizen development
are stunted and distorted when discrimination against minorities remains a social
norm. Welner (2012) explains clearly how the strength of the Brown decision has
been eroded by public and political pressure that pushed subsequent courts to
mitigate social and educational efforts to stem racism.
Defining Race: A Social Studies Controversy
The definition of race has racist overtones, and is among the issues that deserve
examination in social studies courses. Race is a controversial construct. There are
legitimate definitional challenges to the very idea of race, even though most people
understand the vernacular concept of racism. Although “race” and “racism” are
ill-defined, we recognize here their vernacular use by initially using the terms as
though their meanings were clear, and also by using capital letters to identify
White, Black, and Brown where those words infer such racial identifiers. Full
examination of the idea of race brings in pseudo-science, prejudicial law, anthropol-
ogy, sociology, psychology, history, geography, economics, philosophy, and litera-
ture. It also brings in critical thinking to challenge assumptions and myths, while
elaborating the basic concepts of justice and equality.
One example of the definitional problem: Susie Guillory Phipps thought of

herself as White. She found that the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records listed her
as Black, and she asked them to change her racial classification in the records. After
rejection, she sued, but lost. The state contended that Phipps was a descendant
of an 18th-century White planter and a Black slave and should be listed as Black
because a 1970 state law decreed that anyone with “at least 1/32-Negro blood” was
identified legally as Black. The court ruled that the state had the right to classify and
identify one’s racial identity. During the trial, a Tulane University professor testified
that most of the Whites in Louisiana were at least 1/20-Negro” (Omi & Winant,
1994, pp. 53–54). And, as is obvious, white skin is almost never actually white,
and black is not really black. Even at the simplest level the definitions collapse.
The concept of race has become a benchmark factor in human relations,
for good or evil. We ascribe talents, status, values, and behaviors to people on the
basis of what we think of as race. We keep volumes of governmental and unof-
ficial records on racial identity, racial separation on test scores, racial patterns of
birth, death, and health, racial conditions of wealth and lifestyle, racial residence
in neighborhoods, racial involvement in crime and athletics, and racial family life
and strife. Race is a differentiating characteristic for much of our lives.
Underlying all this is an assumption that race is easily determined and useful
for differentiating among people. But that demands a clear, precise, and mutu-
ally exclusive definition of race. Then every person could be placed in one race
or another based on significant and scientifically determined criteria. How do we
know what race is and who is of what race? Is family ancestry the only criterion
that determines race? Are Whites a race? What of Greeks, Hispanics, Irish, Baby-
lonians, Papuans, Jews, Koreans, bald men? Are there any people who are actu-
ally White—save the few with albinism? Are any national, religious, or physically
different groups a race? There are also questions about the contextual meanings
ascribed to these unsupportable definitions of race, such as: are all Whites (Greeks,
Hispanics, bald men) the same? Do all members of any race have the same morals,
ethics, behaviors, test scores, lifestyles? Are all members of a racial group equally
worthy of having the status of superior or inferior peoples?
The scientific consensus among modern anthropologists, geneticists, and
molecular biologists is that contemporary humans, Homo sapiens, can be traced
to central East Africa (Olson, 2002). That consensus argues that there is only one
human race. Arbitrarily determined racial categories allow any group separated by
some characteristic, e.g., nationality, religion, height, skin color, shoe size, ideol-
ogy, or high school graduation date, to be called a race by some authority. That
renders the definition meaningless. Without clarity and precision in definition
and the capability to separate individuals into a single exclusive category, race is
nothing more than a linguistic construct attached to a set of values and prejudices.
The modern history of race, and thus, of racism, has been traced to ideas
in the 16th and 17th centuries attempting to classify groups such as the Lapps
of Scandinavia as distinct from all others (Valle, 1997). That “racial” classifica-
tion system was largely the result of two strands: hereditarians, who believed that
social status and personal abilities are inherited at birth; and by social Darwin-
ists in a faulty application of evolutionary theory to justify the concept that the
already powerful people in society were superior. These quasi-scientific movements
provided a rationale for “scientific racism” (Valle, p. 138). This idea of race was
used to support constitutional limits on voting as well as continuing efforts to
control other people—oppressing, exploiting, enslaving, and even exterminating
peoples for economic and political goals. (p. 138). Valle goes on to conclude that
the mounting scientific evidence from several fields indicates that the concept of
race is empirically meaningless. That is, the concept of race cannot be supported
by any standards of objective fact (p. 139). It is divisive, destructive, and logically
unjustified, but continues to be used in common discourse and official records.
Despite the striking lack of scientific underpinning for a definition of race
and the weakness of definitional quality, the idea of race is compelling to many.
It has proven useful for the powerful as a means of identifying a group they can
consider inferior and given them a label that cannot be overcome by talent, work,
or intelligence. It has offered supremacists a crutch for carrying out their attacks
against others (Ladson-Billings, 2012). It is used for genocide, imprisonment, tor-
ture, slavery, removal, and control. There is social reality to the definition of race,
despite its lack of scientific clarity, precision, or exclusivity. That reality is the use
of race as a sociopolitical marker for granting or limiting rights and privileges.
That is the basis of racism, a prejudice without scientific evidence or knowledge.
It is, however, so commonly used as a descriptive term that we use it here in its
vernacular sense.
Social studies courses rarely include the conceptual origin of race and how
this concept can be traced to beliefs of racial group superiority—racism. Race is
a sociopolitical construct that has been created by humans to stigmatize, distance,
and elevate themselves from those they see as others. Omi and Winant (1994)
view race as a concept that “signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests
by referring to different type[s] of human bodies” (p. 55); thus, early scholars
often equated race with selected biological characteristics such as skin color, hair
texture and color, head and body shape. These subjective measures were then used
to identify supposed racial intelligence and capability differences.
Racialization and the Social Studies Curriculum
“Popular ideas of race, confused as they certainly are, remain in place not primar-
ily because of scientific misunderstandings but through the weight of a racial-
ized history and the current legacy of racial depredations” (Blum, 2002, p. 146).
Blum suggests racialization should be substituted as a term for race, since it is
the prejudicial application of the term. Black, White, or Brown consciousness is

based not on race, but on racial identification—racialization. Asian Americans and
Latinos, Blum indicates, have a very weak sense of being distinct racial groups,
but do “appreciate that they have been racialized.” But they do not confuse this
with actually being a separate race.
Racialization has been used to marginalize and exclude the participation of
citizens in legal and political affairs. African American slaves were denied most
freedoms, from voting to learning to read. Some were killed because they strove
to secure physical and intellectual freedom. Chinese immigrants became the first
group to be identified and excluded by race from immigrating to the United
States in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Executive Order 9066, signed in
1942, imprisoned Japanese Americans without due process. They were put into
camps, their property was lost or sold, and they were also stripped of civil rights
by their own government. Parallels to these events can be found in Canada, where
The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 effectively prohibited Chinese immigration;
and with the internment of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia, based upon
unproven speculation of sabotage and espionage by the Canadian federal govern-
ment and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, during World War II.
This concept of racialization is of value in social studies classroom discussions,
offering examination of the racialization process as used for political or prejudical
purposes. This would displace the assumption that distinct races exist on some
natural or scientific basis. It eliminates the idea that race is a necessary condition
of humans, and moves toward reasoned consideration of how racialization works,
how it can be identified, how it affects people, and how it can be changed or
mitigated. This takes away the pseudo-scientific weight of the concept of race,
while it permits critical study of racism.
Unfortunately, the social studies curriculum often does a poor job of exam-
ining the disparity between the credo of justice and equal treatment and the
pervasiveness of racialization in everyday life. As a field, social studies has often
ignored or been complicit with institutional racism. Education that does not chal-
lenge or question discriminatory traditions, policies, rules, and laws is an example
of that complicity.
Some educational agencies adopt initial but superficial techniques to appear
less “racist.” Textbook companies move away from the use of biased language.
Few books use terms such as savage, primitive, or noble Indian to describe indig-
enous peoples of North America. Many educational groups eliminate language that
describes people from underrepresented “racial” groups as “needy, disadvantaged, or
less fortunate.” These are positive, but small steps. The underlying issue of domi-
nation by racialization is still hidden in much of the social studies curriculum.
Loewen (1995) studied twelve national textbook series in the United States and
found they lacked controversy because their implicit goal seemed to indoctrinate
students in “blind” patriotism. For example, he found that only one-third of

the textbooks series he reviewed accurately presented President Woodrow Wilson’s
views on race. Wilson was openly racist, a Southerner who was “an outspoken
White supremacist and told ‘darky’ stories in cabinet meetings” (Loewen, 1995,
p. 27). Wilson segregated federal workers. Loewen challenges textbook representa-
tions of Wilson as an American hero, arguing that this presentation arises from
a White, dominant viewpoint. Wilson blocked legislation and actions that would
have provided more civil rights to people from underrepresented groups, and he
hired Whites for positions that were traditionally given to Blacks. He also vetoed
a clause on racial equality that had been proposed as part of the Covenant of the
League of Nations.
Social studies teacher education textbooks are also problematic. Gay (2003)
studied ten social studies teacher education textbooks published between 1994 and
2001, and written by well-respected and nationally known authorities in social edu-
cation. The study was designed to examine “deracialization,” the “de-emphasizing,
distorting, excluding, or avoiding elements of race and racism in the presentation
of individuals, the analysis of critical events, and the exploration of sociological
issues in educational programs and practices” (p. 129). She found that the text-
books presented a limited discussion of racism and race or completely ignored the
issues, concluding: “Information about race, racism, and racially-identified issues,
individuals, experiences, and events included in these books is minimal in both
quantity and quality. It is fragmented, lacks specific details, and depth, and is
peripheral to the core of the narrative text” (p. 144).
Lasch-Quinn (2001) writes that positive social developments from the civil
rights movement have been derailed by a combination of racist ideologues and
race experts, new etiquettes in political correctness, and the self-centeredness of
New Age therapies. She argues that critical examination of extant ideas on race
and racism can help to bring us back to a focus on correcting the faults of preju-
dice. For schools, that examination is best done in good social studies classrooms.
But the record of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) in
addressing issues of racism and prejudice is strangely mixed, representing a pecu-
liarly cautious and conservative leadership of the social studies field (Garcia &
Buendia, 1996). Remarkably, the largest organization of social studies educators
has placed little emphasis on the issue of racism or on the role of social stud-
ies in antiracist education. Nelson and Fernekes (1992) examined the historical
record of the NCSS, from the 1940s to the 1990s, for evidence of the organiza-
tion’s commitment to one of the most important issues relating to race—civil
rights—concluding:
[The National Council for the Social Studies’] record on civil rights
can only be characterized as negligent at best and indifferent at worst.
NCSS largely ignored the civil rights movement and in the process
demonstrated indifference toward a social crisis of immense significance,
one that challenged the very basis of democratic institutions and posed
difficult questions for educators who daily had to confront the gap
between stated ideals and social experience. (pp. 96, 98)
(For a critical examination of recent stances of NCSS and its affiliated group,
the College and University Faculty Assembly, on issues of racism, civil rights of
immigrants, and free speech, see Cornbleth, 1998; Fleury, 1998; Gibson, 1998;
Hursh, 1998; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Pang, Rivera, & Gillette, 1998; and Ross,
1997, 1998.)
Other Forms of Prejudice:

Multi-headed and Civically Dysfunctional
Gender Bias
Racism and racialization are especially virulent and nasty forms of prejudice, but
there are many other forms (Pang, 2010). Gender bias, also known as sexism, is
the belief that men and women have different roles and status in society, a belief
that rationalizes the unequal distribution of resources, power, status, opportunities,
and freedoms. This distribution typically favors men over women, and constitutes
the basis of prejudicial and discriminatory actions.
Historically, women have been treated as second-class citizens in North
America (Ehrenreich & English, 2005). Founding documents of the United States
offer significant ideals of liberty, justice, and equality, but they also incorporate
actual gender and wealth discrimination; for example, women and men without
property could not vote. John Adams tried to justify this, arguing that providing
the vote to women or those without property will “confound and destroy all dis-
tinctions and prostrate all ranks to one common level” (Adams, 1776, p. 423). It
took nearly a century and a half after the Revolutionary War for women to gain
voting rights, and only after hazardous and unflagging activism. But elements of
sexism, as well as prejudice against the poor, continue to afflict our social fabric
(Jones, 2011). In 1927, The Famous Five women asked the Supreme Court of
Canada, “Does the word “Persons” in Section 24 of the British North American
Act, 1867 include female persons?” The Court responded, “no,” but its decision
was overturned by the British Privy council 1929; and the “Persons Case” led to
a radical change in Canadian judicial affairs.
Women as objects-to-be-protected by men, along with the subjugation of
their needs to those of their husbands and children, has long been considered part
of the construct of women’s “biological destiny.” Late-20th-century feminists chal-

lenged these gender-biased beliefs, opposing the foundation of a domestic ideology.
Using logic, substantial data, persuasive literature, and steadfast determination, they
fought for women’s independence and equality, this equality to include family,
social, economic, educational, and political contexts where women could develop
their own interests and abilities.
Gender bias is not as blatant or as legally protected as it once was, but it
still permeates much of everyday life. Many people believe gender bias has been
overcome, however, research by Swim, Aikin, Hall, and Hunter (1995), found that
men held higher levels of old-fashioned and modern sexist beliefs in comparison
to women. They also found that those who did not hold strong views supporting
equality were more likely to show old-fashioned and modern prejudices. They
identified differences between old-fashioned and modern gender bias statements
as exemplified in the table below:
Old-Fashioned Gender Bias Statements Modern Gender Bias Statements

Women are generally not as smart as men. Discrimination against women is no
longer a problem in the United States.
Women are more emotional and men are Men and women are treated equally in
more logical. society.
Women should be the primary caregiver Women have the same opportunities
in a family. to succeed as men in the United
States.
Source: Swim, Aikin, Hall, and Hunter, 1995
As another result and indicator of gender bias, the economic status of women
continues to lag behind their male counterparts. The White House Council on
Women and Girls (2011) report, “Women in America: Indicators of Social and
Economic Well-Being,” used economic data of 2009 to show that about 28 percent
of single mothers live in poverty conditions. That is twice the percentage of men
in poverty. Among those Americans age sixty-five and above, 11 percent of senior
women live in poverty compared to 7 percent of men. In the 21st century, where
equality should be the rule rather than the exception, women generally make only
seventy-five cents to a man’s dollar across all levels of education. Women of color
earn even less proportionately, Hispanic women earning only 62 percent as much
as White men. A recent study of gender inequality in Canada concluded that the
gender gap in politics and income equality was so large it could take 228 years to
close. And the Canadian gender gap is not due to lack of qualifications; according
to the study, the closer women get to the top the greater the barriers to achieving
equality (Centre for Canadian Policy Studies, 2013).
LGBTQ
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) prejudice may have dimin-
ished in a few limited areas of broad public discourse and among younger people.
But there are residual laws, policies, religious interpretations, and individual actions
that show prejudice against gays is still virulent and noteworthy. In school settings,
it still accounts for bullying attacks, derision, depression and suicide, and social
disapproval (Avenue Community Centre, n.d.; Biegel, 2010; Fone, 2000; Gold-
man, 2008). In society, it accounts for disapproval, attacks, and personal grief for
gays; staying in the “closet” is still a strong choice for many.
Early discrimination was often based on religious and social ideas that homo-
sexuality is sinful or socially disruptive, and penalties were swift and severe. Later
concepts were that such sexual orientations are simply matters of personal prefer-
ence or a form of illness, either of which is treatable, presumably, by counseling
or medical work. That perspective has slowly shifted to a recognition that sexual
orientation has deeper roots, and that the discrimination is actually a human rights
issue that involves basic elements of justice and equality (Lovaas et al., 2006;
Knauer, 2011). A recent United States Supreme Court decision provides quali-
fied support for this developing idea of human rights. The court decided that the
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), defining marriage as only between a man and
a woman, was unconstitutional at least in terms of unequal treatment regarding
federal benefits of gays who marry in states where such marriages are permitted.
States that have passed legislation supporting same-sex marriage to date include
Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New
Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, as well as the District
of Columbia.
The Supreme Court also decided against consideration of California’s Propo-
sition 8, which banned gay marriage, because plaintiffs did not have standing.
Plaintiffs could not speak for citizens in general, and had not personally suffered
from a lower court decision that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. The Court’s
decision allows the lower court decision that the proposition is unconstitutional
to stand (Liptak, 2013). Clearly, not all sides are content with these decisions,
nor with the increasing movement to expect equal treatment and justice for gays
in all parts of social life, including marriage.
There has been more progress on LGBTQ equality in Canada, where in
2005 Canada became the fourth country in the world to recognize same-sex mar-
riage (same-sex marriage is now recognized in fifteen countries, and civil unions
in another sixteen). Recent legislation and societal norms in Canada have created
a growing acceptance of LGBTQ persons and families with same-sex parents, but
there are still persistent patterns of prejudice and discrimination, including dis-
crimination in the criminal code and hate crimes against LGBTQ persons.
This is an area of significant developing change in laws and values, chal-

lenging many long-held views. It is an area ripe for substantive treatment in social
studies curricula, whether in standard history and civics courses or in social issues
programs.
Religion and Nonreligion
Religious freedom is a constitutionally protected right in both Canada and the

United States. Religious prejudice is another historic tradition in the United States,
even though the colonies were originally a haven for those persecuted for their
religion elsewhere. Each sect, however, established rules and norms that restricted
social freedoms and the freedom of other religions in the name of their own
religion. A current fixation in this area is Islamophobia (Klausen, 2005; Jamal &
Naber, 2008; Sensoy’s chapter in this book). Ghaffar-Kucher (2012) notes a cur-
rent shift: “While racialization continues to be the dominant form of categorizing
individuals and groups, in the case of Pakistani American youth, religion trumps
race, although race, class, and gender are implicated in this process” (p. 31). She
identifies a process of religification, defining people by religion but using preju-
dicial frameworks similar to racialization to create and sustain suspicions about
Muslims. In addition, there is a strong social bias against anti- and nonreligious
ideas such as atheism and agnosticism. We still see outcroppings of anti-Semitism,
anti-Catholicism, anti-Atheism, anti-Mormonism, and others in news reports and
personal comments. Many Americans believe, and much popular political culture
encourages, the idea that the United States is “Christian” and the “wall of separa-
tion of church and state” should not exist, or should be riddled with holes. This
position contributes to discrimination against religions other than Christianity, and
against those citizens who identify as agnostic or atheist.
Persons with Disabilities: Physical, Mental, Economic
Prejudice and discrimination have haunted those individuals who have physical,
mental, or economic disabilities when compared with others. Even the label “dis-
abled” carries an aura of abnormality, despite the fact that no one is actually
“normal” if that means the exact average in all matters, for instance, weight, age,
number of siblings, location, clothing sizes, wealth, IQ, grades, parental age, etc.
In Sparta, children with disabilities were left on a hill to die; in more recent times
these people were hidden away in attics or sent to institutions; more recently,
people with disabilities have been segregated from others by inaccessible building
construction and by school and social policies; and they have been denied employ-
ment and full social participation. Efforts to alter the historic social, economic, and
civic bias against those identified as disabled have been positive, but much remains
to be done (Winzer, 1993; Scully, 2008; Siebers, 2008). For example, The Ameri-
cans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and later laws provide many positive changes,
such as access to buildings for those who have physical difficulty with stairs and
door handles. Similarly, discrimination regarding physical and mental disabilities
associated with schooling has changed as a result of inclusion and mainstreaming
practices in schools (Shevin, 2007, Nelson, Palonsky, and McCarthy, 2013).
Although they are not generally included in the usual list of disabilities, the
poor suffer similar maltreatment, exclusion, and discrimination (Dodson, 2009;
Heathcote et al., 2009; McCarty, 2006). That makes being poor an economic dis-
ability, a lack of social access suffered because of bias against the poor. Although
national discourses include notions of equality before the law and equal opportu-
nity, these are often lacking for people in circumstances of poverty. They do not
have the ability to participate on an equal footing. Even free, public education is
not free when you consider the actual costs to families for full school participation.
The weight of prejudice, with its attendant discriminations, is heavily borne
by those with the least power and influence. Racialization, gender bias, discrimi-
nation against LBGTQ people, persecution of those in minority religious and
antireligious groups, and restrictive acts against the disabled are marks against the
ideals of our developing civilization.
Minding the Gap: Responding to Prejudice through Social Education
It is within our power to close the great gap between professed ideals and our
actual behaviors. One way to resolve the problem would be to alter our ideals, and
restrict justice and equality to a privileged few. Another uncivil way would be to
entirely eliminate any reference to those basic ideals from our worldview, endorsing
the currently powerful to oppress others at will under claims of marketplace ethics,
libertarianism, or principles of social Darwinism. Or we could move toward a form
of meritocracy, where some supposedly neutral agency measures and certifies those
who deserve justice and equality and places the rest in subservient status—an idea
satirized by Michael F. D. Young in The Rise of the Meritocracy (1962). We could
travel the road of many previous tyrants and banish or destroy those who are con-
sidered inferior, threatening, or not in the anointed elite. Infanticide for children
with disabilities in ancient Sparta, headhunting among South Pacific tribes, witch
hunts in old New England, the Holocaust, Cambodian genocide, and other more
recent forms of genocide, constitute examples. These examples push us backward
on the scale of civilization.
Struggles for justice and equality and against prejudice are worthy efforts.
Falling prey to the fears of prejudice-mongers or tyrants is not in the interests of
democratic civilizations or good social studies education. The struggles are global,
as more people in more nations realize the value of democratic ideals, even in
situations where tyranny still rules. The Arab Spring was touted for similar rea-
sons, though no clear path has developed yet from it. The abolition of prejudice
is, however, more than the sum of its academic parts. It is an issue larger than a
legal question, larger than a moral question, larger than a political, economic, or
geographical question. Simply passing laws, preaching sermons, giving speeches,
boycotting stores, protesting, or moving to another place will not resolve the issue.
It incorporates changes in basic values and common behaviors. This makes it an
educational issue and a particularly important topic for social studies.
An issue of such magnitude and negative potential for society should require
increasing emphasis in the social studies curriculum. But the social studies cur-
riculum, with its traditional focus on historical information rather than issues,
often treats prejudice as though it has been resolved, merely a historic artifact.
We offer students information on such topics as slavery, a colonial history of the
sorry treatment of women and religious groups, bias against indigenous peoples,
and immigrants from most countries, internment of Japanese Americans in World
War II, anti-Semitism, race riots, the Brown Decision, and civil rights legisla-
tion. Many students, understandably, assume that these issues are in the past and
that we are now a compassionate, caring democracy—a model for other peoples.
Some conservative writers even claim that we are beyond racism (D’Souza, 1995).
Obviously, there have been some positive changes since the times of vicious race
separation and legal restriction, but serious social, economic, and political obstacles
remain for members of minority groups.
There has been progress; things are better for most people than they were
at the nation’s founding. We applaud those improvements in civilization, but we
recognize how haltingly slow and frustratingly fragile the process has been. Human
grievances, because of racism and prejudice, are fraught with individual sacrifice
and destructive of our nation’s principles and strength. They continue as we strive
toward a better society. The hesitant and twisting path to equality and justice is
a necessary transit to improvements in civilization.
Education is a liberating and progressive activity. Education is liberating
when it frees the mind and spirit from oppressive superstition, myth, and external
control. It is progressive when it is based on a set of ideals that are increasingly
civilizing and inclusive—more equality and justice for more people for more time.
Social studies, properly developed, offers that critical opportunity for the future
generations.
The great tension between claims of equality or justice and the stark reality
of inhumane events in society provides a background against which to examine and
elaborate those ideals, extending them to more people and to more governments.
Prior to World War II, the idea of an international legal challenge to governments
and their leaders for crimes against humanity did not exist, but the crimes did.
That may offer little solace to those who have and will suffer from those crimes,
but offers a glint of light to those in the future, as the ideas become criteria for
behavior. Similarly, prejudice, as depreciating and demoralizing as it is, is less

acceptable in public discourse and less permissible in public action than it was a
century ago. That progress is attributable to people who carried the struggle for-
ward, and it is attributable to the ideals themselves and to enlightened education.
Without the ideals, there would be no criteria against which to measure humanity’s
progress. Without a strong liberating and progressive education, the ideals remain
words in a document and phrases at political conventions. Hope resides with the
young that social practice will approach social ideals; education is the greatest
force for the greatest good—though education can also be abused and misused to
create and sustain prejudice and discrimination. Blind faith education, even when
it is the result of good intentions, can narrow and constrict, offering support for
views that prejudice thrives upon.
Of all the school subjects, social studies is the one that should be most
directed to the matters of prejudice, racialization, biases, and other types of social
oppression. It is the subject most concerned with human ideas, ideals, and practices.
It is also the field most concerned with controversy and the critical examination of
divergent views. Social studies, in its best forms, uses ideas and information from a
variety of disciplines to understand and evaluate conceptions of race and ethnicity.
Prejudicial science contributes to both the problems and the knowledge
of discrimination and prejudice; some early scientific work has contributed to
discrimination, while other scientific information offers corrections to prejudicial
ideas (Pang & Valle, 2004). For example, much of the so-called scientific evidence
about racial differences draws from early racist social science; early editions of now
distinguished journals in psychological measurement sought publishable studies
that demonstrated the inferiority of some racial groups. Much of the work of
Jensen (1969), as well as Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve (1994), argues
some races are naturally inferior in intelligence to others by drawing on data from
standardized test measures, the development of which is rooted in the separation
of races by test scores. Intelligence tests do what they were designed to do, cre-
ate divisions between rich and poor and various ethnic groups, but they may not
actually measure intelligence (see Gould, 1996). Social studies needs to incorporate
critical examination of scientific and pseudo-scientific ideas about peoples, includ-
ing the background and impact of testing itself.
Literature offers opportunities to examine prejudicial thought as well as
protests against these irrationalities. From Little Black Sambo (1923) and The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876/1987) to Native Son (1940/1993) and No-No
Boy (1976), racial literature abounds. Some of it affronts our current sensibilities,
but it is still appropriate for examination of the human condition. The production
and consumption of this literature, as well as the conflicting values it represents, are
of strong interest in a thoughtful social education curriculum. Censorship efforts
to keep students from reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Native Son derive
from wrongheaded right- and left-wing advocates, who ignore the basic purpose
of liberal education. Similarly, political correctness and school speech codes have
provided a contemporary veneer that tries to cover up the social controversy that
accompanies this literature. In addition to the obvious interest a good social studies
program would have in the study of censorship and speech codes that contradict
rights to free speech, the conflict in human values that this literature represents is
also a necessary part of social studies interest (Nelson, 1994).
Enriching social studies education, artistic pursuits such as painting, music,
and sculpture contain both prejudicial content and socially integrative themes—
themes in opposition to prejudice and discrimination. The social studies curriculum
should incorporate the study of prejudice through the arts as well as study of the
arts used in efforts to demonstrate the commonality of humankind. Inquiry via the
arts can assist students in comprehending and assessing racism and other injustices
as well as offering critical examination of the subtlety of some forms of racism.
Social Studies Curriculum
The social studies curriculum examines human enterprise over time and space.
That is well beyond the traditional concept that social studies is merely the study
of “facts” and concepts from the disciplines of history and geography. Time and
space involve much more. School history is usually a self-limiting subject, defined
by traditional historians; it usually follows the work of the powerful and leaves
the powerless invisible and unexamined. School history often covers up or steril-
izes national disgraces in an effort to produce patriotic citizens. History, as taught
in the schools for many generations, reflected a White male superiority tradition;
political, military, and academic leaders were assumed to be White, male, hetero-
sexual, and mostly Christian. Women, members of minority groups, non-Christians
and atheists tended to be marginalized in textbooks and in the curriculum. The
textbooks that have served as the core curriculum for this approach to history,
written mainly by traditional historians, have been required reading with little
critical examination in most social studies classes.
Geography, as taught in the schools, often ignores social interaction and
controversy, cultural and subcultural distinctions and values, and concepts such
as justice and equality. There is a political geography of racism, gender bias, and
other forms of prejudice, but that is not commonly part of the standard school
curriculum. Racism against African Americans in the Southern United States dif-
fers from racism in Canada against Asians, for example. There are fundamental
commonalties, but the perspectives and treatments have differed in different loca-
tions. Prejudice against people from various national origin groups, such as Greeks,
Indians, Italians, Irish, Polish, Mexican, Chinese, Haitian, Vietnamese, and Cuban,
differs in intensity and animosity in locations across North America. Slavery was
not originally based on skin color, but on geography and conquest; the conquered
were the slaves, no matter the skin color or cultural origin. Prejudice regarding
women’s rights, rights which are almost nonexistent in some parts of the world,
can also be expressed through geographic control under religious, governmental,

and subcultural entities. These local and regional patterns of rights and restrictions
should be studied in social studies. Location, location, location is the real estate
sales cry; locations separate people in communities, nations, regions, and hemi-
spheres. Those separations are subject to prejudicial values and actions.
Similarly, the fields of sociology, psychology, economics, political science, law,
philosophy, and anthropology have provided both sustenance and opposition to
discrimination in society. Early anthropological work gave us the racial classifica-
tions, now considered false and misleading, that structured racism. Psychology pro-
vided the means for brainwashing people in support of racial or religious genocide,
mistreatment of LGBTQ people, disability separation, and gender bias. Interpreta-
tions of economics have given support to discrimination that keeps out foreigners
who could take jobs, or prejudices that deny women and minority populations
full participation in the economic sphere. Law has been used to justify and protect
racism, gender bias, religious bigotry, and homophobia in policy and practice. And
philosophy contains rationales for separation into superior and inferior categories.
These same fields, however, provide studies and theories that challenge discrimi-
nation at its base, as well as offering knowledge that can assist in understanding
how discrimination works and how it can be addressed and mitigated. As in the
current anthropological literature, which contradicts a discriminatory definition
of race, contemporary social sciences offer thoughtful examinations of prejudice,
justice, equality, gender and LBGTQ discrimination, disability, and related topics.
This provides significant opportunity for education to address prejudices.
The social sciences, and many other fields, offer information and theories for
social studies education to improve understanding of current and historical knowl-
edge, to open human issues to inquiry, and to provide ideas and information that
should be challenged and tested in social studies classrooms. Solid social studies
education interrelates, integrates, and critically examines knowledge from the social
sciences and other subjects as it takes on the enormous challenge to provide civic
education to all students; and to open critical inquiry into the implications and
practices of society and its values. Thus, it is a responsibility of social studies to
undertake an examination of social knowledge and value dysfunction represented
by contrasts between fundamental American ideals and the effects of prejudice.
Unfortunately, social studies curriculum and instruction has developed a
substantial baggage of dullness, vapidity, absolutism, censorship, and inaccuracy
in its promotion of patriotic nationalism and conservative social values. There are
many reasons for this cloud over social studies, including:
• special interest group pressure on schools and publishers;

• ideological blinders that note social studies as a subject of progressive
education;
• an early linkage to traditionalist historians and history associations;

• lack of professional social studies association leadership;
• isolation of more critically oriented social educators;
• state regulations that mandate certain values or viewpoints on social
issues;
• lack of intellectual depth in teacher education programs;
• lack of depth in undergraduate liberal arts and sciences programs;
• lack of contributions from scholars of color, women, representatives
of diverse religious and LGBTQ communities;
• academic entrenchment of self-superiority and entitlement;
• role of teachers as subservient employees; and
• the broad chilling effect of censorious actions by governments,
boards, and administrators to restrict teachers’ practice and regulate
curriculum content.
These factors contribute to skepticism that social studies can overcome cen-
sorship, student boredom, sterilization of issues, hypocrisy, and pressures to limit
student inquiry into issues (e.g., Apple, 1990; Cherryholmes, 1978; Giroux &
Penna, 1979; Stanley, 1992; Nelson & Fernekes, 1994; Moroz, 1996; Ross, 1997).
Social studies instruction does not need to be insular, boring, and restrictive of
student knowledge. The subject has the capacity—indeed, it has the obligation—to
assist students in developing insightful knowledge about human issues and practice
in critical thinking for addressing them, but it must overcome its own history and
lethargy to accomplish it.
Racialization, gender bias, disability discrimination, and other expressions
of prejudice are prime examples of human issues that deserve social studies treat-
ment—but not in the sterile confines of traditional history or geography Examina-
tion of social studies textbooks and curricula discloses an apparent lack of concern
for justice and equality in the treatment of African Americans, Latinos, Jews,
women, LGBTQ, and other groups (e.g., Allen, 1994; Anti-Defamation League,
1944; Council on Interracial Books for Children, 1982; Gay, 2003; Loewen, 1995;
Perlmutter, 1992). It is also evident that people of Asian and Pacific descent are
virtually unrecognized in the school curriculum (Pang et al., 2011; Pang & Cheng,
1998). Lack of adequate, fair, and critical study in social studies is detrimental to
the basic purposes of social studies: social knowledge, civic education, and critical
thinking. Students of social studies deserve a better education.
Conclusion
Various forms of prejudice envelop society and severely limit our ability to become
the positive society we teach about in schools. Prejudice is a topic of immense
human controversy and impact, historic and contemporary, which requires criti-
cal examination for the sake of human progress. Prejudice continues at a serious
and frightening level. Basic democratic principles are contradicted by the reality
of everyday experience, particularly for persons of color, women, LGBTQ, the
disabled, the poor, and religious minorities. The debilitating irrationality of preju-
dice erodes the core of society. Social studies is the area of the school curriculum
most suited to examine prejudice and to provide knowledge and critical analysis
as a basis for action to combat prejudice. The history of social studies efforts in
this area, however, is mixed. Social studies educators have within their power the
ability to redress past failures.
The fundamental purposes of education—knowledge and critical thinking—
provide a strong rationale for NCSS and for all social studies teachers to examine
their own beliefs about various forms of prejudice and how these attitudes influence
social studies instruction. In addition, social studies educators must critically inves-
tigate the knowledge and values fostered by the curriculum. If the social studies
curriculum continues to ignore, sterilize, excuse, or condone prejudice, the gap
between the idealized American and the actual American experience will only grow.
The continuing history of discrimination through racism and other forms of
prejudice is a dismal reflection on social education. Our society deserves better. It
may be an uphill battle, but one worth fighting because of the civilizing character
of our ideals. It is the responsibility of social studies educators to provide students
opportunities to question and challenge the prevailing and dysfunctional prejudices,
including racism. It is critical that teachers help their students to address these
issues head on with courage, rather than ignoring or superficially covering these
public problems.
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11
The Language of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality

and Youth Experiences in Schools
Lisa W. Loutzenheiser
Introduction
In his 2006 introduction to the third edition of The Social Studies Curriculum,
Ross writes that “[t]he purpose of this book is to present a substantive overview of
the issues in curriculum development and implementation faced by social studies
educators,” and as part of that project, to make “the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-
gendered experience visible in the curriculum” (p. 7). Toward that goal, Jennings
(2006) offers a substantive outline of the lapses in representation in the formal
curriculum of social studies. In this chapter of the new edition, I am going to sug-
gest that what is missing is often known, even if how or what should be embedded
within the curriculum or how issues involving lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit,
intersex, questioning, queer, and/or transgender issues are not always understood
such that they might be raised in a critical, recursive and, not one-off “gay day or
gender day” manner. My goal is to move beyond a statement of what is missing or
how we might add and stir more LGBTQ content into the already existing curricu-
lum, and instead consider what the study of gender, sex, and sexuality might offer
students and educators to think about in relation to the lives of youth in schools.
In contemporary practice, curricular change is often focused on “add and
stir” and equity models (Banks, 2001; Ellsworth, 1999; Ladson-Billings, 1995;
Letts, 1999; Loutzenheiser, 2003; Loutzenheiser & MacIntosh, 2004; Wilson &
Corbett, 2001). “Add and stir” pedagogies create curricula that merely supplement
without contextualizing or building interconnectedness with the rest of the content.
Such lessons are generally developed with a desire for curricular inclusion. It might
be argued that even “add and stir” is a step forward and ought to be applauded; yet
227
228 Lisa W. Loutzenheiser
the scarcity of integration and an overreliance on one-day lessons that are not tied
to the rest of the curriculum result in a lack of analysis in relation to the system or
systemic change. Little of the curricular or pedagogical planning is altered and the
critical analyses are silent. Pedagogies such as this are not aimed toward systemic
change or the disruption of curricular norms.
The end result is often an Othering of the people for whom the curriculum
is purported to be added, and fails to complicate identity or cultural identifications.
Othering functions as a tool of normalizing in that it fixes identity while locating
the Other outside dominant frameworks or dominant curriculum. In order for
dominant norms to exist as fixed, there must be an Other nonnormative body. The
dominant side of a binary cannot function without its Othered half. Perhaps, put
most bluntly, the drive for add and stir sexuality education relies on the Other as
pedagogical trick. By this, I mean that the Other is held up as different from the
good normal and (at times inadvertently framed as) less than. Standardization of
acceptable discussions and lessons about Other bodies only function to concret-
ize these concerns. One current example of this might be the way that bullying
has been pulled into education, where it is often centered on individual students,
which avoids specific mention of homophobic and heteronormative violence and/
or harassment, or other issues such as racism.
The objective of this chapter is to advance a more thoroughgoing discussion
of how sex, sexuality, gender identity, and gender behaviors are constructed and are,
at times, in tension. The chapter has been structured much the way I work with
gender/sex/sexuality in teacher education, high school, and community settings. I
start with that which the participants believe is known and important, beginning
with what Foucault (1990) called “regimes of truth.” From there, I attempt to
complicate the conversation as we progress through multiple readings of sexuality,
sex, and gender, and the ways in which other issues of oppression are part of how
sexuality, sex, and gender are read. It is only then that I move to talk about what
youth experience in schools.
I am arguing that in order to uncover and disrupt the multiple meanings
of gender in the classroom, issues of gender, sex, sexuality, and heteronormativ-
ity benefit from being addressed with ideologically specific and rigorous critical
methods. Therefore, the challenge is not only to reveal the intersectionalities of
gender, sex, sexualities, and heteronormativity, but also to trouble the ways in which
these gendered devices intersect with, and reinforce race, class, and sexualities in
the social studies classroom.1
The purpose of this chapter is not to offer a “bag of tricks” or suggestions for
teaching, but to encourage thinking with a number of perspectives as we consider
these issues together. Your project after that exploration is to take into consid-
eration the contexts where you work and develop locally appropriate responses,
curriculums, and interventions into your settings.
The Language of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality 229
Language of Gender and Sexuality
Definitions are difficult to articulate because at the very moment one writes them
down, one solidifies their meaning. However, when I work with students of all
ages and levels often the first thing that comes up is a discomfort with language
and with not knowing the “right” terms. The problem with focusing on “right-
ness” is that what might be “right” for one person who identifies with a term,
may not be the same definition for another person who identifies similarly. Each
time I teach about gender and sexuality, then, I preface the conversation with the
complicated nature of language and how this complication points toward the ways
in which discourse takes on a meaning of its own through multiple deployments
and usages. This taking on of meaning can be powerful, as when someone states,
“I am X,” but the moment one says, “I am X,” one is actually calling back to
all of the other people throughout history who have said, “I am X,” and all of
their meanings, and the political, social, and linguistic contexts. Derrida (1988)
calls this iterability; this idea is also known as citationality. It’s a useful concept
because it helps trace the ways in which language usage changes over time, and
how discourses are picked up for multiple, including political, uses.
For example, the term queer was once used as a pejorative, a slur, when
speaking of the bodies that were then categorized as “homosexual.” However, in
the 1980s when political movements began to form around HIV/AIDS advocacy
and funding, young gay and lesbian identified people began to feel a need to
show that they were a different, and in their eyes, more radical movement than
the gay and lesbian rights movement that had come before. The difference they
were attempting to mark, among others, was centered on how sexuality and
gender were more fluid and complicated than the identity marker of “I am gay”
could hold. That is, if one began to understand that one’s sexual orientation
(attraction) was not always solidified as wholly gay or straight, and that those
attractions might not stay the same (as if attraction itself can be contained in
only two or so boxes), then perhaps there was a way to mark to the world that
they were not speaking of their metaphorical parents’ gay rights movement, but
one that was drawing upon the works of then-new thinkers such as Michel
Foucault (1978) who pointed toward the constructed nature of sex, gender, and
sexuality.
However, each time the term queer is used in this “new” way, it is reusing the
old term (the pejorative queer) in order to make a claim for a new usage. That is,
in its utterance it is a citation of all previous performances (Butler, 1993) thereby
reifying old queer each and every time the new term was used. This is not to say
that reuse (or reification) is avoidable; it’s not, because citationality is a part of
how discourse functions and evolves as it never completely leaves prior meanings
behind.
Therefore, in the reclaiming of language such as queer in order that it be

utilized for political good and to claim a space for a community that has been
marginalized and harassed through the employment of a slur, one still reifies
the very negative connotation that the word once held. Again, the point here is
not that this is bad or can be rectified; rather, it is unavoidable and points out
both the very power of language and the inescapability of the ways in which
language and discourses are impossible to move outside of, or completely leave
behind.
Much of this is to say that inasmuch as I offer any definitions of any terms,
they are set within 2014 Canadian and U.S. usages and, importantly, harken
to the ways that language was used before and how it might be utilized in the
future. This cycle is unbreakable, but not without utility. This type of tracing
of the repurposing of language points to the historicity of words and their uses
and offers educators an opportunity to map language with students, opening up
spaces for them to understand how discourses are formed and reformed. This, in
turn, offers a pedagogical avenue into the social, cultural, and historical moments
of those usages and the power dynamics (personal and structural) that are
in play.
Returning to the term queer, when first repurposed or reused the desire was
for the term to stand in opposition to lesbian and gay, to be less essentialized and
solidified as a thing made and unchangeable. However, identities markers began
to proliferate from gay, to gay and lesbian, to gay, lesbian, bisexual, to lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender, to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or
questioning, to lesbian gay, bisexual, transgender, two spirit, queer or question-
ing and intersex, and onward. When the terminology went from LGBT when
to LGBTQ, there was confusion in what the Q was symbolizing. What it queer
or questioning? Many who employed queer as a reaction to the identity labeling
were conflicted about its incorporation in the identity label alphabet soup since
its usage as a solidified identity pulled it back into the identity politics that many
were trying to “move beyond.” This points out the difficulty of moving beyond
language, as more mainstream usage of language supports the status quo of iden-
tity and works to pull back the more progressive language into a more recogniz-
able, and often individualistic, form. As this occurred, queer began to be utilized
as an umbrella term when people did not want to uses the unwieldy LGBTTQI
moniker.
The use of queer as all-encompassing had two consequences, it essentializes
the experiences, politics, and differences between different communities and flat-
tened them out into queer (I will speak to the differences a bit later), and secondly,
it removes from the conversation, or at least muddied it, the notion that queer
might be different from a solidified identity marker. However, just as when queer,
as a reclaimed phrase, hailed the pejorative queer, the umbrella queer also has the
tendrils of the more political repurposed queer. And within different communities
queer is utilized as both an umbrella term and as its more fluid sibling.
Keep this in mind as we work through some of the language of import to
this discussion, knowing that the terms themselves are contested and tension-filled,
are always changing and being repurposed. An interesting question to explore is
why is there a drive to take back repurposed language and remove its nonnorma-
tive desires?
When I begin in a class, I often ask for all of the words that we think about
when speaking of sexuality, or sometimes in a university course I will ask for all
the words used to describe gender and sexuality, to complicate the conversation
immediately. Oftentimes the list looks something like this:
Gay
Homosexual
Cross-dresser
Lesbian
Bisexual
Transsexual
Intersex
Transvestite
Transgender
If they don’t already appear, I attempt to add Two-Spirit, asexual, and pansexual
as well.
Sometimes the slurs are also voiced, and fag, dyke, homo, lezzie, trannie
also appear. Often this is uncomfortable and/or engenders some uncomfortable
laughter. It is important to note that long before any discussion along these lines,
my students and I have spent a time talking about what hate speech is and what
is acceptable in a classroom setting. Prior to this conversation, teachers and stu-
dents will often talk about what the class needs for a safer conversation and talk
about the fact that we will put certain words on the board or in the air. As a
class we discuss the ways in which we want to voice difficult words in the spirit
of understanding the power of language, to be cautious, and to think about why
words that are pejoratives might be necessary or important to discuss rather than
merely fun to say because they are taboo.2
Definitions and a View from the West
In order to get common usages out into the air, I ask students in the room to
state the definitions they know. Generally, they look something like the following:
Homosexual: Old word for gay. (I use this as an opportunity to talk

about how terms are coined by the medical community and that,
in this case, the move from homosexual to gay was a clear use of
language to reject the medicalized homosexual, who was thought
to be mentally ill.)
Gay: Same sex desire or attraction between two men.
Lesbian: Same sex desire or attraction between two women.
Bisexual: A person who has desire or attraction to both men and

women.
We move fairly quickly through a definition of asexual as those who do not expe-
rience sexual attraction but may experience romantic attraction. However, there
is often confusion at the idea that romantic attraction and sexual attraction can
work along different planes.
I, then, discuss the information outlined above about language, history, and
the use of the term queer. At this point there is often silence, as students struggle
with language with which they are unfamiliar.
I take advantage of this moment to work with how gender, sex, and sexuality
are complicated and overlapping concepts that are constructed rather than “natural”
or “innate.” Up to this point, what has been defined as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer,
and asexual has been focused on notions of sexual or romantic attraction. This
is not the same as talking about one’s sex, gender identity, or gender expression/
behaviors. In order to begin the conversation in a more concrete realm, I generally
ask: What is the first question often asked when someone is pregnant or a child is
born? Is it a boy or a girl? Through this question we understand the sex of a child
to be whether it is a biological boy or a biological girl. We take this “fact” at face
value. How we understand the child’s sex sets up an entire range of appropriate
gender behaviors for both parent and child in this particular historical time and
place (pink for girls, blue for boys, trucks for boys, dolls for girls). However what
if sex is not ever sex? And the behaviors assigned—that is, masculinity and femi-
ninity—are constructed or made up to conform to normativity?
I query students about their familiarity with the term Intersex. Most are not.
I then wonder aloud if anyone knows the term hermaphrodite. Often one or two
students will state their understanding as someone who has both male and female
genitals. Hermaphrodite is a term that was adapted from the Greek mythical fig-
ure, Hermaphroditus, who was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, born a boy but
transformed into an “androgyne” by joining with Salmacis, a water nymph. The
medical profession took up the term hermaphrodite in the late 19th century to find
medical solutions to those with “abnormal” sex anatomies. This began more than
a century of many medical practitioners attempting to pathologize those whose
anatomies did not fit within strict categories of male or female. Beginning in the
1950s, there was a push to surgically alter babies born with indeterminate anato-
mies in order that they might be raised as male or female, rather than allowing
them to develop without intervention.
I introduce students to the Intersex Society of North America (2008a), which
states “the mythological term ‘hermaphrodite’ implies that a person is both fully
male and fully female. This is a physiologic impossibility” (para 1). The preferred
term, at least among most at this particular juncture, is intersex, which describes
a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual
anatomy that does not seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male (Intersex
Society of North America, 2008b). For example, a person may be born with geni-
tals that seem to be in between the usual male and female types—a child assigned
the designation of female at birth may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or
lacking a vaginal opening, or a child assigned the designation of male at birth may
be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has
formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that
some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY chromosomes
(Intersex Society of North America, 2008b).
Returning to notions of normality, intersex is always understood in relation
to the construction of what is considered normal anatomy or normal understand-
ings of sex. The drive to fix it derives from a desire to have babies match that which
is considered normal, to the point of forcing a child through surgeries, hormones,
etc. to live as the sex doctors and/or sometimes parents decide the child ought be
most like. What is most important in this drive for the norm, is that one in one
hundred people have bodies that differ from standard understandings of male and
female, with one in one thousand births receiving surgery to normalize their genital
appearance to dominant perceptions of genital appearance. Intersex, I suggest to
students, productively throws notions of the normality of sex as being only female
or male into question.
An exploration of the meaning of sex and understandings of intersex put into
focus the possibility that if sex is not sex, might it be possible that sex, like gender,
is both material and constructed, and is “made” or mediated through language and
how it is utilized? That is, bodies become (authentically) male or female through
the ways we understand physicality to be expressed and how gender is performed.
Performativity is not an act or a conscious working (although it can be) of what it
is to be male/masculine or female/feminine. Rather, it is within the relationships
among a word or concept, such as “girl,” and how we expect to “see” girl, and how
a girl actually acts. We rely upon the understandings of utterances made as coherent
with the thing or concept because we have constructed understandings that when
we say “teenager” we, in this context, know what that signifies. Similarly, we, as
educators, know teenager because and only because our linguistic system, and its
use and reuse has told us that a teenager is a young person between thirteen and
nineteen years of age. That is, we are reliant upon understandings of language and
its implications as unchanging in order to make meanings and sense of words,
symbols, and the performance of words such as gender and sex.
Utilizing the purposeful confusion that intersex offers, I ask students, What
of those who do not think of themselves and/or see themselves as fitting within
the sex or gender identities assigned at birth? This is where the concept of trans-
gender, or genderqueer is discussed. Cisgender is the terminology for those whose
gender identity aligns with one’s physical body. Transgender and genderqueer3 folks
see their gender identity and physical body as being different from cisgender. A
thoroughgoing analysis of the very complicated spaces of naming within, among,
and across the trans* spectrum4 is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it
is important to recognize that such tensions exist and how one defines one’s own
gender identity is part of the naming of trans*. That is, gender identity centers
on how one see’s oneself, and/or how you consider yourself in relation to gender
norms. Yet, this naming and purported “seeing one’s self ” is always within the
context of iterability and the realization that there is no “I am” that stands outside
of the language and discursive systems that helps us and others make sense of the
“I am” statement.
Returning to trans*, I suggest to students that it is rarely as simple as a
trans* person feeling as if they are “stuck in the wrong body” as much of the early
literature on trans* issues wanted to suggest. Although some who identify as trans
transition from the designation assigned to them at birth to the other designation
(MTF or FTM), many others who may identify as trans* or genderqueer will never
choose medical interventions or will decide to take hormones but never plan on
surgery. There is not one way to be trans* or genderqueer, but it is important to
understand that it relates to how one “see’s oneself ” (with the caveat above) and
that understanding is not the same as those who are cisgender.
Much of the research to date on the experiences of “LGBT” youth in educa-
tion, bullying, and/or focused on health and risk lumps the experiences of trans*
and genderqueer youth together with lesbian, gay and bisexual youth. That is, it
presupposes that sexual attraction is the same as gender identity. This points out
the assumptions and difficulties of categories that often become classifications for
the ease of those who need to categorize for analysis, surveillance, laws, or exclu-
sions. In educational settings, these often become one-size-fits-all homogeneous
“solutions” to the problem of the LGB and T body.
Some youth who identify as trans* and/or genderqueer also identify as LGB
or queer and some do not. One’s gender identity is not the same as one’s sexual
attractions (often thought of as sexual orientation). That is, one may consider
oneself trans* but be sexually or romantically attracted to the same sex with which
one identifies or predominately identifies, and therefore also identify as gay, asexual,
lesbian, or queer. Others would describe themselves as heterosexual. Bisexual, in
relation to those who are trans* or are attracted to those who are trans*, becomes
more interesting as a term because many who identify as trans* or are attracted
to those along a number of sex and/or gender-based designations choose the term
pansexual. Those who use the term pansexual are purposely disrupting the idea that
there are only two sexes (male and female) and that one is attracted to both (as in
bisexual). Rather, there are a variety of sexualities and gender identities and one’s
attractions may fall among any number of identities.
Some First Nations and Native American people suggest that their gender
identities were constructed differently precolonization and that there was greater
acceptance of gender nonconforming people at that time. Anguksuar (Richard
LaFortune) explains:
The term two-spirit . . . originated in Northern Algonquin dialect and

gained first currency at the Third Annual Spiritual Gathering of Gay
and Lesbian Native people that took place near Winnipeg in 1990.
What we, who chose this designation, understood is that niizh manitoag
(two-spirits) indicates the presence of both a feminine and a masculine
spirit in one person. (as cited in Driskill, 2010, p. 72)
Not all Indigenous peoples based in what is now the United States or Canada had
precolonial teachings about two-spirit, nor do all Canadian and U.S. Indigenous
peoples employ the term. Similarly, not all who identify as Two-Spirit, identify
as trans*. However, as Justice (2010) suggests, the designation is “a reminder that
sexual queer bodies are ambiguously dangerous, especially when they also challenge
racial hierarchy, and should therefore be hidden” (p. 2).
None of this is to suggest that transgender or two-spirit are any more of a
solidified category that “truly” exists than any other identity construction. Certainly
the continued fractioning and claiming/reclaiming of identity constructs as the
method through which to gain greater understanding, or to be better understood,
is misguided at best. For example, people who identify as Two-Spirit, are point-
ing to crucial interconnections between gender, sexuality, and race. This speaks
to the overall concerns of this chapter and the reliance on identity categories in
educational settings. However, even as this raises concerns, if the constructions
of LGBT or LGBTTIQ are going to be utilized, then educators and researchers
must not only understand what is meant by certain identity markers, but also not
conflate the experiences of all students who might identify or be identified under
the umbrella terms.
The Trope of Masculinity and Femininity
If sex is not sex, and gender is not gender, then the next question I ask students
is, How do we make sense of and/or disrupt the masculinity/femininity binary?
The notion of gender expression or behaviors incorporates how one displays one’s
gender on a particular day or how one aligns with and acts out one’s perception
of gender. Certainly, societal expectations, regulations, and norms come into play
when one “shows or aligns” one’s self. What is challenging here is to think with the
idea of how we “choose” to act out masculinity and/or femininity in a particular
time or moment, all the while taking into consideration that conceptions of mas-
culinity and femininity are formed not by individuals but by the culture, politics,
etc. of a culture or community. Masculinity and femininity are only understood
as existing because we, as a society, agree on what is recognizable as a masculine
or feminine behavior or expression. These norms of masculinity and femininity
are then shored up by all of us, with the understanding that context, cultures,
and communities are key, especially in relation to the norms of masculinity and
femininity, which vary from culture and society to culture and society. Hence, the
heading above that these understandings are a “View from the West.”
As I work through these terms and ideas with both students and you, the
reader, I hope that gender and sex become ambiguous and contested. Certainly,
they are no longer easily distinguishable, and some theorists argue that these ought
not be the subject of dichotomous or binary constructions (Britzman, 1998; Butler,
1989). Butler (1993; 2004), for example, argues that it is impossible to separate
gender from sex, sex from gender, and gender or sex from sexuality, and equally
unworkable are attempts to fundamentally erase binary definitions that presume
a primal biological sex. Utilizing sex and sexuality as terms independent from each
other, and from gender, not only operates in, and sets out, the boundaries as a
norm, but functions as part of a system or practice that both regulates what is
normal in relation to gender identity, gender behaviors, and sexual attraction. This
(re)produces what is acceptable in relation to gender, sex, and sexuality through
its very regulatory nature. What is male or female, in the ways that we think of
as biological becomes an ideal that can never be made real, but is articulated,
circulated, and rearticulated through bodies that attempt to, and are forced to,
adhere to an impossible set of gender norms.
Uncritically accepting constructions of masculinity and femininity also regu-
late how race is performed and perceived as well. I am suggesting that how proper
masculinity and femininity are written on a body exemplifies how masculinities/
femininities, conceptions of race, and sexuality come together to regulate “appropri-
ate” racial and gender norms. Historically, the bodies of people of color have been
constructed as different from whites in terms of gender conformity and appropri-
ateness. Either they are “less than,” which is not masculine or feminine enough or
they are “simultaneously, cast as hyper masculine, as sexually aggressive . . . thus
black men were depicted as rampaging sexual beasts, women carnivorously carnal,
and gay men as sexually insatiable” (Kimmel, 2000, p. 217). In similar ways,
Asian American/Canadian men are represented as being asexual, because they are
perceived as not conforming to how a (white) man would or ought perform. If
a man is not in the image of this imaginary man, then he has to be placed out-
side of what is manly; that is, asexual. Asian American/Canadian women, on the
other hand, are often viewed as functioning as an object of men’s desire. More
recently, Asian American and Canadian women have also been portrayed in a new
role of “Dragon Mother,” who, in her unreasonably high expectations of achieve-
ment by her child, is un-White motherly. She is portrayed as cold, unfeeling, and
unnaturally competitive, not the warm, nurturing mother of the white American/
Canadian imaginary. In this light, the norm against which one’s gender identity
and behaviors, sexuality, and their performances are measured against is that of the
normed dominant culture, which brings pressure to bear for gender (and through
that racial and vice versa) assimilation or conformity.
Experiences of LGBAQP and/or TTI Youth in School Settings
By working through the complex interplay and distinctions among and between
sex, gender identities, sexualities/attractions, and gender behaviors before discuss-
ing the teaching of issues involving human rights, discrimination, heterosexism,
homophobia with all their own students, I hope to make complex what before may
have seemed like commonsense definitions. This opens up space for the second
part of the work I am attempting, that is, to discuss the experiences of lesbian,
gay, bisexual, asexual, queer, pansexual and/or trans*, Two-Spirit, intersex youth in
school settings and how the ways youth are understood is significant to how issues
surrounding LGBAQP and/or TTI are approached in school settings.5
It is not unimportant to expose the high rates of suicide, drug use, and/or
lower school achievement among some LGBAQP and/or TTI youth. However, a
focus on youth risk factors is problematic as it fails to recognize that not all youth
are at risk, and that many youth are healthy, happy, successful in school, and are
leaders in their communities in spite of a school climate that tolerates homophobic
and heteronormative harassment.
Problematizing “at risk” is productive as it exposes the ways in which “demo-
graphic criteria, such as sexual orientation, do not automatically imply suicide
risk” (Rutter & Soucar, 2002, p. 297), meaning that statistics do not always offer
substantiation for an overly broad group hypothesis. Other studies suggest that
concerns about suicidal behavior remain, reporting that approximately 28 percent of
bi and gay young men report attempting suicide (Remafedi, French, Story, Resnick,
& Blum, 1998) and youths with same-sex orientation are more than twice as likely
as their same-sex peers to attempt suicide (Russell & Joyner, 2001).
However, the overwhelming majority of sexual minority youths—85 percent
of males and 72 percent of females who identify as LGB report no suicidal feelings
at all. Understanding that the linkages between sexual orientation and suicide are
less clear-cut than generally supposed is one example of the ways in which risk
and statistics research has begun to establish a more multifaceted analysis, which
may point the reader toward a more complex understanding of LGBAQP and/
or TTI students.
Therefore, as the statistics are outlined below, it is also important to keep in
mind that statistics are manipulable, often reliant on a pathologized and “at risk”
youth, and discuss youth as an essentialized, rather than multiply oppressed groups
who exceed bounded identities in myriad ways. That is, youth are never just youth,
never only LGBAQP and/or TTI, but claim and reject multiple identities that
intersect with, complicate, and refute these designations. I am arguing that it is
important to become aware of the reported rates of risk for youth in schools and
still be able to problematize the overreliance on discourses of “at risk” to motivate
educators to act.
My focus, therefore, is not on the “risk” of the youth but on the “risk” of
the schools. That is, how do those youth who identify with or are perceived to
be LGBAQP and/or TTI, experience school spaces? In the most recent Gay, Les-
bian, Straight Educator’s Network (GLSEN) study in the United States (Kosciw,
Greytak, Bartkiewicz, Boesen, & Palmer, 2012), four out of five LGBT students
reported being verbally harassed, with two in five reporting physical harassment
and nearly 20 percent reporting having been actually physically assaulted at school
in the previous year because of their sexual orientation. Sixty-four percent of LGBT
students stated that they had been verbally harassed, 27 percent stated that they
had been physically harassed, and 12 percent stated that they had been physically
assaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression. LGBT students
routinely (85%) heard “gay” used in a negative way (e.g., “that’s so gay”) and 71
percent heard homophobic slurs frequently or often at school. More than six in
ten LGBT students (64%) reported feeling unsafe at school because of their sexual
orientation; and more than four in ten (44%) felt unsafe because of their gender
expression. Eighty percent of transgender students reported feeling unsafe at school
because of their gender expression.
Youth also noted that they felt invisible or isolated at school (Mudrey &
Medina-Adams, 2006; Rudoe, 2010) and that schools are spaces of near-constant
heternormative messages in both the hallways and lunchrooms as well as the hid-
den and official curriculum in classrooms (Ferfolja, 2007; Nixon & Givens, 2007).
However, teachers and other school staff do have an impact on heterosexist and
homophobic school environments (Hong & Espelage, 2012; Taylor, Peter, & with
McMinn, 2011). In the GLSEN study (Kosciw et al., 2012), 77 percent of all
LGBTQ students who felt there were no supportive school staff felt unsafe because
of sexual orientation, as opposed to 53 percent who felt unsafe when there were
supportive staff. While 53 percent is still too high, a supportive staff can make a
difference. Similarly, one-half of students without access to supportive school staff
felt unsafe because of gender expression, which dropped to approximately one-third
when there were six or more supportive staff at a school. Supportive staff mem-
bers included those who intervened when biased remarks were made; however, 71
percent of students reported that staff intervened never or only some of the time
(as opposed to often or mostly) when homophobic remarks or negative remarks
were made about gender expression.
The first national school climate study in Canada (Taylor et al., 2011) report-
ed similar findings; however, this study breaks down the experiences of trans*
and LGBQ youth and youth of color. Interestingly, they also found that almost
three-quarters of all students reported hearing expressions such as “that’s so gay”
every day. Approximately one-half of all students stated that they heard comments
such as “fag” and “dyke” every day in school. Sadly, 10 percent of youth who
identified as LGBTQ in this study heard homophobic comments from teachers
on a daily or weekly basis, with trans-identified students reporting the highest
incidence at 17 percent. Approximately 18 percent of all LGBTQ students heard
teachers use gender-related or transphobic statements daily or weekly. More than
96 percent of all the LGBTQ students in the study (99% trans, 98% female sexual
minority, and 96% male sexual minority)6 reported hearing negative language about
gender and sexual orientation at school on a daily or weekly basis. When thinking
through the experiences of Aboriginal and other youth of color, they are likely
different from other LGBTQ youth. According to the Canadian study, youth
of color, both LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ, are less likely than white students to
identify teachers or staff members who are supportive of LGBTQ students (48%
knew of none, compared to 38% of Aboriginal and 31% of Caucasian youth,
LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ combined.) This suggests that Aboriginal and other
youth of color are likely to experience greater isolation and enjoy less access to
support than their peers.
Taylor and her colleagues in Canada found that the two most unsafe spaces at
school were physical education change rooms and school washrooms. Interestingly,
this held true for both LGBTQ youth and youth with LGBTQ parents (42–49%),
in comparison to 28–30 percent of other youth. In looking more closely at the
data, they also found that students who identify as female and LGBQ or trans
felt more unsafe (than male sexual minority youth) in “sex”-segregated school
change rooms and washrooms, with 59 percent of female identified sexual minority
students stating that they felt unsafe in school change rooms, and 52 percent of
trans students feeling unsafe in both spaces. What is interesting here is that the
popular perception is that gay males (or those perceived to be gay) are the most
likely to feel unsafe or experience homophobic, heteronormative, or transphobic
harassment at school.
While these statistics are both damning and convincing, I return to the con-
cerns about looking at youth as the risk factor here, rather than the schools. When
thinking through risk it is easier to see the child as the thing in need of fixing
or saving. This is problematic on a number of fronts: one, it views the youth as
victims; two, this victimology assumes a lack of agency on the part of youth; and
three, it suggests that discussion centering on issues of importance in relation to

LGBAQP and/or TTI peoples is only of import to LGBAQP and/or TTI youth
and teachers; and four, it may encourage one-size-fits-all educational solutions.
While youth experience harassment, violent language and slurs, and an
unwelcome school environment, they are not victims in need of saving. Although
they may be targets of an unwelcoming and dangerous school environment, many
youth are successful students and are agents of change in both their own schools
and their larger communities. To paint them as victims removes their ability to
act and advocate for themselves and others and flattens out their experiences to a
one-dimensional caricature in need of fixing.
Whole-school planning and the inclusion of thoroughgoing (rather than
one-day) and recursive discussions and activities that address school climate, het-
eronormativity, intersectionalities and homo- and transphobia, especially in social
studies classrooms, offer the opportunity to engage in deeply critical examinations
of gender, sex, and sexualities, which are important to all students, as all students
and teachers are subject to regulation in regard to gender expression, gender identi-
ties and sexualities.
Because schools are complicated spaces with myriad issues and concerns, it
is not surprising that school boards and administrators reach for prepackaged or
easy solutions to major problems. However, this can lead to responses such as an
add-and-stir “gay day” in the name of curriculum inclusion, or the establishment
of a Gay-Straight Alliance to “solve” the problem. (For more on the GSAs and their
overreliance on youth and queer teachers to resolve the problem of school climate,
see MacIntosh, 2007 and Mayo, 2004.)
Where Do We Go from Here?
One question I often hear from teachers and students is: How can I educate myself
enough in LGBAQP and/or TTI issues to begin to feel as if I can teach with and
about these issues? I will offer a few suggestions here and hope this will encourage
you to look beyond them to your own communities. Certainly, the Internet is a
useful place to find information. Organizations such as GLSEN (www.glsen.org)
and EGALE (www.egale.ca) offer introductory materials (including some cited
in this chapter), which constitute wonderful resources for teachers and research-
ers. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) (www.glaad.
org) offers materials on homophobia and heterosexism in the media. Teaching for
Tolerance (www.tolerance.org), despite its use of tolerance in the title,7 is another
excellent resource.
Similarly, online and local bookstores have multitudes of books on the his-
tories of LGBAQP and/or TTI peoples across the world. There are hundreds of
excellent children’s and young adult books that are useful and accessible for adults.
Going to your local children’s bookstore, if one exists in your community, and
speaking with knowledgeable booksellers can open up a whole new world of adult
and children’s books.
However, what is critical here is that educators begin to look at and under-
stand their own communities. What LGBAQP and/or TTI organizations are in
your area or town, or in the nearest city? Are there book or poetry readings, plays,
film festivals, or other cultural events that incorporate or highlight LGBAQP and/
or TTI communities? If there are, attend these events and learn more. One word
of caution, if you go, attend respectfully and listen more than participate until
you feel that you are able to do so with a fulsome understanding of the issues
and interests of the community. The communities are generally very welcoming
of those who educate children and want to learn more and/or address issues of
school and school climate better.
Look to see if community organizations and nonprofits in your area have
speakers’ bureaus or workshops for teachers and/or youth. Attend a workshop or
talk to the executive director or education director to see what they offer and how
it will fit in with your school and community. Talk to your administrators to see
if the organization would be welcome at your school. If not, attend workshops
yourself and talk to other like-minded teachers about how to bring this work into
your schools.8 These are just a few suggestions on how to begin the process of
thinking with these issues; your project is to take this work and decide where you
wish to go with it. The project is yours.
Notes
1. I am quite cognizant of the limitations of this list, both in terms of repeat-
ing the very categories I am attempting to blur and in its silences. Issues of disability are
not addressed in this paper, not because they are not important but because they are not
addressed. I have made the decision not to include in a laundry list of oppressions as if I
were signifying inclusion by placing this very complicated issue on a list.
2. This is particularly necessary and important with younger students.
3. Transgender or genderqueer is not the same as drag queens/kings who used to
be called, usually pejoratively, transvestites. Those who perform drag can identify anywhere
along gender identity and sexuality spectrums but choose to perform as the sex they were
not assigned at birth.
4. Trans* is employed as a way to recognize the wide diversity within gender
identities.
5. I will utilize this awkward designation throughout the rest of the chapter to call
attention to the variety of identities I hope to highlight, and also to problematize the very
act of identity constructions as always incomplete and overly solidified. LGBAQP and/
or TTI denotes lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, queer, and pansexual and trans*, two-spirit
and intersex. However when discussing literature I will utilize the designations the authors
select.
6. A reminder here that I am using the identity language of the study here.
7. Tolerance is a problematic word in relation to diversity, social justice, and differ-
ence. To tolerate someone is to barely contain one’s indifference or dislike, which is quite
different from accepting, respecting, or affirming.
8. You will notice that I have chosen not to focus on fears of parental backlash
in this chapter. While this is a real concern, it happens far less often than most educators,
especially student teachers, assume, and if you have begun to make connections to the
LGBAQP and/or TTI communities in your own area, have educated yourself and talked
to other teachers and administrators, you will be aware of the potential for backlash and
likely be more than ready to face any parental concerns.
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Part III
The Social Studies Curriculum in Practice

12
Making Assessment Work for

Teaching and Learning1
Sandra Mathison
Assessment often seems like something that is done to you; this is true whether
you are a teacher or a student. Many teachers believe their work (what is taught
and how) is defined by others, and this belief extends to assessment practices.
Both novice and experienced teachers must resist external pressures and defini-
tions of the best way(s) to assess student learning and their own teaching, and
imagine assessment that is pedagogically sound and supports a democratic vision
of public schooling.
Disciplinary content and child/adolescent development are at the heart of
teaching and learning, but absent good assessment teaching is a one-way street.
Assessment is the ingredient that turns teaching and learning into an interaction.
This chapter situates assessment practices historically and politically, and provides
a framework for assessment that promotes positive relationships among teachers,
students, and parents while respecting the democratic ideals of public education.
Perennial Dilemmas in Assessment
Social studies teachers, like all teachers, struggle with the contrast and contradic-
tions between traditional assessments of student knowledge and skills, such as
multiple- and forced-choice tests, and performance-based and authentic assessments
of learning. We know that traditional tests are inadequate for many purposes, but
increased accountability demands from government authorities encourage the use
of those very same traditional tests—easily scored multiple choice standardized
tests. This brief description of technical and political assessment issues is meant to
facilitate dialogue and decisions. Understanding these issues as perennial dilemmas
247
248 Sandra Mathison
helps ground our assessment practices in teachers’ professional knowledge, not

simply the dictates of various external authorities.
Briefly, these issues are:
1. Central versus local control: This is a perennial problem in any

educational reform, including assessment. A move to performance
assessment intensifies the tension by calling for a more active teach-
er and student role in assessment, and privileges local prerogatives
over curricular content and pedagogy. At the same time, centralized
control over assessment increases as governments demand more
accountability at the district, school, and classroom levels. Debate
and often tension about who has authority over social studies cur-
riculum and assessment are inevitable.
2. Adding-on versus reformulation: New forms of assessment are often
adopted in addition to those assessments already administered by
the district, state, and/or other agencies. While government author-
ities assert the need for outcomes-based high-stakes testing, there is
little consideration of how this crowds out local, authentic assess-
ments that facilitate teaching and learning. The testing burden is
already too great in schools, and serious interest in good assessment
demands reconsideration of the whole assessment program.
3. Reality versus the ideal: There will never be enough resources (espe-
cially time) to create perfect assessments and perfect social studies
curricula. This dilemma is particularly significant given that good
performance assessments, especially those that are authentic, must
be created at the local level, which places demands on the time
and talents of an already overworked and undervalued teaching
corps. The ideal cannot be realized, but that should not dissuade
efforts to improve.
4. Disciplines/activities versus goals/objectives: So much of what counts
as school knowledge has become fossilized, making it hard to
discard, especially if it is easy to assess. While what is currently
taught, and by what means, may be perfectly appropriate for a
new social studies, it must be at least open to question in face
of considerations about appropriate goals and objectives for social
studies teaching and learning.
5. Political versus technical solution: Assessment is a political, social,
and technical act. Balancing politics with technical acumen is criti-
cal to avoid coopting assessment for crass political ends or in the
name of technical sophistication.
Making Assessment Work for Teaching and Learning 249
In this chapter, these issues will be alluded to from the perspective of encour-
aging authentic assessment in social studies teaching and learning. These dilemmas
occur within a context in which teachers are drawn into multiple roles in their
assessment practices: guiding student learning; mentoring students; maintaining
records of student achievement; reporting student achievement to students, parents,
the school administration, and the state; and developing curriculum and instruc-
tion. These roles create conflicts for teachers as they struggle to serve the needs
of their students, to adhere to what they believe are sound pedagogical principles,
and to meet external accountability demands (Mathison & Freeman, 2003).
Putting Assessment in Historical Context
In schools, as in other social institutions, efficiency is highly valued. Testing has

been a mark of efficiency in the educational system, and in spite of the perfor-
mance assessment movement in the 1990s the current neoliberal era has sustained
the enthusiasm for standardized traditional testing in schools and as an instrument
of educational reform. Over the past fifty years repeated waves of educational
reform (such as James B. Conant’s comprehensive high school but meritocratic
postsecondary education, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965,
the basic skills and minimum competency movement of the seventies and early
eighties, the passage of No Child Left Behind, and value-added teacher evaluation)
have involved the use of tests (Linn, 2000).
Large-scale standardized testing programs have been a technological response
to the ever-increasing numbers of people taking tests and the increased emphasis on
using test scores as policy instruments (Madaus, 1993). Historically, the develop-
ment of testing has been a series of changes, each responding to a contemporary
constraint on testing, each of which enhanced the efficiency of testing—that is, the
ability to test more people at less cost, in less time. For example, in the mid-19th
century, Horace Mann replaced the Boston Schools’ oral examinations with writ-
ten examinations that “allowed examiners to pose an identical set of questions
simultaneously, under similar conditions, in much less time to a rapidly expand-
ing student body, thereby producing comparable scores” (Madaus, 1993, p. 17).
Early in the 20th century, to overcome the unreliability of scoring essay tests, the
multiple choice test item was created. In 1955, Lindquist’s invention of the optical
mark sense scanner combined with the use of multiple choice test items launched
the developments in large-scale testing over the past sixty years.
While these technical developments in testing and measurement increased
the efficiency of testing, concomitant developments in the uses of testing occurred.
Sometimes these technological changes were intended to facilitate certain uses and
sometimes new uses were made possible by the changes. An example of the former
is Horace Mann’s not very concealed intention of getting rid of certain headmasters
250 Sandra Mathison
in the Boston Schools by introducing written examinations. By using common

written examinations, Mann reasoned, any differences in student scores could be
attributable to nothing other than teachers’ ability. If poor performance occurred,
this was reason for dismissal. Mann thought it likely that those headmasters who
were resisting his attempts to abolish corporal punishment would have the low-
est scores! An example of the latter type of use has been the ever-increasing use
of testing as a policy implementation strategy to control curricular content and
pedagogy in schools (Madaus, 1988; Mathison, 1992). In the search for greater
efficiency, it is doubtful that measurement experts saw testing’s potential as a means
of curricular control, but the power of efficient testing became apparent. A good
historical example of this is the New York State Regents Examinations, which
control the secondary education of all students in New York State.
Not all technological changes in testing have been embraced by the edu-
cational community, even when these changes add efficiency. A good example
of this is the matrix sampling strategy used by the U.S. National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) for reporting on achievement in American schools.
Matrix sampling, a strategy that minimizes the testing burden for individuals and
the system as a whole, allows for fairly good system-wide indicators of achievement.
Matrix sampling has not been widely adopted, though, even when educational
policymakers profess to be interested primarily in system accountability. In New
York State, for example, when statewide performance tests in social studies were
adopted, all sixth graders were required to take the test even though the test was
called the “Social Studies Program Evaluation Test.” The Bureau of Social Studies
(and the Bureau of Science, with a similar test) did not consider using matrix
sampling when these tests were adopted in the late eighties (Mathison, 1992). And,
although a sophisticated matrix sampling procedure has been used in the California
Assessment Program, it was abandoned in favor of census testing.
The rejection of some technological advances such as matrix sampling sug-
gests that efficiency is not the only important value; so too are individuality and
competitiveness. The current culture of education promotes individuality, indi-
vidual accomplishment, and individual failure, and matrix sampling disallows the
assignment of value or disvalue to individuals.
While standardized, machine-scored multiple choice tests make it possible
to test many people in many places at one time at relatively low cost, there is an
ever-growing dissatisfaction with their supposed value. Ample research suggests
that the effects of such testing, especially in high-stakes situations, on teaching
and curriculum have been deleterious (Darling-Hammond, 1991; Jones, Jones, &
Hargrove, 2003; Madaus, 1988; Mathison & Freeman, 2003; Mathison & Ross,
2008; Smith & Kovacs, 2011). And clearly, such testing has differential effects
on subgroups of students, including minorities, speakers of languages other than
English, students with disabilities, and females (Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Linn,
2000; Mathison, 2003; McLaughlin & Nagle, 2008; Valenzuela, 2005). When
the stakes are high, there has been greater obfuscation in reporting achievement,
and cheating by students, parents, teachers, and school administrators to escape
punishment or capture rewards. Over the last several years, cases of cheating have
been documented in thirty-seven U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Cheat-
ing occurs before, during, and after testing and takes many forms including giving
teachers the tests ahead of time, using various forms of guiding students while
doing the test, correcting student answers, and “scrubbing” or dropping students
from enrollment rolls if they are likely to do poorly on the test.
Large-scale standardized testing has created substantial business for a rela-
tively small number of multinational corporations selling test development, scor-
ing, and reporting services. Pearson Education is now the major player in both
curriculum publishing and testing services. Pearson owns other publishers (Adobe,
Scott Foresman, Penguin, Longman, Wharton, Harcourt, Puffin, Prentice-Hall, and
Allyn & Bacon) and has contracts for a broad range of testing programs (National
Assessment of Educational Progress, Stanford Achievement Test, Millar Analogy
Test, New York City special high school admissions test, G.E.D. examinations, and
a relatively new Web-based Teacher Performance Assessment) with at least twenty
U.S. state education departments (Singer, in press). Other countries are watching
Pearson Education as they attempt to take over curriculum and assessment first
in the U.S. and then beyond (Gutstein, 2012).
Numerous foundations, each with its own image of how education ought to
be improved, join these publishing conglomerates. Foundations have always been
involved in public schooling and education, but the more passive giving of the
Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations has given way to the agenda-driven
and direct influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates, the Broad, and the Walton
Family foundations. The involvement of megapublishers and corporate foundations
promotes the tenets of a neoliberal agenda including competition, choice, and
outcomes-based assessment (Kovacs, 2010; Saltman, 2010).
Performance Assessment, the Future
Performance assessment is and ought to be the wave of the future in education at all
levels (Darling-Hammond & Adamson, 2010; FairTest, 1995; Perrone, 1991; Wig-
gins, 1989; Wiggins, 1993; Wolf, Bixby, Glenn, & Gardner, 1991). One argument
is that “21st-century skills” are inconsistent with taking a multiple choice, closed
response test. Instead, assessments requiring students to “find, evaluate, synthesize,
and use knowledge in new contexts, frame and solve non-routine problems, and
produce research findings and solutions” through the acquisition of “well-developed
thinking, problem solving, design, and communication skills” is what we now need
(Darling-Hammond & Adamson, 2010, p. 1). But there are long-established argu-
ments in education, such as those that favor learning by doing and apprenticeship,
252 Sandra Mathison
that are equally compelling educational justifications for performance assessment

(Tanner, 1997). Research on how people think and learn also favors performance
assessment (Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001, pp. 59–110).
An example that highlights the importance of performance assessment is
one most of us have experienced—the driving test. While a multiple choice test
is adequate to permit people to learn to drive, we are not sanguine about handing
out a permanent driver’s license based on successful completion of a multiple choice
test. We want to know that people can actually drive, and so they practice driving
in preparation for hopping into a car with a driving examiner and demonstrating
they can drive, including the ability to parallel park!
A straightforward definition of performance assessment is “testing that
requires a student to create an answer or a product that demonstrates his or her
knowledge or skills” (Office of Technology Assessment, 1992). This is distinguished
from assessments that require choosing among given options—for example, mul-
tiple choice test items. Performance assessment can take many forms, including
projects (individual or group), interviews, oral presentations, essays, experiments,
demonstrations, portfolios, even sentence completion. Performance assessment is
appropriate for both classroom and large-scale assessment. When performance
assessment is used for large-scale assessment it is: (1) done in a structured, stan-
dardized context, (2) with common stimulus material or information, (3) and clear
directions about the kind of response expected, and (4) seeks responses that can
be judged with predetermined standards (Stecher, 2010).
The emphasis in performance assessment shifts from whether students know
the right answer to a demonstration of how they have arrived at an answer. Per-
formance assessments are therefore directly related to the goals of instruction and
the expected outcomes. For example, a traditional test might require students to
match countries with their capital cities, while a performance assessment might
require students to prepare a travel brochure of a region of the world, including
countries and cities to visit, the geographical relationship among the countries, and
attractions to see as a traveler. In other words, the assessment task is synonymous
with the instructional task. The expectation is also that performance assessments
can and will examine more complex and interrelated skills and knowledge. For
example, students may be asked to demonstrate they understand the issues sur-
rounding capital punishment, can conduct library research, and have developed
public speaking skills sufficient to participate in a debate on the issue.
A distinction should be made between performance and authentic assess-
ments. While all authentic assessments are performances, the reverse is not true.
Many performance assessments have meaning in school contexts but are not neces-
sarily generally meaningful or valuable, especially in lived experience contexts. It is
the latter characteristic that distinguishes authentic assessment. (See Wiggins, 1996,
and Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage, G., 1995 for more on the differences between
performance and authentic assessment.) It is this lived experience that matters, and
even if relevant skills are learned they must be combined in an authentic way to
be meaningful. When children learn to play hockey they practice skating, shooting,
puck handling, but these skills must be combined in actually playing hockey for
their hockey prowess to be authentically demonstrated.
In social studies, one might want students to learn about unionism, for
example, and a performance assessment might require students to write an essay
about John L. Lewis, or stage a play demonstrating attempts to unionize coal
miners in the South, or prepare a photo essay of working conditions in union and
nonunion companies. An authentic assessment on the same topic would require
students to be involved in real-life issues of unionism by, for example, organiz-
ing their own union or through involvement with real unions (such as teachers’
unions) and management.
Needless to say, most emphasis is on performance assessment, and the term
authentic assessment is often misused. Were we to seriously create authentic assess-
ment, the unionism example suggests the very radical changes in knowledge,
authority, and domains for learning that would be required. While standard-setting
groups and policymakers recognize the problems involved in creating and adopt-
ing performance assessment, these are seen as technical problems to be left to
the experts. Psychometricians have demonstrated admirable technical advances in
the past; surely they will do likewise in the future. Measurement experts are left
with validity and reliability problems created by the enthusiasm of policymakers,
and the literature is full of reasoned and serious discussions about these matters
(Linn, 2000; Linn, Baker, & Dunbar, 1991; Linn, 1994; Mehrens, 1992; Mes-
sick, 1994). Research on performance assessment illustrates that attention to task
design (including field testing), scoring systems (including rubrics and collabora-
tion among teachers), and change and growth in learning are key features of good
performance assessment (Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001).
What, however, will be the consequence of this technological advance? Just as
other forms of assessment have corrupted and been corruptible, so it may be with
performance assessments in the long run. Examples already exist of performance
assessments driving the curriculum in much the same way that multiple choice
standardized tests have, and little consideration has been given to the underlying
meaning of these common connections between assessment (regardless of its form)
and curriculum and teaching (Mathison, 1992). Performance assessment is indeed
an improvement over current standardized, multiple choice testing practices, but
it is no panacea.
The idea that any testing technique, be it a new test design or a

national test or system, can reform our schools and restore our nation’s
competitiveness is the height of technological arrogance and conceals
many of the negative possibilities of such a move under the guise
of a seemingly neat technological fix. Further, by casting the debate
254 Sandra Mathison
over how to address the problems in our schools in terms of a testing

solution we divert attention from systemic problems related to delivery
systems such as instructional delivery, quality of textbooks, length of
the school day and year, teacher training and working conditions, and
gross inequalities in in-school and extra-school resources. (Madaus,
1993, p. 23)
What is important is that the technological changes in testing are accompa-

nied by social consequences, sometimes intentional and sometimes fortuitous. The
challenge for social studies educators is to embrace the promise of performance
assessment, aware that doing so will have consequences, to avoid Utopian thinking
about performance assessment, and to support authentic assessment when possible.
Assessment, Not Tests
For many years, psychometricians controlled our practice of evaluating students,

teachers, and curricula. Early in the 20th century, E. L. Thorndike set the path
for the development of measurement as a quantitative one: “Whatever exists at
all exists in some amount. To know it involves knowing its quantity as well as its
quality” (Thorndike, 1918, p. l6). The technology of testing and measurement has
been the physics of education. But, our envy has given way to skepticism about
psychometrics’ exactitude and doubt that measurement should be the engine of
educational reform.
Our skepticism has been fuelled by recent interest in teacher empowerment,
local control of education, the failure of testing programs to improve schools, and
the pernicious negative and differential effects of testing on students. Often, tests
and measurement are created outside schools—edicts to be adopted by teachers
and schools—ideas out of synch with the contemporary views of teaching as a
profession. The use of test results by those outside of the classroom and school has
increased our skepticism as the sociopolitical purposes for student testing become
apparent, purposes that often run counter to the interests of public education
(Mathison & Ross, 2008).
The current climate of standards-based reforms (for example, the U.S. Com-
mon Core State Standards) and the use of high-stakes standardized tests as the
enforcing mechanism often work against the use of performance-based and authen-
tic assessments. Recognizing the severe constraints government-mandated testing
programs place on schools and teachers, it is nonetheless imperative to enjoin
teachers to strive for meaningful assessments of student progress, which is to say,
that provide information most useful for instructional decision making and learn-
ing at a local level.
In this chapter I will talk of assessment—tests and measurement are a

means to this end, but by no means the only means. Measurement implies we
can know with precision how much of something there is. For example, when
we bake a cake we measure two cups of flour and there is very little room for
interpretation or misinterpretation—two cups is two cups. When we measure
something we assign it a numeric value based on a preestablished standard. In
education we might say a student is reading at a grade 5.6 level, a statement that
raises, rather than quells, questions. First, what is meant by reading? Is it low-level
comprehension requiring recall? Is it critical analysis? Second, what do I know
if I learn that a student has a reading level of grade 5.6? What is a grade? How
do I distinguish between an interpolation and an actual measurement? And, so
on. While we are confident of the precision of many measurements (temperature,
distance, volume), the standards used in education (grade point average, grade
equivalent score, normal curve equivalent) leave substantial room for interpreta-
tion and misinterpretation. So we look beyond measurement to determine the
quality or value of something.
Tests, in a general sense, are a way of trying something out, such as testing a
light bulb by screwing it into a lamp socket to see if it works. In education, tests
have become less a means of trying something out than a means for measuring
something that is predetermined. They have been stripped of the connotation of
tentativeness implied by other uses of the word test.
Assessment, on the other hand, may use tests but relies more on the idea
of tests as a means of trying out, and demands less faith in the exactitude of the
measurement resulting from that test.
Assessment also implies a relationship between the assessor and the

assessed. An “assessment” is where one “sits with” the learner. It is
something we do “with’ and “for” the student, not something we do
“to” the student. Such a “sitting with” suggests that the assessor has
an obligation to go the extra mile in determining what the student
knows and can do. The assessor must be more tactful, respectful, and
responsive than the giver of tests. (Wiggins, 1993a)
Assessments, therefore, involve students in substantive ways and are not solitary
acts performed by or on them.
In education, we speak more of assessments that may use formal tests, but
which relate to other educational ideas such as curriculum, instruction, standards,
and policy. In the remainder of the chapter, I advocate shifting our assessment
emphasis to performance assessment in contrast with more traditional standardized,
close-ended tests. This shift in emphasis can be revealed by a closer look at various
kinds of assessment, including their technical and social aspects.
256 Sandra Mathison
Assessment of, for, and as Learning
Assessment in schools is often conceived as a means to identify what students know

and can do, that is, it is assessment of learning. This is essentially a summative per-
spective, that is, assessment is done at the end of a unit of teaching and learning
to determine what students know as a result of that instructional experience. End
of unit tests, culminating essays, final examinations, and end of course portfolios
are all examples of such summative assessments.
Assessments of learning are often expressed as letter or percentage grades, a
score that is meant to tell you where you as a student or a teacher stand in rela-
tion to the performance of others. The necessity for grades is being scrutinized,
and grading to express a summative assessment of learning has a number of nega-
tive consequences for learning: diminishing students’ motivation to learn and the
quality of their thinking, while pushing them to choose easy tasks (Kohn, 2011).
Narrative assessments and the use of teacher-developed rubrics (such as the Learn-
ing Record) are alternatives to grades.
Assessment may also be formative, what Earl (2003) calls assessment for
learning. This kind of assessment is done often, during instructional activities,
using many sources of data. Good formative assessment means “giving students
as many ways of showing what they know as possible—through formal and infor-
mal measures, through tasks chosen by both the teacher and student, through
speaking, writing, and other forms of representation” (Levstik & Barton, 1997, p.
160). Assessment and instruction become synonomous when students are assessed
with a variety of strategies, resulting in a continuous flow of information about
what students do and do not yet know. Assessment for learning helps teach-
ers create the scaffolding for more and better student understanding of what is
taught. This assessment refocuses teaching and learning activities to help stu-
dents meet learning expectations, and is diagnostic. In-class questions, worksheets,
student-teacher conferences, class discussions, and observations are examples of
formative assessments.
Formative and summative assessments are done largely by teachers. Students’
self-assessment also has a role in good assessment, with the broader objective of
developing self-motivated learners using a repertoire of metacognitive strategies
encouraging self-reflection and self-feedback. Assessment as learning is important in
all contexts, but perhaps most obviously in social studies education. The benefits of
fostering student self-assessment is closely tied to the goal of preparing citizens for
democratic participation—learning to use their knowledge to understand, develop-
ing skills to self-monitor understandings and lack of understandings, and making
decisions about what to do. This latter type of assessment is, in a quite practical
sense, what students will take away from their schooling experience that enables and
empowers them to make decisions, solve problems, and participate in public life.
Table 12.1. Description of Approaches to Assessment
Approach Purpose Reference Points Key Assessor

Assessment of Judgments about Other students, norms Teacher, student,
learning placement, promotion, parents, state
(Summative) credentials, and so on
Assessment for Information for External standards Teacher
learning teachers’ instructional and expectations
(Formative) decisions
Assessment as Self-monitoring and Personal goals and Student
learning self-correction or external standards
(Self-evaluation) adjustment
Adapted from L. M. Earl, Assessment as Learning. Corwin Press, 2003.
Some Principles of Effective Assessment
Building on the idea of assessment as, for, and of learning, I offer some principles
of effective assessment, not meant to be a definitive or conclusive list, but a starting
point for examining assessment practices.
1. Assessment should help students learn.

2. Variety in assessment encourages the participation and interest of
all students and teachers.
3. Assessment tasks should resemble interdisciplinary, complex,
real-life problems and situations.
4. Assessment should foster striving for learning, not completion of
a task for the sake of completion.
5. Students need detailed, timely feedback on their work that high-
lights how improvement can be made; just a grade is not good
enough.
6. Grades are not always necessary; even summative assessments can
be richer than a percentage or letter.
7. Too much assessment is unnecessary and possibly counterproductive.
8. Systemic analysis of assessment results facilitates curriculum devel-
opment and pedagogy.
258 Sandra Mathison
9. Assessments, especially summative ones, must be justifiable.

10. Large-scale and classroom-based assessment should serve appropri-
ate, complementary purposes within a larger coordinated assess-
ment system.
The Social Studies and Performance Assessment
Social studies has received a great deal of attention in the standards develop-
ment movement, and many national organizations have received federal money for
working specifically on social studies standards.1 While curriculum and assessment
standards have been a professional responsibility, there is a turn to government
authorities controlling standards. In the United States, this is most apparent with
the Common Core State Standards Initiative; interestingly, the Common Core
relegates all but English-language arts and mathematics to supporting roles. But
for all these efforts about what should be taught and how to assess students,
more, not less, debate has been the result. This debate is significant because the
performance assessment movement is dependent on delineations of what students
should know and be able to do. And, as indicated previously, good performance
assessment tasks become instructional activities, and therefore require reconsidera-
tion of content and pedagogy.
Alleman and Brophy (1999) characterize assessment in social studies as an
uninventive, tradition-bound enterprise, one where teacher-made tests predominated
over norm-referenced tests and where tests used often come from textbooks; where
objective tests were used more commonly than essay tests (especially with low-ability
students); and where items concentrated on knowledge and skills, with only slight
consideration given to affective outcomes (p. 334). They suggest that typical social
studies assessments fail to “measure student attainment of major social studies under-
standings, appreciations, life applications, and higher order thinking” (p. 335). This
state of affairs is contrasted with the guidelines adopted by the NCSS Advisory
Committee on Testing and Evaluation, which recommends that evaluation focus
on “curriculum goals and objectives; be used to improve curriculum and instruc-
tion; measure both content and process; be chosen for instructional, diagnostic, and
prescriptive purposes; and reflect a high degree of fairness to all people and groups”
(Alleman & Brophy, 1999, p. 335). Good performance assessment in social studies is
about more than just involving students in “doing”; it must be assessment that focuses
on students doing something within a larger curricular framework oriented toward
valued goals. Performance assessments for their own sake provide little of value.
Can performance assessment work within national, provincial, and state
frameworks? Looking at one teaching/assessment activity, object-based inquiry,
provides an illustration of how these ideas might work together. Object-based
inquiry assumes that we learn when we touch history, and learning activities con-
structed around historical objects create the context within which it makes sense
to use performance assessment. Table 12.2 illustrates the relationship among goals,
learning activities and performance assessment.
Table 12.2. Object-based Inquiry, an Illustration of Performance Assessment Linked

to Curricular Goals
Goal(s) Activity Assessment
Example 1
Explore lifestyles, social/culturalStudents research various Build on the knowledge
needs and wants in different primary items and determine of items by grouping
parts of the world the function of each item. them into an
Objects include material organized museum
View historic events through the focusing on children in the exhibit by determining
eyes of those who were there, as 1800s. The items include a common focus.
shown in their art, writing, butter churns, weaving Provide rationales for
music, and artifacts cards, hoop game, ball and individual objects and
cup, Jacob’s ladder, paper central theme.
Investigate time period by posing dolls, sampler, and child’s
analytical questions, selecting diary entry. All decisions
relevant data, distinguishing fact should be based on personal
from opinion, hypothesizing, analysis, research, and tested
testing, and forming conclusions. hypotheses.
Example 2
Explore different traditions, Observe, analyze, artifacts Write a biography
experiences, and beliefs of people and primary documents to describing the owner of
living in communities create hypothesis. Research the belongings. Include
sources for evidence to the historical context of
Investigate differing and support conclusions. the time period and
competing interpretations of the The activity includes a research references.
theories of history collection of items from
World War II: postcards of
Weigh the importance, reliability, concentration camps, military
and validity of evidence uniforms, a carrier pigeon
holder, diary entry of soldier,
Consider the source of historical photos of what was
documents occurring on the home
front, letters about salvage
campaigns, and much more.
Students are told these
materials were found in a
piece of luggage left at the
airport.
260 Sandra Mathison
During the 1990s heydays of performance assessment, there was attention to

how this might be done in the social studies. For example, two prominent social
studies journals devoted issues to “authentic” assessment (Baker, 1993; Nickell,
1999). These special issues include cautions regarding traditional multiple choice
tests (often used inappropriately), examples of performance assessments used by
social studies educators, confessional tales from teachers struggling to incorporate
more authentic assessment into their teaching, and useful illustrations of perfor-
mance assessments.
In these discussions, examples of instructional activities that entail perfor-
mances or demonstrations of what students have learned are given. A sample task
for a global studies student portfolio is: “Conduct an oral history on a topical but
historically interesting issue: recent American immigrants [or] veterans of Desert
Storm, Vietnam, and World War II on ‘America as policeman in the world’ ”
(Wiggins, 1993, p. 6).
A sample task for a middle school English and social studies portfolio is: The
principal has asked the class to be responsible for one of the school’s showcases
for the year. S/he has requested that they be changed monthly and reflect various
periods in American history. Each student will become part of a task force that
will effectively design and create displays for a showcase (Wiggins, 1993, p. 7).
In another example, Jones (1993) suggests the following for a fifth grade
social studies portfolio:
1. A student self-assessment: What I have learned in fifth grade this

year and what advice would I give to next year’s students?
2. Video of a project (e.g., demonstration of a Native American craft).
3. A research project, such as, “How People Make a Living in
Argentina.”
4. A draft of a story based on an Inuit tale or legend.
5. A summary of a group activity in which the student participated
(e.g., a decision-making activity on each of five cities to visit:
Toronto, Atlanta, San Diego, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro).
6. A letter to a pen pal in another country, in which the student
describes the characteristics of American culture.
7. A journal entry in which the student describes the advantages of
democratic government. (p. 21)
Smothers Marcello (1999) describes a particular learning activity—a ret-

rospective on the civil rights movement, tied to the NCSS curriculum theme of
time, continuity, and change and to specific expectations for middle grade students:
(1) identify and describe selected historical periods and patterns of change within
and across cultures; (2) identify and use processes important to reconstructing
and reinterpreting the past; and (3) develop critical sensitivities such as empathy
and skepticism regarding attitudes, values, and behaviors of people in different
historical contexts.
The activity draws on a number of multimedia sources and asks students to
adopt a particular vantage point to look at the civil rights movement using any
of a number of possible forms of representation (historical essay, journal writing,
poetry, three-dimensional model, collage, oral presentation, Web page). Smothers
Marcello includes a rubric (a grid that lists the criteria by which a performance
will be judged along one side and the degree to which each criterion is met
along the other) to judge the students’ work. In this example, the criteria are (1)
ideas and content—retrospective and civil rights/slavery, (2) voice, (3) quality, (4)
creativity-overall, (5) creativity-detail, and (6) work effort. There are five categories
for describing the attainment for each criterion. This example illustrates connecting
performance assessment to larger goals in social studies.
Moon (2002, p. 55) describes “Read All About It,” an activity in which
“students assume the role of producer/creator of a special edition of the local
newspaper focused on significant events of the previous century. Focusing on five
great wars of the 20th century, students are asked to analyze and synthesize infor-
mation related to common elements historically found in war: cause and effect,
alliances, perceptions of the war abroad and at home, and the peace process.” The
activity culminates in the production of a newspaper with a comprehensive view
of 20th-century wars using appropriate types of newspaper components (articles,
editorials, letters to the editor, cartoons, and so on).
These examples illustrate the promise of and challenges in adopting perfor-
mance assessment. The examples describe learning activities requiring active partici-
pation by students, encouraging varied forms of representation, and emphasizing
multiple domains of knowledge and skill in doing the activity. As assessment tasks
(and as learning activities) these are significant improvements over textbook-driven
instruction where students are assessed using tests or quizzes with matching, mul-
tiple choice, or fill in the blank items. This transformation is no small accomplish-
ment and occurs in the face of a long tradition of teaching social studies as lists,
truncated facts, and predetermined answers (McNeil, 1988).
At the same time, these examples also demonstrate challenges faced by social
studies educators in the move toward performance assessment. Many of the exam-
ples are presented without reference to why students should do these particular
activities, even though a thoughtful reader could easily make reasonable inferences.
Too often, adopting performance assessment leads to the creation of activities or
tasks that result in a performance without clarity about the fundamental goal being
demonstrated by that performance (Mathison, 1994). The activity for the social
studies and English portfolio would be more sensible and richer if we knew the
262 Sandra Mathison
intention was for students to, say, “identify continuities over time in core institu-
tions, values, ideals, and traditions, as well as processes that lead to change within
societies and institutions, and that result in innovation and the development of
new ideas, values and ways of life” (NCSS, 2010). The design and creation of a
showcase would then be pedagogically purposeful and related to foundational goals
of social studies curriculum, and not activity for its own sake.
The examples are also specific in terms of content and form of the perfor-
mance. The global studies example specifically delineates not only how students
will do the performance (an oral history) but also about whom (immigrants or
veterans). The “read all about it” example focuses on wars and specifies the per-
formance as producing a newspaper. There is little opportunity for students to
exercise choice about how and through what content to demonstrate they have
acquired certain knowledge or skills.
Based on my earlier distinction between performance and authentic assess-
ments, these examples illustrate performances specifically associated with school
knowledge. One needs obviously to think about the complexity of authenticity in
creating instructional tasks and performance assessments, including considerations
about the role and nature of social studies content and students’ roles in assess-
ment. Given the emphasis in the social studies on promoting civic competence
(NCSS, 2010) and the real-life nature of civic responsibility, authenticity is a
critical element of performance assessments that truly leads to the achievement
of social studies goals.
Such are the promises of and challenges to creating and adopting perfor-
mance assessment in social studies. The National Council for the Social Studies’
Curriculum Standards for Social Studies provides a starting place for thinking about
such reformation. These standards avoid a rigid specification of particular content
(for example, the Civil War or the American Revolution must be taught at such
and such a time) and, although they are organized around ten thematic areas,
the focus is on well-articulated skills and knowledge. The examples provided also
illustrate how the standards can be translated in classroom practices.
What the standards do not provide is a vision of the curriculum planning
that facilitates the move toward more authentic learning tasks and assessments.
Scholars and practitioners alike need to think carefully about how this develop-
ment work will be done.
The danger of mapping an existing curriculum (for example, the history of
Native Americans in fourth grade) onto something like the NCSS standards with-
out thinking simultaneously about foundational goals conveyed by the standards
will be an exercise in compliance, not reformation. It is complex to think about
generic skills and knowledge and disciplinary content simultaneously. Mostly, disci-
plinary knowledge has won out. While content knowledge is important (and there
is nothing wrong with fourth graders learning about Native Americans) it provides
little direction in the formulation of learning and assessment tasks. This is much
more related to the more basic and generic ideas outlined in the NCSS standards.
Conclusion
This chapter began with a description of five issues that will continually be encoun-
tered in making decisions about assessment in schools, and so it concludes. These
issues, while never resolved, must be addressed in order for assessment as, of, and
for learning to occur. These issues need not simply be dichotomies, and in some
instances a compromise resolution may be possible. For example, it is possible
to develop performance assessment for large-scale assessment and not succumb
to the lowest common denominator when large numbers of children are being
assessed. On the other hand, there has been little progress made in reformulat-
ing assessment in schools to meet the many varied information needs. Nor has
there been much progress in reallocating resources (including time and money)
to meet assessment needs, with ever increasingly more money going to support
assessment demanded by governments, with the quintessential example being the
testing burden created by the No Child Left Behind Act. But there is a growing
sophistication among parents, teachers, and school administrators that assessment
is not simply about technique; it is also about politics and must therefore be con-
sidered in more complex and multifaceted ways—in the classroom, at the school
board meeting, among parent and community activists, and in legislatures. These
issues provide a means for remembering the history of assessment in schools, but
also for anticipating its future.
Notes
I want to acknowledge the contributions Kristi Fragnoli made to a previous version

of this chapter.
1. These organizations include the National Center for History in the Schools UCLA;
the Center for Civic Education; the National Council for Geographic Education (in coop-
eration with the Association of American Geographers, the National Geographic Society,
and the American Geographical Society); the National Council on Economic Education;
and the National Council for the Social Studies.
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13
Why Inquiry?
Doug Selwyn
One of the most important acts in a teacher’s preparation is to become clear about
what she values and wants for her students. The most fundamental questions one
can ask as a teacher include: Who are my students? What knowledge, experiences,
questions, strengths, fears, and concerns are they bringing to the classroom? What
are my goals? What do I want them to take with them when they leave my class
or room at the end of the year? What do I want them to carry with them five,
ten, or twenty years beyond our parting? How can I make sure that my actions,
my choices in class, align with my goals and move the students in the directions
that I most value, in ways that will be most useful to them?
These beginning questions are more crucial than ever during these times of
curricular and pedagogical standardization that results from government initiatives
such as No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core. We
know that students are getting little or no social studies in the early grades, since
social studies is not part of the testing that lands schools in the newspapers and
in hot water. As a consequence, many students come to their middle and high
school classes without content knowledge and without any skills or experience in
the social studies. They come to understand that their questions, their concerns,
their interests are really not all that relevant or important; instead, they are trained
to be compliant, to do as they are told if they want to succeed. This leaves social
studies teachers in a quandary. How do we truly serve our students in the cur-
rent climate so that they carry with them content and skills that will help them
to become responsible citizens, able to act on their own behalf and on behalf of
others? And how do we do this while surviving ourselves to teach another day?
In this world of compliance, research has come to mean an academic ver-
sion of fetch. Students research assigned topics that have little meaning for them,
organize their “findings” into a prefabricated template and hand it to the teacher,
267
268 Doug Selwyn
who stuffs the papers into his briefcase, or on top of her ever-increasing pile of
papers-to-be-graded. At some point the papers come back with grades on them, and
numbers enter a grade book. That’s the meaning of the assignment, end of story.
By contrast, inquiry in the “real world,” involves asking questions that the
researcher truly wants or needs to explore. It is a satisfying act to complete, because
it helps the inquirer to learn about something of interest, something that matters.
Inquiry involves an increasingly valuable set of skills and strategies to bring to
students; if we don’t help them learn how to question, to research, to evaluate, to
communicate, and to act, where will they learn and practice those skills? And if
they don’t learn and practice those skills and strategies, and learn the content their
research will connect them with, what kind of citizens, what kind of neighbors
and colleagues will they become?
We can best prepare students for life after school, and engage them while
they are in school if we are working with their interests and questions. We can
work with their energy rather than working against it; a student-centered, inquiry
research approach provides structure for students to learn and to practice essential
research skills on high interest topics, which improves the likelihood that they will
stick with the work, even when it gets challenging or frustrating. We can have them
share their research results with each other, and perhaps with the wider community
(such as other classrooms, the parent teacher organization, community meetings,
and so on), which offers them real-life experience in communicating about what
matters to them, and offers real, valued consequences for their work.
Inquiry is nothing new; we are programmed to ask and pursue questions
from birth. It’s how we survive and learn about the world, and we ask questions
because we want or need to know. Our students know about asking questions;
they’re just not used to doing it in school.
Overview of the Inquiry Process
Inquiry in a school setting is clearly different than what we do in our day-to-day

lives; there are grades, fifty-minute periods, and required content to cover. Despite
these limitations, inquiry inspires and requires critical thinking, moving beneath
the surface of topics, working toward understanding. While there is no one “right”
way to carry out the inquiry process, there are common elements to most success-
ful inquiry research efforts: identifying and refining a question; identifying your
rationale and assumptions; locating sources; assessing and evaluating what you’ve
found, both individual sources and as a body of research; determining what you
now know and what you still need to know; organizing what you’ve found into
a coherent whole; deciding what to communicate and to whom, and choosing
how best to do so; sharing your work with your intended audience; reflecting on
the work and determining what’s next. What follows is a brief discussion of the
Why Inquiry? 269
elements of inquiry research that we can offer our students the opportunity to
learn and practice.
Choosing a Question
The most useful inquiry questions are broad enough to offer depth and complexity
and narrow enough to be meaningful and graspable. “What was the name of the
scandal that rocked the Nixon White House and led to his resignation?” is too
narrow a question to base an inquiry on since it can be answered in thirty seconds
and leaves the researcher with nothing to do. A question as broad as “How can we
better serve the full array of students who are in our classes?” points to a general
direction, and often is a useful place to begin, but is so broad and multifaceted
that it can become almost meaningless, or paralyzing.
Shaping a question takes both patience and practice. Some examples of useful
inquiry questions include the following:
• Why are my shoes (or shirts or soccer balls) manufactured in China,

Indonesia, or Pakistan, and what impact does that have on those
people and places involved (including me)?
• How has life changed in our hometown since a particular business
left or arrived?
• How has NCLB changed education at our school?
These questions are rich with possibilities for learning significant content, are
narrow enough to offer the possibility of a successful search, and require students
to engage in a complex search, making use of a range of sources.
One of the challenges to teaching through inquiry is offering students the
opportunity of pursuing questions that have meaning for them while, at the same
time, moving through the required curriculum content. Teachers can offer those
opportunities within a structured framework that will introduce students to specific
skills, concepts, and complexities that fit the teacher’s overall sense of the journey.
This need not take meaningful choice away from the students. One assignment
I use when exploring the relationship of humans to and with their environment
is to require students to create a world tour that takes its passengers through five
different climates zones. The students create a brochure that communicates what
passengers will experience at each stop, identifying those elements that I want them
to explore (who lives there, cultures, significant landmarks, kinds of employment,
roles of men, women, and children, architecture, flora, fauna, etc.), and whatever
else they decide is of interest. The students choose the places they research and
include in their tour, and they decide how best to organize and present what they
have found. When I have offered students this assignment, many have researched
270 Doug Selwyn
locations related to their family histories, places they have visited already, and
places they hope to visit. They learn about the world from and with each other,
and we use their data to deeply investigate the interconnection of humans and the
environment, which shifts the balance from the teacher as dispenser of informa-
tion to a learning community that teaches and learns from and with each other.
Rationale
Part of identifying an appropriate question for an inquiry topic is being clear

about the reasons, or rationale for making that choice. This is true for students,
when they initiate an inquiry, and it’s also important for us as teachers. We make
choices about inquiries for our classes based on our knowledge of our students,
of the content and skills we are required to teach, and about what kinds of expe-
riences we want our students to have. Colleen Ryan chose to have her middle
school math students investigate the watershed in which their school is located,
and in which they live. She had many reasons for bringing this research question
to her math students.
I wanted them to make connections to other content areas. I hoped

the students could go out and collect data and use that also to create
arguments for why we need to change habits, why we need to improve
the way we deal with water. I wanted to show them how precious a
resource water is, and how little potable water there is in the world,
and then help them to understand how much water they really do
use in a day. I hoped this would create a sense of urgency, and help
them to understand why we need good quality water, and then we
could progress from there.1
Colleen’s students investigated their own water usage, made plans for test-
ing the water quality of the Ausable River, and considered the role that the river
played in their lives and in their community. This inquiry led the students to learn
and practice their required math in a real-world context, and inspired them to
make changes in the ways they moved through the world (no more twenty-minute
showers).
Assumptions
We almost always begin an inquiry with ideas, attitudes, or assumptions about the
topic or question; this is why we take it on to begin with. Those assumptions or
things we think we know about something can influence the inquiry we carry out
so it is important to be aware of our starting place, and to check out the accuracy
Why Inquiry? 271
of our assumptions as part of our work. It is also important to recognize that our
assumptions are based on our unique lives, and that each of us carries a mix of
experiences that affect the way we see the world.
Lenses and Point of View
Artist and educator Don Fels gave middle school students the assignment of draw-
ing a still life that he had arranged in the center of the room; the only catch was
that they had to look through cardboard tubes (like personal telescopes) in order
to view the objects. He had constructed a different shape across the end of each
tube so that the viewer could only see what the shape allowed/determined, lead-
ing to a varied set of drawings, much to the surprise of the students. It was an
elegant and simple exercise that made clear to his students that the lenses through
which we view the world have a significant impact on what we see and what we
don’t see. We each have our own set of lenses and filters, based on our particular
experiences, knowledge, training, racial and ethnic background, culture, economics,
gender, sexual orientation, and history. Three principles arising from this lesson
are at the heart of the study of social studies, and of research:
• What we see of the world is not all there is to see; it is not the
whole truth, but instead is based on what we are able to see, at a
particular point in time;
• What others see of the world is based on their own set of factors,
and they are no more correct than we are, but also no less correct
when they see the world differently than we do;
• We tend to believe the world really does look and behave the way
we see it to the extent that we lose the ability to see the frames and
lenses through which we are looking.
The more awareness we can bring to the particular and limited view we have of
our world, the more room there is for us to be open to learning from and with
others, to moving beyond what we know and believe about the world. That is the
essential purpose of research.
Gathering Information
The next step, once a question has been formed and the rationale and assump-
tions the researcher brings to the process are identified, is to map out possible
sources and resources that might help to investigate the question. Researchers must
identify where they might find information, and then strategize how to approach
272 Doug Selwyn
each potential source of information. How might they find articles or documents?
How will they make contact with individuals who might know something of their
topic, and how will they approach those individuals to make the best use of their
time and gain as much information as possible? How will the researcher budget
her time to get as much information as possible, given realistic constraints of time,
resources, skills, equipment, and the size of the task? Once they make a plan, they
then carry it out as efficiently as possible, making sure to keep a research trail of
sources they have consulted.
Evaluating the Research, Inch by Inch and Row by Row
Researchers have to evaluate the research they gather, to determine whether it is

reliable, whether it is useful, and whether it supports, contradicts, or offers new
insights on the other research that has been gathered. There is more than one
account or way of understanding any useful inquiry topic or issue, and it is the
task of the researcher to develop a strategy for evaluating the data from each source
on its own, and then to evaluate what has been found in total, from all sources,
in order to make meaning from it.
The researcher then reminds himself of his original question and asks: “What
do I now know? What do I need to know? Are there voices that are dominating
or absent? Are there things about which I still know nothing? Are there things
that don’t make sense? Are there contradictions, or pieces that don’t yet fit? How
can I find out what I still need to know?” He then adjusts his research strategy,
if needed, and continues.
Historian Howard Zinn, noting first that his early discoveries of omissions in
his own education led him to bring a “healthy” skepticism to his research, talked
about how he approached making sense from multiple perspectives:
It made me look even more carefully for information and for points
of view that I did not know, and made me ask the question, “If I
didn’t know this about Columbus, what else don’t I know about these
incidents that I have learned about?” It just makes you dig deeper and
farther afield, and to question why I hadn’t been taught a more honest
version of U.S. history in school. That is a very important question,
because it creates a suspicion, that certain things have been withheld,
for ideological reasons, and makes you even more concerned about
finding out the truth about a particular incident.
This initial caution also encouraged Dr. Zinn to identify those voices he was
not hearing, and to notice which voices were dominating, were overrepresented
in the telling of U.S. history. He then developed an approach to evaluating what
he was and was not hearing:
Why Inquiry? 273
I think it’s understanding that the accounts you get of any particular
event are going to be told through a very subjective lens, and that
you’ll get different accounts. I think the best you can do is multiply
the number of points of view, get as many different points of view as
possible and sort of cross check and see where they corroborate one
another. If you suspect Las Casas is developing an animus against
Columbus, you know he might exaggerate what he is seeing, then
you have to check him against other accounts. In fact, the best kind
of check is against an account by somebody who has a different point
of view, but which actually corroborates what Las Casas is saying.
Las Casas was saying, you know these Indians were not warlike, they
were very gentle and they were very generous you might think, oh
he’s romanticizing, and then you read Columbus’s diary and it says
the same thing.
Understanding that, you try your best to understand, not simply
accept blindly, any one account or any one point of view, but get
enough information from enough different sources so you can sort
through them and see where they either corroborate one another or
contradict one another, and you have to make your own judgment.
And then I think it’s important to be honest about what you
find out. That is, when you are not sure of something to say you’re
not sure of something. You may not discard the information, like
CBS wanted Dan Rather to discard the information about Bush and
his record of service as a member of the national guard because it
wasn’t fully corroborated, but what would have made more sense was
for Dan Rather to say, “This is what we found out about Bush but
we’re not absolutely sure about this piece of evidence or that piece
of evidence . . .” And I think this point about honesty in disclosing
your own bias and honesty in disclosing the inadequacy of what you
have found is very important.
Lorraine McConaghy, historian at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry

notes that responsible historians begin their real interpretive work once their data
has been collected, and they are very cautious about putting too much weight on
any one source.
As you evaluate the data you’ve gathered you’re beginning to look for
meaning . . . to figure out what’s really important, what’s significant
and what stories, what meanings can be pulled from it. That is the first
act of doing history. It’s interpretive. It has to tell us why it’s important,
what’s significant about it.
274 Doug Selwyn
Dr. McConaghy continues:
Historians make their arguments based on the preponderance of the

best evidence. Preponderance means to me the heaviest weight of the
best evidence. How do we qualify our evidence? . . . This is where
you begin to get very cautious about erecting this huge edifice on a
piece of evidence that may be in conflict with others. Where we’d like
to believe this but there’s this conflict. How are we to resolve that?
Historians have what they call the rule of three. And it’s a very
powerful and important rule when doing research. It holds that no
argument can be successfully defended unless you have three separate
pieces of primary material to support it. . . . It keeps you from erecting
this huge interpretation on a slender, perhaps flawed, bit of evidence.
However, for under-studied, under-documented groups, people, or
neighborhoods, we might not be able to find three independent pri-
mary sources. . . .
I understand about the limited time and perhaps needing a more
limited goal when you’re setting out. I would just suggest that it’s
important for kids to realize from the start that they need to learn to
be skeptical in their approach. Not cynical, but skeptical. Skepticism
is a healthy social studies attitude.
Communicating
Researchers then must decide what to communicate about what has been found,
the purpose for the communication, and the best way to do that. This may look
like a traditional article or research report, but it also might take the form of a
short story, a children’s picture book, a play, painting, poem, speech, documentary,
musical composition, novel, movie, or sculpture. The researcher decides how to
communicate what he or she has found by considering the topic, the impact they
wish to have on their intended audience, the researcher’s own interests and skills,
the resources they have at their disposal, and the message they want to convey.
Artist Roger Shimomura, who was incarcerated along with his family and 120,000
other Japanese Americans during World War II, created two series of paintings
about the incarceration, based on his experience and the diary his grandmother
kept during their imprisonment. Roger considered the impact he wanted to make
in mind as he was creating his paintings:
Every time I started a new painting it was strictly an issue of how

I was going to trigger those various sets of responses that I felt that
I wanted in the work, to have different people respond in different
ways, to paint under the knowledge that a lot of kinds of people are
Why Inquiry? 275
going to look at this work and have different experiences, and I wanted
something there for all of them.
He talked more specifically about his intention to communicate content as well

as compelling art with his second camp series:
I knew that I was walking a sort of artistic tightrope . . . the first

diary series that I did looked very Japanese, sort of eighteenth-century
wood block style, and it was easy for people to miss that point com-
pletely. The fact is that I think that most people who purchased those
paintings did not want to know the story about the internment. They
wanted to see those paintings as a decorative piece that they could
put on their living rooms and it was fine with them if they never had
to explain to their friends what inspired that work. The last two or
three paintings in the series had barbed wire fences in them and they
actually asked me to paint out the barbed wire fence, that they would
buy the paintings if they didn’t have the fence in there. So, that was
really interesting. . . .
I can’t say that it came as a surprise, but I do feel that in the
end what I had done essentially was sort of plant a stink bomb in
these various living rooms across the country, that sooner or later
that issue was going to have to come to surface and the stench of the
internment was going to win out in the end. So I was very aware of
that as I was working on this new series I was going to be very direct.
Revising
It is most often useful for researchers to share their work in draft form with oth-
ers, to get feedback and to determine that the message that they intend to com-
municate is actually communicated effectively. This step allows for reflection and
for mid-course adjustments. It is important that the people approached for feed-
back have enough knowledge, caring, honesty, and tact to provide useful feedback
that leaves the researcher both confident and wiser about the effectiveness of her
work.
Some researchers/artists prefer not to share their in-process work, but most
find it useful to employ an outside editor, to step back and view their work in
a detached way in order to clearly see if it is functioning as they have intended.
The Product
The researcher presents his product, in whatever format is appropriate, and, hope-
fully, has the opportunity to both reflect on and gather data on its effectiveness.
276 Doug Selwyn
The true products of extensive research are often additional questions and possible
paths for their next exploration.
Some Notes and Cautions Related to Authentic Research
If students are conducting authentic research, it means they are asking real ques-
tions, which means that at the beginning they don’t know where they are going.
Managing time for this research journey is not simple. There may be dead ends
and unexpected roadblocks or discoveries, which makes the process harder to fit
into a predefined schedule, and this can be a challenge in a school setting. If a
teacher decides to structure assignments to allow students to engage in authentic,
open-ended inquiry there are a few things to keep in mind:
• The student may or may not find the information he is looking

for, or may require more time and additional strategies for finding
that information. The teacher may need to play a significant role
in supporting students in organizing their research, or may need to
step in and help them to define what would be a reasonable project
for them to carry out, considering time, resources, and skill levels.
• The original questions may give way to other, more relevant, com-
pelling, or realistic questions as the research continues. It gets better
when students land on a question that matters to them, and they
need support and “permission” to recognize and act on their chang-
ing appreciation for the questions they are asking.
• The researcher’s task is to learn all that she can about her question, rath-
er than to simply find evidence to support what she already “knows.”
• An inquiry must move beyond any one source of information. It
is best to consult a range of sources representing as many relevant
points of view as possible.
• The most effective manner of reporting or sharing findings may
only become evident after the research has been done. What the
researcher decides to communicate about his or her research, and to
whom, will have a strong bearing on the ways in which they chose
to communicate.
• Results of her study may be disappointing to the student researcher,
or seemingly complex and contradictory, with some data supporting
one conclusion, other data another. This is actually a more realistic
finding than the reductive, simplistic, black and white world many
school texts and curricula present to students. The student may,
Why Inquiry? 277
because of the limits of time and resources, fall short of a full and
complete understanding of their topic, again a realistic result for
most of us. She will report honestly on what she has and has not
found, and come to realize that it is a topic she can continue to
research for as long as she is compelled to do so.
• And finally, the purpose of this approach to teaching and learning is
to help students to develop and practice the skills, dispositions, and
problem-solving strategies that will enable them to pursue whatever
questions and concerns they may encounter in the future. While we
want the results of their in-class research projects to be satisfying
and successful, the larger goal is to develop life skills and confidence
they can take with them wherever they go.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD INQUIRY PROJECT?
There is a limited amount of time for extended, inquiry-type research

projects and so teachers will want to make best use of those that
they offer to their students. I interviewed a number of teachers and
researchers to get their thoughts about the elements that contribute to
successful research and while each interviewee emphasized that there
is no formula that fits every researcher and situation, there are com-
mon elements that increase the likelihood that the inquiry will be a
successful learning experience. There are six significant factors shared
by those I interviewed:
• The research must matter for the researcher;
• Real research takes time;
• There is no one source that contains the whole story;
• The most important skill for a researcher is listening;
• The research must lead to an authentic consequence for the researcher

and others; and
• There are multiple ways to communicate what has been found.
I have already addressed some of these points above, but will briefly
discuss a few of the points in some additional detail next.
Figure 13.1. What Makes a Good Inquiry Project?

278 Doug Selwyn
Researching What Matters
Ryan is six years old. His teacher, Steve Goldenberg, has this to say about him:
We always have a story-writing time, and at first Ryan wanted to write

a history of the whole world and the whole universe, and was having
trouble finding the point for starting. I gave him a little structure,
which was to have him invent fictitious characters, but have them do
real things that could happen, that his characters could do.
Ryan came up with three characters, Ed, Jake, and Randy, who
work at Microsoft, and they take vacations together. The first vacation
that he wanted them to go on was to Montana, where his (Ryan’s)
grandfather lives. Ryan started to research how they would get to
Montana. . . . Then it became clear that he wanted them to stay in
a hotel, and he was very focused on making sure to have them stay
on the highest floor of the tallest hotel in Montana.
I asked him, “How would Ed, Jake, and Randy know which one
was the tallest hotel?” and he said he didn’t know. He took a trip up
to the library at our school . . . and our librarian was stumped, so I
suggested we call a travel agent. He had never heard of a travel agent,
but he was fascinated by the idea of people who knew about places all
over the world and might even know how many floors a hotel had.
We called one, in Billings, and when she heard it was for a
six-year-old student she made it her top priority to find it out and
get back to us.
I think something happened for Ryan. This magical travel agent
was very important to him. He started becoming more interested in
just trying to find out about things. He wanted to know all of the
museums that they could have gone to, what hours they were open,
and everything they might see while visiting Montana. . . .
Ryan went on to write a series of five books about Ed, Jake, and
Randy, who always went traveling together. Ed, Jake, and Randy, in
his books actually did a lot of research. They looked in travel guides
and they asked people what it would be like and what people would
be doing in the places they were going to travel to.
Steve’s story about Ryan sums up the most important point made by every one
of the researchers I interviewed; the research experience is most rewarding and
successful when the researchers find value in what they are doing. Their research
must matter to them, and must be of appropriate and sufficient challenge for them
at whatever skill and experience level they bring to it.
Why Inquiry? 279
Ryan is an exceptional student, but the other students in Steve’s class share
his passion for pursuing their interests. In Steve’s words, “Once they understand
that they can research about things they’re interested in, they all want to do it,
and want to do it passionately.”
What matters is that we want to know. Poet Georgia Heard talked about
her own young son’s approach to learning, linking it to the speech made by the
Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska when she accepted the Nobel Prize for poetry:
Part of Szymborkska’s speech was about the phrase “I don’t know,”

and how, she said, without that one little sentence, one little phrase
“I don’t know” I never would have written poetry, Isaac Newton never
would have done his work, I mean, this is how we start, with “I don’t
know.” I mean, that’s the question.
Georgia goes on to say,
So often in schools we try to cover up that we don’t know. I think

that’s what a child’s world is. I think about my son Leo. He wants to
know how the world works, and his question is “I don’t know,” and
that’s where his passion for learning comes from, not from being filled
up by a curriculum that someone else has just invented.
When students engage in work they value, they learn that research is
rewarding; it helps them to find out what they want to know, and it generates
its own life and excitement. They learn that their own questions and curiosities
are legitimate and matter. This is the basis for lifelong learning, and for living
in the world. The alternative would be for the students to learn that their ques-
tions and interests don’t matter, and that the only point of an assignment is to
complete it to the teacher’s, or the state’s satisfaction. There is no quicker way to
smother curiosity and defuse creativity than to dictate to students what they will
or will not investigate, and then to tell them whether they have been successful
or not.
Inquiry Takes Time: Following the Thread, Going to Multiple Sources
I’ve already discussed that real inquiry involves asking real questions, and it takes
time to pursue those questions. We must encourage our students to search out
multiple sources, from multiple points of view as we guide them toward researching
to make meaning, to understand as fully as possible. This means being guided by
what they want to know, and going wherever those questions lead.
Poet Georgia Heard, talking about her poetry and her life says,
280 Doug Selwyn
I think that I definitely “follow the thread,” as William Stafford named

it. And that’s so important. . . . When researching about Vietnam I
found out my father was in the Têt offensive in Saigon. Then I went
and researched . . . what it was like during the Têt offensive, and I
found out that Têt is a holy holiday, so then I wanted to find out
about Têt, from the Vietnamese perspective, and how important it is
to them. So I had all these various threads that would come up, and
it was based on a passion. I wanted to know. I felt it was important,
and I would follow it.
Historian Howard Zinn put it this way:
From the beginning I decided that I would go wherever an issue

took me. The important thing to me was, “Here’s a question to be
solved.” If there’s a question to be solved you mustn’t limit yourself
to one particular field in trying to solve that question. If you have to
go into economics, go into politics, if you have to go into genetics
and geography, whatever, you just go wherever the question leads you.
Don Fels, talking about his process for carrying out research regarding the
history of the Duwamish River, a waterway that leads into Seattle, said:
In the beginning one doesn’t know what one is going to find. I knew
the end result was that the river had been messed up, but I didn’t know
what had happened at this particular site. . . . So, I started researching,
I started looking. And by looking that meant I did a lot of reading
in whatever I could find that talked about the Duwamish. I looked at
old newspapers, I looked at books that treated the general geographic
area, I looked at old maps, and then I talked to as many people as
I could find who had some memory or knowledge of the place, and
they would usually then point me to somebody else.
Listening
Each of those I interviewed placed listening at the heart of their work. They
talked about listening in four main ways: first, listening to oneself, being open to
one’s interests, questions, curiosities, and situations; second, listening to what your
sources have to say, through interviews, print, videos, photographs, documentary
films, music, artifacts, or other modes; third, listening to the feedback of others,
including comments from critical friends and others who can help you to evalu-
ate what you have done; and fourth, for educators, it is paramount to listen to
your students, to have a strong sense of who they are, what they are interested
Why Inquiry? 281
in, what they are saying, and how they can best carry out their work successfully.
I will address listening to others and listening to students a bit more in the next
paragraphs.
LISTENING TO OTHERS
I am using the term listening to mean being open to taking in and processing
new information, from the full spectrum of sources. Skilled researchers attempt to
understand, as fully as they can, what people are telling them, from their experi-
ences and points of view, from their frames of reference. This means the researcher
withholds judgment as long as possible, and attempts to stay open to new infor-
mation, to new ways of looking at his or her questions, and to considering the
addition of additional information.
As people talk, you are listening to what they say, what they don’t say, and
noticing when what they say is surprising, or new information to you. Howard
Zinn, when he began to write his groundbreaking work, A People’s History of the
United States, was still learning the extent to which our nation’s true story had
been suppressed or censored by those in power.
I’d started out from a kind of general philosophical question, that is,
“What are the points of view that are omitted in any traditional telling
of history?” and of course in the case of Columbus it was the point of
view of the Indians. Once I decided that I was going to look for their
point of view, I found that they weren’t a writing society. That was one
problem; there were no written records left from the Indians. And the
other problem was that they’d been wiped out, which in itself was an
interesting bit of information that nobody had ever told me. Nobody
in elementary school had ever said that about Columbus’s encounter
with the Indians, so I thought “Who else was there, and who could
possibly have thrown light on it?” That’s when I discovered Father
Bartolome Las Casas. The writings of Las Casas gave me a wealth of
information, because he was writing, he was at least looking at it as
much as he could, not being an Indian, from the standpoint of the
Indians, from the standpoint of the victims. So, it’s a matter of ask-
ing the question, whose point of view is being left out of this story?
When I was dealing with the Mexican War, the question was,
there too, whose point of view is left out of the story? That led me
to go to many, many, many volumes written about the Mexican War,
digging and digging and trying to find out what is the point of view
of the soldiers in the American army, or the leaders or soldiers in the
Mexican army? That principle led me, in every situation, to look into
the shadowy parts of the library.
282 Doug Selwyn
Documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand recognized that any story that one
enters is already in motion, and that all involved come to it with their mix of
personal history, experience, biases, and attitudes. When she traveled to the South
to interview mill workers, and family members of mill workers for the film Upris-
ing of ’34, she also recognized that, as an outsider she was not necessarily some-
one factory workers would trust and open up to. She knew she had to become
legitimate in their eyes before they would go below the surface, and talk about
the textile strikes that took place in their towns. Those strikes by textile workers
were traumatic; seven workers were murdered in a small town in South Carolina,
shot by their own townsmen, members of the South Carolina National Guard who
had been sent out by the governor to guard the mills against the strikers. It is still
a very painful subject for residents of the town, and many who had known the
story refused to talk about it until researchers came to them in the early 1990s.
Judith talked about the research experience.
Individuals do historical inquiry and they come to it with a certain

kind of bias, and they come to it with a race history and a class his-
tory and a religious history. . . . So I went to the south to research
this film as a privileged, white, Jewish person from Long Island and
then I wound up there talking with people about perhaps one of their
greatest moments of risk taking, when they had a great deal to lose,
talking about their loss, and about the impact of that loss.
Judith was recovering from cancer that she had gotten as a consequence of
unethical behavior on the part of drug companies, and she felt that her illness in
a strange way helped her to connect with the workers:
I don’t think you need to have cancer and lose things to be qualified
to do historical inquiry, but you have to be aware of who you are
and what your experiences are so that you can figure out how you
can authentically form a relationship with those people you are asking
questions of, and that you really are bringing something, that you are
worthy of asking about loss.
You need to bring something to the table, you need to bring a
level of compassion, a level of awareness that lets you honestly say, “I
am lucky, and I am honored to get to talk to someone who has had
such a rich set of experiences.”
Listening means you are actively taking in people’s stories, listening for the
ways in which bias and point of view may have shaped what you are hearing. You
are learning to engage in critical thinking, in analysis of what you are hearing, not
as a passive “ear,” but as an engaged listener. It is one of the reasons that middle
Why Inquiry? 283
school teacher Wendy Ewbank has her students carry out research via interviews
and oral histories.
One of my students was investigating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

She came to me one day and said, “I was interviewing this woman
and you know, I think she’s really biased. She’s an Israeli woman and
talked about terrorism and Palestinians.” The student could see that
this woman was coming from a particular perspective and she needed
more interviews, because if she simply goes with what the woman said
it would be clearly one-sided. It was fabulous.
LISTENING TO THE STUDENTS
As teachers, we must learn to listen to our students. It is really at the heart of

teaching, and most fundamental when supporting student research.
Steve Goldenberg always starts with his students:
The most important thing is for them to know that their ideas really
are important, to really make their ideas be at the top of the agenda.
That’s what motivates most people, if they’re really going to be excep-
tional students it’s because they’re operating on their own ideas and
their own thoughts and feeling that power. That doesn’t happen if
you have an entire, fully planned day, or a day when you’re just not
listening to the kids.
Steve has his mandated responsibilities as a teacher, and part of his mastery
is to make sure that he is meeting those responsibilities while also listening care-
fully to the children. He knows that he can attend to his students, follow their
lead and still guide them so that
[w]e’ll be sure that it touches all the basic skills that need to be touched.
There’ll be some words and writing in there, there will be some things
that need to be counted or added up, or categorized, sorted, and clas-
sified, and there will be some relation to the natural world, either the
social sciences or science, but it really can be done from their point
of view. I guess the most important thing is to really listen.
This is no less true with older students. Rosalie Romano’s university stu-
dents are faced with the challenge of listening to their public school students as
they lead expeditions. This is challenging for the teachers and for the university
students who are interning in the classroom because they can only plan the shell
or outline of the experience; the rest is being ready and able to move in the direc-
284 Doug Selwyn
tions suggested by their middle school students. Dr. Romano talked about what
it takes to teach in this way:
That takes confidence and it also takes a mindset, an attitude that

listens deeply to your kids, and responds to it, and shifts and begins
making adaptations so you’re always right there with the kids, able to
ask the questions so that the kids keep moving, and stay engaged. They
keep generating, actually not just the momentum, but the intellectual
curiosity that animates the lesson, the unit, or in this case the entire
expedition. When these teachers who write the lessons immediately
have to adapt and change the lessons, and have to reflect on it, they
begin to see that the lessons themselves are creations, nothing more,
nothing less. They’re not set in stone. And that they have an intellec-
tual obligation to make sure that whatever they are teaching connects
in some way with the lives of their kids, whoever those kids may be.
The Best Research Leads to an Authentic Consequence
Research in the “out-of-school world” is rarely done for its own sake. There is
usually a reason, a goal in mind that is tangible, which will lead to change. Those
I interviewed all engage in research related to better understanding who we are
and how we came to be this way, and there is an intention to communicate that
understanding to others, to make a difference through their work.
For Don Fels, his art is designed to get people to pay attention, to see the
world that they most often overlook, or take for granted:
Having art help to make people off-balance is something that most

artists, in one way or another, believe in. I think part of the function
of art is to get people to experience their world more fully, and you
can’t do that if you just present them with what they already know.
They’ll look at it, say thank you, and walk on. So, you have to do
something that gets people to see things differently. . . .
If it’s working right, some part of the hundreds of hours of
research I’ve invested in this thing reinvests itself in them and they
walk off with a little piece of it.
There Are Many Ways to Share the Results of Research
Schools have traditionally favored structured research assignments that result in

structured written reports, with a vague sense that the teacher would be reading
the papers. We have all written them throughout our school careers, and have read
more than our share if we have taught for more than a couple of weeks. One
Why Inquiry? 285
must conclude, given the nature of the assignment, that there is no real authentic
purpose to the work beyond carrying it out, handing it in, receiving a grade, and
checking it off the list of requirements.
It does not have to be this way, and, if we are looking to involve students
in meaningful work that has a real purpose then we would do well to encourage
them to think differently about the consequences of their efforts, and the impact
they want to have on those who come to the task. Researchers communicate what
they have learned about topics through a wide range of modes that they choose for
a number of reasons. They consider what they have to say, to whom they would
like to say it, and the impact/response they are hoping to have on those who
experience their work. The researchers also consider their own strengths, resources,
and preferences for communication.
Roger Shimomura created a series of paintings, Stereotypes and Admonitions,
with an intention to communicate what he had seen and experienced, in hopes
that it would move viewers:
I really meant to establish a forum for examining racism and injustice

with this other series, Stereotypes and Admonitions. I don’t sit here and
implant all of these questions or issues into the work. I just hope the
work is pregnant with those possibilities, with those issues coming up
between whatever group of people, whether they end up coming out
as gender issues or whatever, that’s great. To create this forum, for
things to happen, for sparks to fly.
There’s a certain advantage of having something sit on the wall,
and especially in a house, and to keep sending these sparks out for
whoever may look at it. I’ve always said that, in trying to explain some
of these issues to students, depending on who is standing in front of
a particular painting, you have a circuitry that comes out of one end
of the painting and through that viewer’s head and out the other, and
that circuitry just waits for a different head to come in and complete it.
Part of our challenge as teachers is to help our students take themselves and
their work seriously. One aspect of this is to encourage them to research something
that matters to them, for them. And then, since it matters, we can encourage
them to think carefully about how they might communicate about what they have
learned, and to whom. They can certainly share with their classmates, and perhaps
with others in the school community. They might make presentations to younger
students, or to parent/family groups, or create Web sites, digital stories, blogs,
plays, or films. They might write letters to the editor, articles for journals, or put
together presentations for conferences. Once they take their work and themselves
seriously, they begin to recognize that it is worth doing well, because it matters,
and that it might well be worth sharing with others.
286 Doug Selwyn
Final Thoughts
I received my teaching certificate in 1981. That year Ronald Reagan became presi-
dent, and fifty-two American hostages were freed from more than a year of cap-
tivity in Iran, on the very same day that Reagan took office. The Cold War was
still cold, with the Soviet Union and United States still threatening each other
and the world with Mutually Assured Destruction. There was a wall between East
and West Germany. There was still an American middle class. It was the year that
MTV came on the air, the year that the first cases of HIV-AIDS appeared, and
year that Charles and Diana married, watched by millions.
The mandate for high school social studies teachers in Seattle was to make
sure students knew several pages’ worth of disconnected social studies terms, dates,
wars, presidents, kings, pacts, and treaties. The district’s strategy for preparing
students for the future seemed to be to fill them up with the past.
As I look back, some thity-three years later, there is no way I could have
predicted what those sixteen and seventeen-year-old students would be facing in
2014, as they approached their fiftieth birthdays. How could we have imagined
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, Enron and
the financial bubbles, two wars in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan (with the Afghanis
now fighting the United States), the financial collapse of 2008, genetically modified
foods, the WTO (and the Battle of Seattle), melting polar ice caps and climate
change, Occupy Wall Street, and the Red Sox winning the World Series, not once,
but three times. Unimaginable, the stuff of science fiction.
And today, despite computers that can access overwhelming amounts of
information and can connect people around the world, we are no more able to
predict what our current students will be dealing with in 2045, thirty-three years
from now, than I could have in 1981. What is most certain is that they will be
dealing with issues and crises that we cannot even imagine. Given that, what is
our role, our responsibility as educators? How can we best serve our students so
they are most able to deal responsibly and effectively with whatever they encounter
as they move through school and into the rest of their lives? What is to be done?
We can bring inquiry into our classrooms, offering students a solid under-
standing of what got us to the present moment, and a reliable set of strategies
for continuing to learn about the world. We can help students recognize the
importance of asking why things are the way they are and strive to understand
why they happened as they did. We can help them make connections, across time
and place so that they understand that what happens over there does matter to
us, and the choices we make here in the United States have serious consequences
for those living around the world. We can offer them the opportunity to develop
the skills, knowledge, and dispositions that will allow them to continue to pursue
their own questions, concerns, and curiosities, to evaluate whatever they encounter,
and to communicate with others about the issues and challenges of their days.
Why Inquiry? 287
If we want our students to grow into responsible adults and citizens, able
to advocate and act for themselves, their families, and their communities, we can
best serve them by introducing them to skills that they can bring to whatever they
encounter in the future. They will learn by doing, by reflecting, by sharing with
their classmates and school community, and, hopefully, will continue to learn and
grow as they move beyond school into the rest of their lives. If this is one of our
fundamental goals as teachers, we must organize our classrooms so that we are
acting in service to this goal.
Note
1. All quotes in this chapter are drawn from interviews the author conducted
between February and August 2008.
14
Beyond Fearing the Savage

Responding to Islamophobia in the Classroom
Özlem Sensoy
What Is Islamophobia?
Islamophobia is a form of religious and cultural intolerance of Islam and Muslims.

While this might serve as a useful shorthand definition, the actual meaning of the
term is more complicated. Some scholars have argued that the phenomenon the
term tries to capture is less a phobia (or “fear”) and more a cultural intolerance, a
rejection that is rooted in race and ethnicity more than religion (Modood, 2003).
Despite its place in contemporary political parlance, the term is not new.
As Fernando López (2011) explains, emerging in the late nineteenth/early twenti-
eth centuries, the term Islamophobia in essence described an emerging attitude in
Europe at the time, wherein Islam (and Muslims) were perceived to be the image
of the enemy. As López describes it, Islamophobia was “a hostile attitude towards
Islam and Muslims based on the image of Islam as an enemy, as a threat to ‘our’
well-being and even to ‘our’ survival” (p. 569). In other words, Islam and Muslims
are the face of all that is a threat to “our” way of life and being, and the word
Islamophobia is the name we give to this threat.
So if I were to ask you, What are the characteristics of this image of threat?
What does it look like? You might think about images such as: religious funda-
mentalism (scenes of ritualistic prayer, religious leaders issuing fatwas), a backward
society without modern ideas or things (no cars, cell phones, high rises, just lots
of sand, dirty and crowded streets, rubble), scary men (scowling, bearded, brown
faces, fists waving) oppressing women and girls around them (veiled and huddled).
Whether you believe these things to be true or not, it would be difficult to argue
that these characters and plots do not constitute the predominant image of Islam
in the colonial “Western” world.
289
290 Özlem Sensoy
But where do these images come from? If I’ve seen them so often that they
come to mind instantly when I think about “Islam,” doesn’t this mean they are
likely real and thus true?
These are fair questions; and by the end of this chapter, you will, hopefully,
understand that these images have more to do with how ideologies about Islam
and Muslims circulate in mainstream popular culture and formal school curricula
than with their reality or truth. In this essay, I will describe how discourses of
Islamophobia circulate in schools, and identify three domains (religion, politics,
and media) where educators can focus pedagogical activities for maximum effects
in responding to Islamophobia and Islamophobic discourses in constructive ways.
Islamophobia in Schools
In 2009, I co-edited a book called Muslim Voices in School. In that book, Nawell
Mossalli tells the story of Kareem, a second grade student of Muslim heritage at
the elementary school where Mossalli is working. One day, walking through the
halls of the school, she comes upon Kareem, crying. In front of him is his teacher,
waving a piece of ham in his face. Mossalli asks the teacher, “What’s going on?” To
which the teacher responds, “It’s not going to bite him!” After a reminder about
his dietary restrictions, and a request to the teacher that “he should not be forced
to eat something his parents do not wish him to eat,” the teacher leans in and
whispers, “But he comes to school with only a hot dog bun with some white
looking cheese in it!” (Mossalli, 2009, p 56).
Is this an exaggerated story motivated by ideologies of political correctness?
After all, the teacher was innocently trying to fix what she perceived to be a child
coming to school with inadequate lunch. Her intentions were good, even if their
impact was clumsy. We just need to lighten up about all this stuff.
Or is this an example of a lone teacher’s bad moves? Perhaps this particular
teacher is one of those who are simply uninformed about the most basic aspects
of their students’ lives. This is a solitary teacher’s mistake and an isolated case,
and should be treated as such.
Or, is this an example of Islamophobia? What assumptions about Kareem’s
religious customs, family life, and parents’ love and care of him underlie this
teacher’s actions? Further, what about the school structure sets the stage for this
encounter to occur in the way it does?
I often think about Kareem’s story as I work with students at my university,
many of whom want to become teachers. In class, we often struggle with questions
about cultural knowledge and how much about “other” cultures they (as preservice
teachers) are expected to know. Often students will lament, How am I supposed to
know everything about every child?
Beyond Fearing the Savage 291
While most educators would agree that they can strengthen their relation-
ships with students by developing their knowledge about their students’ lives,
“knowing everything” is not the only (nor most constructive) way to respond to
Islamophobia. Further, it likely isn’t the case that we know nothing about students
different from us. In fact, from a social justice perspective, we have already received
a lifetime of knowledge about those who are “not like us” (Sensoy & DiAngelo,
2012).
Let’s consider an example. Imagine that you do not have a person with a
disability, such as mental illness, in your life, and that you have never systematically
studied disabilities nor issues related to ableism. Despite not having these experi-
ences, you have likely learned a great deal about persons with disabilities based on
how they are regularly presented in popular culture. For example, consider how
discourses about mental illness are represented in pop culture. These discourses
are present both in representations of characters with mental illness (in classic films
such as Psycho and on TV soap operas, which regularly feature characters with some
form of mental illness such as Dissociative Identity Disorder), as well as in plots
in which characters are talked about as “acting crazy” (such as “hysterical women,”
and the still-common use of slurs such as the “r word,” and in virtually all horror
films that build on characteristics of disability such as physical disfigurement, or
“insanity”). These discourses “teach us” what sorts of lives persons with disabilities
have, how they behave, and perhaps even where they live. In fact, even if you simply
watch the occasional horror movie, you will “learn” a great deal about mental and
physical disabilities; and further, through repetition, aspects of these representa-
tions will seem to be true. Thus, the discourse (or story) about what it means “to
be” or “act crazy” (for example), while perhaps loosely based on real-world details
about one or some persons with disabilities, is nevertheless a set of constructed
elements (characteristics and plots). When these elements are repeated over and
over again in a multitude of public discourses, and are so consistent, they become
familiar and can seem true. In other words, the relentless repetition and consistency
of popular culture’s representations of a disability such as mental illness (rather
than any actual “truth” of mental illness) serve as the most familiar image most
of us have about persons with disabilities. And if we don’t have any persons with
disabilities in our lives, or whom we advocate for, these discourses are often the
only way we have come to know persons with disabilities.
Similarly, you may never have known a Muslim person and, because of this,
think you know nothing about Islam or Muslims. But mainstream media, news,
and popular culture at large have already done a great deal of schooling, educating
you about the lives and experiences of Muslim people—such as Kareem’s family.
Thus, as educators, it is a false belief that we come to our students as blank slates.
In fact, we have received a lifetime’s worth of hidden curriculum about the social
groups our students represent.
292 Özlem Sensoy
To respond to Islamophobia from a social justice perspective means that

educators must do at least two things: first, learn about the various social institu-
tions that do pedagogical work and teach us this kind of hidden knowledge; and
second, respond to the hidden knowledge embedded within the institution and
formal curriculum of schooling. To put another way: neither the educator nor the
school is a neutral space—both are embedded with a unique cultural fingerprint,
and situated in a particular cultural context.
While the scope of this essay does not allow for a thorough exploration of
the demographics of students and teachers, it is important to state that all teachers
(whatever their personal religious, linguistic, ethnic, or racial background) must
develop an awareness about how their own identities inform the knowledge they
access and validate. Similarly, the institution of schooling itself is not neutral but
has a unique culture that can be studied. So how does Islamophobia manifest in
schools? What are the conditions in the school (the hidden cultural fingerprints)
that allow anti-Islamic prejudicial (internal) beliefs to manifest as discriminatory
(external) actions?
While it’s true that anyone of any background can discriminate (that is, act
on prejudicial beliefs about any other group), it is also the case that there are some
beliefs (values, expectations) that are woven into the fabric of all social institutions
in the United States and Canada. These norms are often described as the dominant
group’s “privilege.” (Blumenfeld, 2006; Sensoy, 2009). When considering race, the
beliefs woven into the fabric of a school are white; when considering gender, the
beliefs woven into school culture are masculine; and in the context of religious
expression, in Canada and the United States, Christian norms and values (the
invisible values and expectations embedded in the school) predominate, and so
to respond to Islamophobia educators must understand how Christian privilege is
manifesting in schools.
Understanding Christian Privilege
WHAT IS CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE?
If you are Christian, you might be thinking that you don’t have any privileges.
In fact, you may believe it is Christianity that’s under attack in public schools.
From a social justice perspective, when we talk about Christian privilege, we are
describing group-level dynamics, not individual experiences. And at the group
level, Christian norms and values are embedded in school culture, and in the
United States and Canada, Christians are the only beneficiaries of privilege in the
religious identity paradigm.
Schlosser (2003) defines Christians as those who believe “(a) in Jesus Christ
as their Lord and Savior, and (b) the teaching of the Old and New Testaments
(e.g., belief in the Holy Trinity and the resurrection of Christ)” (p. 45). The largest
groups to fall into the category of Christian include Catholics, Protestants, and
other, smaller denominations. Groups that are minoritized on religious grounds
include those who practice other faiths, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism,
and Islam (Schlosser, 2003).
Reflecting on the annual Easter egg roll on the White House lawn, Warren
Blumenfeld (2006) explains how Christian privilege becomes an invisible value
embedded in public institutions such as schools. He writes,
Many people (most likely the majority), consider these events played
out in Washington, D.C., and in some schools in the United States
as normal, appropriate, and joyous seasonal activities. Upon critical
reflection, however, others experience them as examples of institutional
(governmental and educational) (re)enforcements of dominant Chris-
tian standards and what is referred to as “Christian privilege,” though
presented in presumably secularized forms. They represent some of
the ways in which the dominant group (in this instance, Christians)
reiterates its values and practices while marginalizing and subordinat-
ing those who do not adhere to Christian faith traditions. (p. 195)
Blumenfeld is arguing that the normalizing of Christian traditions as “secular”

traditions that “we all” should value, uphold, and practice is one of the ways that
Christian privilege manifests in the public sphere as a hidden curriculum. This is
problematic because rather than incorporating a diversity of faiths, events like the
one on the White House lawn masquerade as neutral.
There are three levels at which privilege and oppression (as partner concepts)
are often described as playing out: the individual/personal level, the cultural/social
level, and the institutional/structural level (Mullaly, 2002; Blumenfeld, 2006).
At the individual/personal level, Islamophobia can play out as actions or
beliefs about the inferiority of non-Christian faiths, or the cultural or religious
inferiority of people in parts of the world that are identified as the “developing”
world. In school, this can manifest when a student from a non-Christian religious
community (Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Jew) is called on to educate the class about
his/her tradition. Consider how Christian students (wherever they are personally on
the spectrum from orthodox to secular) are never asked to educate others about
Christianity. They aren’t because it isn’t necessary to. Christian traditions (both
religious and secularized ones) are all around us within and beyond school.
At the cultural/social level, Islamophobia emerges in cultural practices that
are normalized by the dominant group. In the case of Christian privilege, Blu-
menfeld (2006) describes how educational leaders who push to teach creationism
or push for constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage are examples
of oppression at the cultural/social level. We can also think about dietary norms
and restrictions as just one cultural domain that is a pervasive yet invisible level
294 Özlem Sensoy
of privilege in public settings. Another level of Christian cultural norms that per-
meate public schools is the nondenominational cultural rituals that stem from
Christian practices. Think about all the activities in school during the weeks
before Christmas: holiday clothing, reindeer, candy canes, gift giving, assemblies,
and sing-a-longs, even when “neutralized” and presented as secular, are rooted in
Christian practices.
And finally, at the institutional/structural level, privilege and oppression play
out as governmental, educational, and other policies “that explicitly or implicitly
privilege and promote some groups while limiting access, excluding, or render-
ing invisible other groups” (Blumenfeld, 2006, p. 204). Clark et al. (2002) offer
examples of Christian privilege as it plays out at the institutional level. For example,
do state and federal holidays coincide with your religious practices and, thus not
negatively impact your job or education? Is the central figure of your religion used
as the major point of reference for the calendaring system (e.g., BC and AD, as
well as BCE and CE)? And have your religious holidays been legally constructed
as secular so that they can be openly practiced in public institutions (so you do
not need “special accommodation”)?
The result of all this is that Christian faith practices, when secularized,
become hidden and normal within the school structure. And the practices and
customs of all other faiths (such as calendar and timing of prayer, or dietary restric-
tions) stand in contrast to this presumed secular space. And so any requests for
accommodation of these different practices are quickly seen as a threat to “our,”
presumed-neutral, customs and traditions.
Responding to Islamophobia in the classroom means that educators must
take into account not only the invisible culture of Christian privilege in schooling,
but also a range of interconnected considerations related to Islam and the Middle
East, primary among them being religion, politics, and media. For example, there
is often a great deal of interchangeable usage of the terms Middle Eastern, Arab,
and Muslim. Thus, it is important to understand how the Middle East (a politi-
cal region) or Arabs, Iranians, or Turks (as ethnic groups) are not the same thing
as Islam (a religion) or Muslims (adherents to Islam). Also, despite the fact that
geographically the Middle East refers to a relatively small global landmass, it is
a region of the world that is of great political interest to the United States and
other colonial powers; thus, politics must be considered when educating oneself
to constructively respond to Islamophobia in the classroom. And finally, because
so much of what the public knows about Islam is rooted in the representations
circulating in mainstream news media and popular culture, educators must content
with issues related to the media and popular culture.
In what follows, I will address each of these three areas, and offer specific
considerations related to classroom pedagogy and the curriculum that can help
counter Islamophobia.
Religion: The Terms Middle East and Islam
In order to constructively respond to Islamophobia in the classroom, educators

must understand the various issues involved in shaping what it means to think
about Islam, the Middle East, students of Middle Eastern (Arab, Persian, Turk-
ish) or colonial (English, U.S., Canadian) Muslim background. When thinking,
for example, about the experiences of students of Middle Eastern heritage, we
are referring to a very diverse group. For comparison, consider trying to think
about the experiences of students of European heritage. In both cases, there are
very diverse population of students situated in various national cultural contexts
to be considered: some are immigrants, others native-born; some first generation,
bi/multi-lingual, others monolingual or EAL; some Christian, some Jewish, some
Muslim, others atheist; some religious, others secular; some white, others of color;
some members of traditional families, others members of bi/multi-racial and non-
traditional families; and so on.
Research conducted by scholars on Islam and the Middle East (c.f. Said,
1981; Esposito & Mogahed, 2007; Suleiman, 1977; Shaheen, 1997, 2001; MESA,
1975; NAAA, 1980) has catalogued several common assumptions in mainstream
conceptions about people believed to be of Middle Eastern heritage. These assump-
tions include a habit of describing the Middle East, Arab, and Islam (and people
from those regions) as monolithic; assuming that the Middle East is primarily a
place of political and religious strife and therefore this presumed strife underlies
assumptions about Middle Eastern or Muslim heritage students and families; and
that these assumptions are solidified as facts through their consistency and repeti-
tion in media and popular culture. This repetition often rationalizes ongoing fear
and misinformation.
The Basics: Understanding the Middle East
As background, let’s review some basics. Middle East refers to a geographical region
of the world that is identified as such from a European perspective (“Middle” in
relation to what?). Until the 20th century, Europe referred to the region as the
Near East as compared to the Far East (meaning China). This illustrates that it is
a fluid term that has included at various times nation-states from the West Coast
of the African continent, through to Central Asia. The term has been in popular
usage since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I,
prior to which the term Near East was in wider usage. This term referred to the
lands that included the Ottoman Empire, but not necessarily to areas that today
are associated with the Middle East. Sometimes the term Middle East is used
interchangeably with the Arab World or the Muslim World and in fact, many world
history textbooks still have such units or chapters in them (Sensoy, 2009b). This
296 Özlem Sensoy
again shows the fluid nature of the term, referring at times to a geographical space
and at other times to a cultural space or people.
Further illustrating the fluidity in identifying the region, the United Nations
recognizes no region called the Middle East per se. Rather, they organize the nations
of the world into the five inhabited continental areas (and subregions within each
continent): Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania. Nations we consider to be in
the Middle East will fall into Africa (such as Egypt, Algeria, or Morocco), as well
as Asia (such as Iraq, Israel, and Saudi Arabia). However in popular culture today,
the Middle East most often refers to nation-states that are situated in Northern
Africa across Anatolia and the Mediterranean, down through the Arabian penin-
sula, and stretching across West Asia to Pakistan. The fact that the Middle East,
Muslim World, or Arab World are so persistent in popular culture and parlance
reveals a great deal about how important it is as an idea.
Despite the fact that the Middle East includes Israel and that people of
all faiths live in the Middle East, when referring to the Middle East or those of
Middle Eastern heritage, most outsiders presume that Middle Easterners are Mus-
lims and primarily Muslims of Arab descent. Arab refers to people who ethnically
identify as Arab, have a shared Arab culture and language, and who can trace
their ancestry to the territories of the twenty-two Arab nation-states identified
within the Arab League as: Kingdom of Jordan, United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.),
Kingdom of Bahrain, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Algeria, Republic of Dji-
bouti, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Republic of Sudan, Republic of Syria, Republic
of Somalia, Republic of Iraq, Sultanate of Oman, State of Palestine (Occupied),
State of Qatar, Republic of Comoros, State of Kuwait, Republic of Lebanon,
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Republic of Egypt, Kingdom of Morocco, Republic of
Mauritania, Republic of Yemen.
Yet the Arab states encompass neither the totality of the region identified
as the Middle East, nor the totality of Muslim populations that are associated
with the Middle East. For instance, countries in what is understood to be the
Middle East region and with large Muslim populations (such as Turkey, Iran, and
Afghanistan) are not Arab-majority nation-states, nor is the largest population of
Muslims (Indonesia) situated within the Middle East region, nor is it an Arab
state. Similarly, Arabs have a diversity of religious affiliation. There are Arab Jews,
Arab Christians, Arab atheists, and Arab Americans make up less than 15 percent
of the U.S. Muslim population.
That said, there is a very important connection between Islam and Arabic—
that is, classical Arabic. The relationship between the classical Arabic language and
Muslims is related to the Holy Book of Islam. The primary theological text of Islam,
the Qur’an, is believed to be the exact record of what the prophet Muhammad
heard as revelation. In fact, the Arabic word Qur’an means “the recitation”—that
is, that which was recited to the prophet by God. Sometimes you may see Qur’an
written as Koran. This is an example of the kind of distortion that can occur via
transliteration (representing sounds of one writing system, in another). In Arabic,

there are two letters that produce a “k” sound, and the one that produces a hard
“q” preceding vowels such as o and u as in “coffee” is accurately transliterated in
Latin alphabet to a “Q.” Because Muslims believe that the previous revelations from
God (namely the Old and New Testaments) have been translated and changed
in ways that have distorted the revelation of God, learning the classical Arabic of
the Qur’an and understanding the Qur’an in its original language are important
spiritual goals for devout Muslims. For this reason, the connection between clas-
sical Arabic (as the language spoken by the prophet at the time of revelation in
the 7th century CE) and Islam is very strong. However, consider that someone
speaking English today would likely not be conversant in 7th century English, or
think about how much trouble you may have (had) reading and understanding
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales the first time you read them—and that was writ-
ten in the 14th century! Similarly, most Muslims who read and study the Qur’an
in its 7th century Arabic, are not necessarily fluent in Modern Standard Arabic
nor conversant in contemporary Arabic spoken in the various dialects (Moroccan
Arabic versus Egyptian Arabic versus Iraqi Arabic, etc).
To summarize, to think constructively about someone who is Muslim is to
untangle that category from the category “Middle East”—or the “Arab World”
or “Islamic World.” The Middle East is a very fluid label referring to a shifting
landscape of geographical, cultural, and religious groups. That said, it is neverthe-
less a very real category in its effects because to say that someone is of Middle
Eastern heritage (Arab, Turk, Iranian, Pakistani, Saudi, etc.) brings to mind a rather
persistent image of someone who is brown and Muslim.
Curricular and Pedagogical Considerations
One of the key ways that students of all backgrounds learn about themselves
and others is via the formal school curriculum. Unfortunately, there is a history
of misrepresentation of peoples from the Middle East in the school curriculum.
For students of Middle Eastern heritage, the ways in which they see themselves
reflected in schools is primarily in the context of religion (Islam) and ethnicity
(as Arab). Thus, much of the research is focused on these two elements. The
earliest study of representation of Arabs and Muslims in U.S. schools is a thesis
from 1957 written by a student at Kent State University, titled, Misconceptions
in the Treatment of Arab World in Selected American Textbooks for Children. This
study included a questionnaire sent to teachers in Ohio and a content analysis of
fifty-eight textbooks. But the first comprehensive program of study of representa-
tion occurred in the early 1970s, conducted by a group of scholars affiliated with
the Middle East Studies Association, or MESA, (Farhat Ziadeh, Ayad al-Qazzaz,
John Joseph, Lorne Kenny, Glenn Perry, and Michael Suleiman). These scholars
began a systemic examination of representations of the Middle East, Arabs, and
298 Özlem Sensoy
Islam in U.S. textbooks. They reviewed more than eighty world history, geogra-
phy, and social studies textbooks. Among their major findings were that textbooks
contained many errors (in particular related to Islam), often simplified complex
political issues (such as the Arab/Israeli conflict), perpetuated stereotypes (such as
camel-riding Bedouins dominating the landscape of the Middle East), emphasized
cultural “costumes” and backwardness over modernity and middle-class realities,
and offered judgments on events.
Studies in the 1980s by members of the MESA group as well as the National
Association for Arab Americans (NAAA) found that in addition, Islam was often
separated out from the Judeo-Christian tradition despite the fact that religious
scholars cluster the three Abrahamic faiths together (Corrigan et al., 1998). These
studies argued that the effect of treating Islam separate from Judaism and Chris-
tianity (in contrast to scholarly evidence) was to uphold popular political senti-
ment that Islam and Muslims in particular (and Arabs and Middle Easterners in
general) were fundamentally unlike “us.” In this way, many textbooks focused
on issues that could be described as xenophobic such as the Arab/Israeli conflict,
which was taught in a simplistic framework of “bad Arabs”; a focus on ancient
civilizations rather than contemporary events other than conflict with Israel; and
a focus on religion, and on the status of women. Similarly, these studies found
that few textbook authors had any training or knowledge of the region or culture.
Studies conducted since then about the experiences of Muslim students in
school by authors including Christopher Stonebanks (2008, 2010; Stonebanks &
Sensoy, 2009), Özlem Sensoy (2010, 2012, Sensoy & Marshall, 2009), Selcuk
Sirin & Michelle Fine (2007), Ahmad & Szpara (2003), and Jasmin Zine (2000,
2001) have added to this work. These scholars, along with others, have studied
how school-based experiences and representations in the curriculum influence the
self-esteem and self-identity of students of Middle Eastern and Muslim heritage.
Some of the themes that frequently emerge from this body of scholarship are that
Muslim students often feel alienated from the culture of the school and classroom
because of inaccuracies in the formal curriculum, media stereotypes, or lack of
knowledge among classmates and teachers. As educators, there is much that we
can do to respond constructively to these issues.
In order to be responsive to dynamics of Islamophobia related to religion
manifesting in the classroom, educators can take action, including:
• Treat students from nations associated with the Middle East with as
much cultural specificity as possible, remembering that students may
be of Middle East background and also be white, of color, Chris-
tian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, bilingual, multilingual, middle-class,
working-class, more secular than orthodox, veiled or not, and so on.
• Use the confusion that undoubtedly emerges from a developing
study of Middle East/Arab/Islam as an entry point for exploring
how “confusion” itself can often be the first step to understanding

complexity. Students must be prepared to engage with the com-
plexities of identity. One fruitful entry point might be to use a
curriculum such as Scarves of Many Colors (Bigelow et al., 2000) to
help understand how a cultural practice that on the surface is seem-
ingly simple (such as veiling), is in reality reflective of very complex
and culturally situated circumstances tied to Islam but also to other
pre-Islamic religious and nonreligious traditions.
• Acknowledging that classroom resources are often underdeveloped,
access the many wonderful Web resources that are connected to
university-based Area Studies programs. These outreach centers,
initially developed during the Cold War, have resulted in rigor-
ously reviewed, academically sound materials developed by university
scholars for schools. The Middle East Outreach Council (www.meoc.
us/) is the U.S.-based national network of regional outreach centers.
Their Web materials are terrific resources. Additionally, Saudi Aramco
World (www.saudiaramcoworld.com) makes the materials of their
cultural magazine available online and is great professional devel-
opment reading (on topics such as the history of Islam in China,
contemporary architecture in Jordan, the history of Arabian horses,
music, food, and culture, and many other topics). The Web site also
includes virtual walking tours and other materials that can be used
as curriculum with students.
Politics: The Middle East versus Middle Eastern Heritage
The effect of the shifting landscape of what the Middle East is thought to mean
on a person who is (or is presumed to be) of Middle Eastern heritage is that
their identification (how others categorize them) depends on aspects of their iden-
tity, including their cultural affiliation, religion, citizenship, family language, and
birthplace. These are political complexities, and politics/foreign affairs are a key
way that knowledge about Islam, and by extension the Middle East, is circulated.
One of the most common misunderstandings is that all people of Middle
Eastern heritage are Arabs, and that all Arabs are Muslims. Sometimes, “Arab” is
used interchangeably with “Middle Eastern” or “Muslim” and thus can influence
how we identify students of Middle Eastern heritage (e.g., presuming that all stu-
dents who “look” Middle Eastern, are in fact Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim).
Some students and families of Middle Eastern heritage may be of Arab heritage and
Muslim. Yet in reality, many North Americans of Arab ancestry are Christian. In
fact some of the most famous Arab Americans (e.g. Edward Said, Danny Thomas,
Khalil Gibran) have been of Christian heritage. Similarly, many (though not all)
300 Özlem Sensoy
students with Middle Eastern heritage will be Muslim, and similar to their Jew-
ish or Christian classmates who learn Hebrew or study scripture as part of their
religious education, some Muslim students might be learning Arabic as part of
their religious education.
There are no stable numbers for predicting the population of Middle East-
ern Americans. The U.S. census considers Arabs to be white, and while it does
collect demographic information on religious identification, many Middle Eastern
Americans will not identify religiously. It is estimated that there are approximately
seven million Arab Americans in the United States, and according to the 2008
census adult Americans who identified as Muslim total fewer than 1.4 million. For
comparison, Christian Americans are 173 million, Jewish Americans are 2.7 mil-
lion, and 34 million people reported that they did not identify in religious terms.
Given this relatively small demographic, there is still a great deal of media
focus on the Middle East, due in large part to the political interests of the United
States. The appearance of Arabs and Muslims in the school curriculum and on the
news is often in response to a political, terrorist, or military event (Said, 1981; Sha-
heen, 1997; Esposito & Mogahed, 2006). Further, the school curriculum reinforces
rather than eliminates simplistic rhetoric (such as good versus evil, clash of civiliza-
tions, or with us versus against us). For example, the term jihad has gained a very
powerful political meaning as a savage war against Western civilizations. However
as Esposito and Mogahed (2006) explain, jihad in its original meaning refers to
the obligation incumbent on all Muslims, as individuals and as a community, to
exert themselves to actualize God’s will. Jihad is not intended to include aggressive
warfare. Sometimes this term is used interchangeably with intifada, which refers
specifically to the Palestinian struggle.
This demonstrates that many religious and relatively benign discourses are
taken up and merged with political and militaristic discourses in ways that perpetu-
ate the presumed fundamental cultural, ideological, and spiritual incompatibility
between Muslims/Middle Easterners/Arabs and the Western world.
An example of how politics can play a role in influencing the curriculum is cap-
tured in a study by the MESA group that showed that while in books written
during the 1950s, Islam was commonly (and erroneously) termed “Mohammad-
ism” and Muslims “Mohammadens,” by the 1970s this had been corrected and
textbooks rewritten. More recent research reveals that while some errors (such as
Mohammeddanism and Mohammedans) have been corrected (to Islam and Muslims
respectively), the discourse of backwardness, religious fundamentalism, and oppres-
sion of women are still common aspects of formal curricular materials about the
Middle East and/or Islam (Sensoy & Stonebanks, 2009; Kincheloe & Steinberg,
2004). So different is Islam and the Middle East presumed to be from the rest of
human civilization that it is often the only part of humanity that is identified as
another world. It’s common to still see unit or chapter titles on The Islamic World,
or The Arab World, while no Jewish World, Christian World, Italian World, or
Catholic World exist.
The MESA group theorizes that the social and political changes in the
United States during the 1950s and 1960s, the heightened U.S. attention to the
then-USSR and the Cold War (which resulted in area studies programs in the
late 1950s), the 1948 war in Palestine/Israel, the 1956 Suez War, and the 1967
Six Day War between Arab nations and Israel all play a part in how the content
of the school textbooks related to the Middle East and Islam is presented. As is
the case for many nondominant groups, the broader social and political context
influences what knowledge is taught and omitted about them.
Since these studies, other scholars have explored how students of Middle
Eastern heritage might see themselves reflected in the school curriculum. For many,
the content of the curriculum is still overwhelmingly dominated by stories of
backwardness, oppression, and cultural costumes. For instance, in studies examin-
ing the popular genre of adolescent fiction depicting the lives of Muslim girls,
Özlem Sensoy and Elizabeth Marshall (2009, 2010) found that not only was the
curriculum of the stories in line with stereotypes about a backward and uncivilized
Middle East, but that teachers and future teachers who read the books believed
overwhelmingly that these were accurate depictions of the political conflicts taking
place in Afghanistan and the Middle East. They also believed that these fiction
books served as important jumping-off points to studying the “real” lives of Mus-
lims, Middle Easterners, and women in particular. These beliefs have important
implications for how students of Middle Eastern heritage will experience schooling,
since their teachers’ attitudes (of sympathy, pity, or scorn) about the Middle East
and life there impacts how their family lives and cultures are presumed to be here.
In order to counter this form of Islamophobia in the classroom and foster a
learning environment that is responsive to Islamophobia, teachers can:
• Continue to work on parallel tracks, understanding that the Middle

East as a unified region does not exist, yet that there is a very real
lived experience based on popular assumptions about what it means
to be Middle Eastern;
• Work to make visible the historical discourses (such as civilized/
savage) that underlie many of the popular political discourses (such
as “clash of civilizations”) that circulate.
Media and Popular Culture: Genies, Terrorists, and Camels
While popular culture is not an educational space per se, it does influence how
and what we teach and how students learn about cultural diversity. Scholars in
302 Özlem Sensoy
fields including critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and cultural studies have
written about the manner in which group stereotypes are perpetuated in popular
culture and media. In this way, much of what we “know” about people of Middle
Eastern and Muslim heritage is knowledge that has been shaped by the media
stories we see. For example ideas about jihad, war, the presumed backwardness of
the region, the oppression of women, deserts, camels, and villainous sheikhs are
all dominant elements of the media curriculum.
In what is likely to be the most extensive study of Arabs and Muslims in
film, Jack Shaheen (2001) reviewed more than nine hundred Hollywood movie
depictions of Arabs and Muslims. He found that virtually all Hollywood depictions
of Arabs and Muslims were negative. Common themes included: terrorists, cheating
vendors, holy wars, and sleazy Arabs drooling over white maidens. The perceived
backwardness of the Middle Eastern or Arab is part of a long history that is not
begin nor limited to Hollywood. Linda Steet (2000) and Shirley Steinberg (2004)
have also written about the prevalence of sleazy Arabs, dancing harem girls, and
terrorists in popular culture representations.
While youth might not be watching old Hollywood films, they are inter-
acting with a new generation of pop culture Middle Easterners such as the Bratz
Genie Magic dolls, they’re reading Deborah Ellis’s The Breadwinner about a girl in
Afghanistan, they’re wearing belly dancer costumes at Halloween, watching news
coverage of the ongoing War on Terror, playing Middle Eastern–themed video
games like The Mummy and Prince of Persia, and hearing adults around them (who
grew up on a steady diet of stories built on themes from Hollywood’s “tits and
sand” movies) express a range of ideas about “those Arabs.”
Representations in pop culture matter because the iconic fictional texts from
the past have influenced the most popular character types, story elements, and
plots of today related to the Middle East—serving as a type of shorthand. Want
an evil villain? A violent and backward society? Cast the Arabs! Let’s go to the
Middle East! Did you know that before they were our allies, the Klingons of Star
Trek were a super-warrior race of bronze-faced, mustached villains and that their
guttural language draws on orientalist tropes against Arab culture? Read this out
loud: “Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam” Does it sound like Arabic? Klingon? Both?
Not only do these fictional characters from pop culture build on one another,
but the thin line between fact and fiction is blurred when fictional representations
are so overwhelmingly consistent (across genres and over time) that they seem true.
Consider the effects of seeing the same sorts of pop culture images repeatedly
over time. Have you noticed how often media-based representations of Middle
Eastern men show them as evil, mean, and stupid? And, conversely, how many
times (if ever) have you seen representations of Middle Eastern men as smart,
rational, loving, wittv, playful, kind, or even hot? Why are there so many repre-
sentations of the former sort, and so few of the latter? One reason could be that
there are no men of the Middle East who are rational, or hot. In my view, a better
explanation is that it suits those who create (and read) these representation to see
the Middle East as backward and full of evil, mean, and stupid men (and the poor
women they oppress), because if they are evil, then we must be good; if they are
mean, we must be righteous and benevolent; and if they are stupid, we must be
wise and all-knowing. The “logic” of colonialism, empire, and a civilized “us,” the
justification for economic and ideological exploitation, and drone attacks killing
thousands of unremarkable, interchangeable, and backward “them” is normalized.
In mainstream Western culture, the myths of meritocracy, exceptionalism,
and hard work determine one’s degree of access to the rewards of one’s labor. If
one has (through repeated exposure) internalized the message that Middle East-
ern Muslims don’t work very much, or very well, then it won’t be surprising to
not see any signs of modernity in the Muslim “world” in general—such as bank
machines, high rise buildings, cars, cell phones, and computers. Try this quick
thought experiment: When was the last time you saw a media representation of
a major urban center in the Middle East (Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, Damascus) in
all of its rush hour madness? Can you picture in your mind’s eye Cairenes texting
on their smartphones? Istanbulites hailing taxis? Tehranians joining friends for din-
ner out? Or Damascans enjoying an evening stroll in a local park? Our capacity
to simply imagine the range of mundane life experiences of various groups is in
part determined by the scripts and characters that we have been most socialized,
through repetition, to see as normal. And whether we acknowledge it or not in
the absence of ongoing personal relationships with people different from ourselves,
the media curriculum plays a part in presenting and normalizing who “they’ ” are,
and what they are like.
By the time young people study the Middle East and Islam formally in school
(usually in upper elementary, and sometimes not until the secondary levels), they
have already received a lifetime of persistent and persuasive media curriculum about
it. So it is important to examine how one’s education (both within and beyond
schools) influences one’s capacity to imagine a spectrum of Muslim individuals,
societies, and experiences.
While most canonized knowledge about the world is transmitted formally in school
curricula, the school curricula occur within a social environment that is saturated
with media and pop culture that serve as both a curriculum (reinforcing norma-
tive representations) as well as a “teaching machine” that does not simply reflect
but produces culture.
The characters and plots of popular culture are not independent of ideol-
ogy. Rather, they are intimately connected to mainstream narratives about good
versus evil, industriousness versus indolence, modernity versus backwardness, intel-
ligence versus stupidity, and so on. How these particular character types are cast,
reflects how narratives (such as industriousness versus indolence) are thought to
be distributed among particular cultural, racial, and ethnic groups in a globally
304 Özlem Sensoy
situated visual and discursive vocabulary. The continual representation of harem

seductresses, genies, terrorists and evil Arabs and Middle Eastern and Muslim
men, camels and outlandish palaces, holy wars, oil sheikhs, and stretches of desert
landscape normalize these deeply problematic associations. In fact, they not only
normalize but, via repetition, they shape the range of persons and plots we can
readily imagine in our minds as associated with “them.”
In order to be responsive to these dynamics, teachers can:
• Engage themselves and their students in ongoing media literacy

activities that help to examine media messages according to the
accuracy of a representation (noting distortions and errors, as well
as differences among various accounts); the context and variant ide-
ologies embedded in any text (for example, studying the meaning
given to cultural items such as veils in various contexts); and the
political and/or corporate motivations for the production of any text
(such as the motivation for circulating a closeup rather than wide
angle image of the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Firdos
Square in 2003) (Sensoy, 2010).
• Engage with, rather than avoid, the popular culture that students
consume. Most students find pop culture pleasurable—and as such,
it holds great pedagogical potential. Are your students excited about
THE 99—a new comic series based on Islamic superheroes? Or,
do they love listening to music by Akon or Mos Def? Do they
play with Bratz Genie Magic dolls? Bringing in the popular culture
which young people love can be a productive way to enter them
into complex discussion pertaining to religion, politics, and social
diversity.
Common Fears
Based on my prior experiences working with educators who want to challenge

Islamophobia in school contexts, I can predict that some common questions and
fears will emerge. These fears can function to block action and, given their tenacity,
I would like to name and briefly address three of the most common.
Fear That Addressing Islamophobia Will Take Time Away

from the Curriculum
• “I don’t know anything about Islam and I don’t have the time to
study this in addition to everything else they keep adding to the
curriculum.”
• “If I teach about Islam, don’t I also have to teach about other
religions?”
• “The school shouldn’t be a catch-all for every social problem.”
Whether an elementary or secondary social sciences teacher, teaching about reli-

gions of the world, or diverse cultures, is often a required part of the social
studies curriculum, and much of the formal curriculum is devoted to learning
about various social groups. However, responding constructively to Islamophobia
and other forms of religious oppression is not the same as “teaching about Islam.”
While some may not describe Islamophobia as a social problem but part of a
whole of fear of difference, it is nevertheless an especially relevant social issue to
address when it is part of a holistic curriculum that includes teaching kids toler-
ance and social justice. For example, addressing Islamophobia could be connected
to a study of the Holocaust, which educators routinely teach about. However,
because the Holocaust was not in the current era the important lessons to be
learned from studying it may be abstract to youth. Given the current post-9/11
context, addressing Islamophobia in school can reinforce some of the important
lessons learned about the Holocaust, as well as lessons from other parts of the
curriculum.
Islamophobia is present whether you are explicitly teaching about religion
or not. It is in the structure of the school calendar, the holidays marked, and
assumptions made about which families have what kinds of lives. Just as addressing
misogyny and sexism can occur without “teaching about women” or addressing
homophobia and heterosexism can occur without “a unit on homosexuality,” edu-
cators can address Islamophobia without teaching about Islam. More importantly,
Islamophobia affects people who may not even be Muslim; many people who are
not Muslims are victims of Islamophobia. The 2012 shootings of six worshippers
at the Wisconsin Sikh gurdwara, and the 2011 massacre of seventy-seven mostly
teen youth in Norway were both motivated by ideologies of white supremacy,
anti-immigration sentiments, and Islamophobia (Fekete, 2012; Thobani, 2012),
even though the victims were not Muslims.
It is also worthwhile to remember that no curriculum—whatever the con-
tent—is ever taught from a neutral perspective (Apple, 2004). Thus, one of the
most effective ways to respond to Islamophobia (without adding to the curriculum)
is to make the ideologies embedded within any curriculum visible. For example,
have the students go through the school calendar and insert all the holidays cel-
ebrated by all the kids in the classroom or school. At the higher grades, you can
examine the discourse of liberation, invasion, allies, insurgents, and collect data
about how these discourses are used in various reports (in the school textbooks
as well as newspapers). You can compare the ways in which the school text is
organized (for example, why is there a “Muslim World” or “Arab World” in many
world history textbooks, but no “Catholic World” or “Italian World”?). These
306 Özlem Sensoy
activities are easy to take on, and they can be an important part of unsettling the
invisibility of dominant narratives, Christian hegemony, and subtle xenophobia.
Fear That “Our Nation’s Traditions” or “Our Nation’s Values”

Are Disappearing
• “It’s Christmas that’s under attack.”

• “So we can’t say Merry Christmas anymore, and we have to watch
everything we say?”
• “When you enter the school, you are in America/Canada, things
like veils don’t belong in an American/Canadian school.”
• “Muslims want to have Sharia law over our laws!”
While the last is a common fear, it’s unfounded in actual practice. Further, there is
very little about “our” traditions that are not already imposed by a small number
of us on the rest of us.
Regarding fears that we are losing Christmas, nothing about the practices
of most public schools during December shows that Christmas is under attack. In
fact, most schools are saturated with Christmas decorations, songs, clothes, activi-
ties, foods, and charity events (Sensoy, 2009a). Not to mention the prevalence of
Christmas outside of school—on the radio, television, and in virtually every store
between November and January of each year. Without suggesting that Christmas
should be prohibited, I believe it is fair to examine the purpose of Christmas cel-
ebrations within public school (even if they are coded with “Happy Holidays” or
“Winter Festival”). If these celebrations are meant to build community, then what
do we do with all the kids (Muslim, Jewish, Jehovah’s Witnesses, among others)
who do not belong to this community of celebration? Questions such as this can
help us be inclusive overall to many more students.
Moving on from Christmas in public school, blanket claims that a billion
Muslims want Sharia law, or that all Muslim women are forced to wear burqas,
is akin to the worry that all Christians want Leviticus laws to replace civic laws.
And it is even less likely, given that there is no centralized authority in Islam as
there is, for instance, for Catholicism via the Vatican, to pass a canonized set of
understandings of sharia (Martin, 2004). First, consider the multitude of events
that would need to occur for civic law to be replaced by sharia: Muslims would
need to first agree on a core set of understandings about what sharia is; then,
Muslims who wanted sharia-based laws would need to be voted into enough elected
positions in order to write legislation and pass such laws; the various constitutional
issues related to these law changes would need to be addressed, most likely by
Supreme Courts, etc.
While sharia is most often translated as Islamic law, it is more accurate to

describe it as a set of rules that govern both the believer’s relationship with God
(such as rules of prayer, regulations for fasting, etc.), and also believers’ relationships
with one another in society (Vikør, n.d.). Hamilton Gibb, a prominent scholar
of Islamic studies, described sharia as having never been constructed as a formal
code, but as remaining a discussion about the duties of Muslims (Gibb, 1962).
This is not to deny that various states with majority Muslim populations rely on
specific interpretations and apply those interpretations to specific national contexts.
However, it is important that educators be aware of the complexity of Islam and
sharia, especially if they are concerned about Islamophobia.
Given this complexity, the reality of such a takeover occurring is far-fetched.
Even so, perhaps some readers are concerned there is a “slippery slope”—that
what is implausible today will one day occur: that the currently 2.5 million U.S.
Muslim population, which is less than 1 percent of the U.S. total population, or
the less than 1 million Canadian Muslim population, which is less than 3 per-
cent of Canada’s total population (Pew Research Center, 2011) would be able to
accomplish the implausible. Consider, then, that if Muslims did in fact agree on
a set of “laws” called sharia, and that they also agreed that sharia should be the
basis of civic law, how do we explain the many nation states with majority Muslim
populations (Turkey, Uzbekistan, Bosnia) that do not have sharia-based laws? Thus,
if any nation state was “at risk” of having civic laws replaced with sharia, it would
be a Muslim majority state. The reality is, sensationalized claims (such as, Christmas
is under attack, or that sharia will one day re-shape existing laws), create fear and
distract educators from engaging comprehensively with the actual flow of power.
A final aspect of the “loss of our values” discourse is that this fear renders
invisible the history of colonial power upon which contemporary Canadian and
U.S. societies are built. When as educators we begin to learn about structural
oppression, it is likely that our taken-for-granted ideas will become visible, and
change. The deepening and evolving awareness that comes from critical thinking
is something that all teachers should seek, not fear.
Fear of Islam as a Scary Religion with Scary Men
• “The parents at my school are really conservative and will think that
I’m indoctrinating students.”
• “I just can’t tolerate the oppression of women endorsed in Islam!”
• “I’m afraid if I get it wrong, I’ll be attacked, or some Imam will
put a fatwa on me!”
• “I believe that Islam is oppressive and I am not going to sanction
it in my classroom.”
308 Özlem Sensoy
Islam has more than one billion adherents worldwide, and thus represents a great
diversity of lives and experiences. Some of the most famous Muslims you may
recognize the names of, including comic Dave Chappelle, jazz pianist Ahmad
Jamal, rappers Lupe Fiasco, Busta Rhymes, and Mos Def, doctor and television
host Dr. Mehmet Oz, supermodel Iman, boxers Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson,
CNN host Fareed Zakaria, among many others.
The one trait many Muslims share is that they are also often persons of
color. If you are afraid of Islam or fear that Muslims are scary, and if you are also
white, it may be difficult but important to reflect on the degree to which your
fear of Islam is connected to a fear of people (and especially men) of color. If
we are white, mainstream society does not prepare most of us to think deeply or
complexly about how our racial socialization influences our ideas about peoples of
color. For instance, how has our racial identity socialized us to see people of other
races as “like us” and thus to be trusted, or as “unlike us” and thus to be feared?
The socialization of peoples of color and Indigenous peoples does not have the same
impact since they have to engage with (and thus understand better) mainstream,
white society. Because the power structure is white, as white folks we don’t have
the same understandings (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012).
You may insist that you are not fearful of race per se, but of the reported
actual crimes that Muslim groups (such as al-Qaida) have committed and the scary
things you hear Muslim people do (such as stone women, decree fatwas, and protest
trivial things like cartoons drawn of the prophet Muhammad).
Criminal activity and xenophobia (or, for that matter, gender-based violence)
are not exclusive to Islam. There are terrorist groups, xenophobes, misogynists,
homophobes, and religious extremists in every corner of the world affiliating them-
selves with many religious faiths. Consider when in a news report, the religious,
racial, or ethnic identity of a criminal is presented as part of his criminal activity.
In many cases, when criminals are white and/or Christian (Timothy McVeigh in
the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Anders Breivik
in the 2011 Norway attacks, Wade Page, who perpetrated the Wisconsin Gurd-
wara attacks in 2012, and many others), many of us are able to separate out the
criminal’s individual motivation (even if supported by others who believe as he did)
from an identity shared with others belonging to the group. We are also shielded
from media speculations about the role these mens’ race or religion (or gender)
played in his crimes. Many white supremacist groups identify as Christian and
some would claim to be doing God’s work. Yet most of the millions of Christians
within a nation and beyond would be (and were) horrified by the crimes of these
Christians and would not share the same interpretations of their faith nor its
religious scriptures.
It is also important for us as educators to inform ourselves both about the
realities of a subject we are teaching (such as Islam), as well as to self-study to
evaluate where our own fears and prejudices are rooted. For example, a fatwa is
a nonbinding opinion given by a mufti (a jurist) to a legal question posed by an

individual or a court (Esposito, n.d.). Thus, to offer fatwa (a legal opinion) is not
the same as “put a fatwa out on me” akin to a mob-movie style “putting a hit
out” on a person a Muslim dislikes. Educating oneself on these nuances is critical
for any educator committed to constructively responding to Islamophobia.
As you begin to think about how you can manage your fears about Islam
or respond to Islamophobia, consider the following questions:
• To what extent are my assumptions about what Islam is, and fears
related to those assumptions, shaped by my own racial socialization?
What are my earliest memories learning about Islam or Muslims?
What avenues of education (in addition to individual Muslim friend-
ships I may have) have I explored?
• If I get something wrong in other subjects I teach about, or when
speaking to people of other groups that are different from me, do
I have the same worries and fears as I do in the context of Islam?
How do I overcome those fears, and can I transfer any of those
strategies to this case?
• What would it mean if, while teaching in an aspiring democratic
nation-state, I ignored Islamophobia and did not teach students about
attributes (such as fair-mindedness and tolerance for ambiguity) and
skills (such as stamina for challenging ideas, engagement with gather-
ing new information, critical thinking, and perspective taking) that
are necessary to fostering and furthering that democracy?
How you respond to these questions can reveal a great deal about the source of
your fears and how you might address them.
Conclusion
Teachers across all subject areas typically engage students, in some way, in the study
of “otherness”—other societies, other cultures, other practices. Yet often they do
so with incomplete understanding, or insufficient tools, for examining a culture
in thoughtful, non-ethnocentric ways. This is especially challenging in the case of
Islam and students of Middle Eastern or Muslim heritage who have a heightened
visibility in representations in the political and religious landscape of foreign affairs
news and popular culture media. For these reasons, it is even more important that
teachers of these students remain vigilant about the complexities of their experi-
ences in schooling. However, to do so, teachers must often battle both reductive
media and school curricula that reduce Islam and its (true or presumed) adherents
310 Özlem Sensoy
in backward, savage, political, violent, or at the very least flat and caricatured ways.
For educators who want to respond in constructive ways to Islamophobia in
their classrooms and schools, the work is difficult, complicated, and in many ways
a political minefield. However, from a social justice perspective, to know about
inequality is not enough (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2012). We must act on that knowl-
edge. The classroom is not now nor has it ever been a neutral space. School has
always been a site of ideological struggle; the end of legal segregation and residen-
tial schooling, the inclusion of greater diversity and the voices of absent histories,
and the reintroduction of missing contributions by marginalized communities are
necessary means to expose how political and value-driven public schooling is. Just
as schools are places where social injustices are reinforced and normalized, they
are also places where the seeds of social transformation are planted and nurtured.
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15
Class Struggle in the Classroom
Gregory Queen
Introduction
In my collective bargaining agreement, the board of education “recognizes the

[teacher’s] right and responsibility to insist that children must be free to learn and
teachers free to teach.” However, a teacher’s academic freedom is not determined
by words in a collective bargaining agreement, and it does not exist within a
vacuum. Academic freedom is determined by the social relations within society.
Because teachers are part of the working class, their struggles for academic freedom
are connected with the larger working-class struggle against the capitalist class for
control over the processes and products of their labor. Therefore, the degree of
struggle between the capitalist and working class in general determines the par-
ticular degree of academic freedom within schools. As working-class struggles have
declined, academic freedom has declined.
Ronald Reagan’s election as U.S. president was the manifestation of a grow-
ing antilabor movement. Emboldened by the conservative ascendancy to political
power, Reagan and subsequent capitalists have and are more intensely attacking
the working class and its organizations, demonstrating and further shifting power
into the hands of the elite. The shift in wealth and income from the working class
into control by the capitalist class reflects the shift in power relations between the
capitalist and working classes. Although the commercial ideological apparatus is
firmly in the control of the elite, the formal education process is not. To prevent
challenges to the increased social inequities, the capitalist class has sought to extend
their control of the process and product of the education system to help ensure
their control over the total system.
Teachers are being used as scapegoats for the increased inequality in society.
Over the past three decades, the focus of the causes of increased inequality in
313
314 Gregory Queen
society shifted from the mentally handicapped, to welfare recipients, to union-

ized manufacturing workers, to state employees, and to teachers. To justify their
actions over their control of the formal education of the working class, the elite
have claimed that the nation was at risk because schools were not correctly educat-
ing future workers and citizens. The lack of serious resistance coming from most
educators has allowed the government, pushed by corporate interests, to impose
a more capitalist authoritarian model of education, that is, Standards-Based Edu-
cation (SBE), with high-stakes testing and standardized assessments. SBE with
high-stakes testing and common assessments strips teachers of their control of
the curriculum, its organization, and the methods of instruction. Secondly, SBE
with high stakes testing and common assessments changes the relations between
the teacher, the curriculum, and the student. The struggle (class struggle) over the
process and product of education labor is played out in my workplace (school),
academic department, and the classroom where I teach.
Capitalist Relations Embedded within the Education Process:

Standards-Based Education
Today, the root of inequality is capitalist exploitation of labor. The capitalist class
controls the means, processes, and products of production and they desire to not
only maintain but expand their control over these necessary components of the
production and reproduction of society, including education. To help ensure their
domination, the capitalist class strives to control the form and content of the
education process that is creating future labor power. The working class (includ-
ing educators) who provides the labor power necessary to the production process
has a tendency to resist this control and may seek to creatively and collectively
alter the social relations between capitalist and worker so the latter is empowered,
freed from the control of the capitalists, and humanized through the liberating
process. Schools become a centripetal point of production in terms of values, ideas,
behaviors, and attitudes, and they are a point of struggle between workers and
capitalists. Currently, the form and content of education tend to reinforce social
relations that normalize and reproduce a capitalist-dominated society.
If we use the form and content of the social relations of capitalism to analyze
today’s classroom, we can see similar relationships. According to Sarup (1978), the
three directly related participants in the production of knowledge and methods
for knowing are students, teachers, and curriculum. Students can be seen both as
workers and commodities. Similar to the worker who exchanges labor power for
money that is then used to buy the objects necessary to live, the student exchanges
her objectified labor (completed assignments) for the means (grades) to get a job
(where labor power will be exchanged for the means to life). At the end of the
day, in the capitalist mode of education, students are “transformed into products,
Class Struggle in the Classroom 315
commodities to be sold on the market” (Sarup, 1978, p. 140). The teacher in the
capitalist mode of production is both a capitalist and a worker. As a capitalist,
the teacher determines the content and methods in the production of knowledge.
When the students produce and reproduce this knowledge, the teacher, like a
capitalist, appropriates the objects of production from the students and returns to
them a wage, or grade, normalizing the social relations of capitalism. However, as a
worker, the teacher’s labor power is being used to produce future labor power. Like
a tool, the teacher is employed by people whose objective is to reproduce society
and to maintain the social relations of capitalism. As a result, the teacher is in a
contradictory role. As a worker, the teacher’s class interest should lead the teacher
to create individuals who have a critical capacity to understand the capitalist system
and the workers’ role within it. However, in the role of capitalist, the teacher is
driven to maintain the form of education where the student is transformed into a
commodity whose purpose is to sell labor power to a capitalist to (re)create capital,
the capitalist, and the social relations of capitalism and to instill an acceptance that
capitalism is the natural state of affairs (Sarup, 1978). Teachers ought to be aware
of their role in creating knowledge and modes of behavior that may be reinforcing
an unequal, authoritarian capitalist social system.
The radical critiques of society and education, like that summarized in the
previous paragraphs, coupled with the increased inequality in society over the past
thirty-five years challenge and potentially undermine capitalist control of education.
As a result, the right wing is intensifying its efforts to control education polices.
Using the state, the right wing is asserting its power to define whose methods
and knowledge are considered legitimate. They have been promoting the needs of
capitalists as the primary needs of society and the primary purpose of education.
They have been pushing standards-based education, with high-stakes testing and
common assessments and have been attacking teachers as the forces resisting this
ideology. Peter Mclaren (1994) explained back in 1994 that the scientific manage-
ment style initiated by Frederick Winslow Taylor a hundred years ago has acceler-
ated in schools and, I would add, continues today. Patrick Shannon says that the
invocation of science (data such as test scores) creates the appearance of objectivity
and promoters of scientifically managed schools claim that standardized programs
are produced objectively without regard for the emotional and social context of any
particular classroom. As Shannon says, standardized education programs “provide
the division of function with teachers becoming factors in the implementation of
the curricular designs of others; they fix the actions of teachers across classrooms,
schools, and districts; and they synchronize the actions of teachers and students
toward the abstracted exchange value of student test scores” (Shannon, 2001, para.
7). In addition to this form of education, the content tends to emphasize practi-
cal and technical knowledge in contrast to transformative knowledge. Because the
knowledge taught in schools is divided into particulars and forces students to learn
one particular subject outside of its context, the knowledge available in capitalist
316 Gregory Queen
schools is useful neither for developing a critical sense of the world nor for devel-
oping an understanding of the essence of capitalist society. As a result, the social
relations of capital remain unexamined and oppression and exploitation continue.
The scientifically managed standards-based education model operates under
the assumption that schooling is a thing that is separate from and sits outside
of a social context and that the inequalities in our society have been determined
by the level of schooling. In other words, promoters of scientifically managed
standards-based education policies believe that one’s exchange value is determined
not by the social relations of capital in the sphere of production and the unequal
distribution of socially produced resources, but the reification of these unequal
social relations in the form of test scores in the sphere of education. Therefore,
to determine the exchange value, students and schools must complete standard-
ized tests and their scores must be ranked against other students and schools. The
unstated goal of the advocates of this scientifically managed standards-based regi-
men seems to be for people to gaze at particular schools and their test scores as the
primary cause of inequalities within society, rather than the social context of the
schools. Promoters of SBE with high-stakes testing can say that the unequal edu-
cation results manifested in test scores arise from the particular schools, teachers,
and students and not the social relations of capitalism. As a result, test scores can
be used to justify state intervention to discipline schools, teachers, and/or students.
Freire, Lukács, and The Centrality of Schools
The pedagogy of Paulo Freire provides insight into ways that education can help
us understand and free ourselves from oppression. Freire says we need to facili-
tate experiences and organize curriculum so that students come to realize that
the objective social world is not an unchangeable thing but is the result of social
relations between humans and that since the objective social world is the result
of relations between humans, these relations are under the control of humans and
can be changed. Secondly, students must develop an understanding that oppressed
people must recognize their class position and struggle toward changing the exist-
ing social relations that control them for the empowerment of the oppressing class
(Freire, 1993). However, I am cognizant that overcoming oppression consists of
more than students and workers recognizing the relationship between the oppressor
and the oppressed, but students and workers must concretely defend and demand
more equality and freedom. With that said, a good starting point is recognition
of the historical and contemporary sources and the methods of domination and
liberation (Freire, 1993). But, ultimately, the oppressed must struggle to be free.
The roots of the struggle for liberation exist in understanding dialectical
thought, where the world and action are intimately interdependent (Freire, 1993).
Freire argues that we should not just be in the world but should be with the world.
He argues we must engage with the world through organizing ourselves, acting,
testing ourselves, choosing the best responses, and changing ourselves in the very
act of responding. Through our critical engagement with the world we discover
our temporality and recognize the dimensionality of time. Through this process,
we realize we are not imprisoned within a permanent today but can emerge and
become temporalized (Freire, 1973). To be human is to be creative and want
to participate and intervene in reality with the intent of changing it. Freire says
that in contrast to other animals that just adapt to the context, humans want to
engage in activity to integrate themselves within their context. Being able to inte-
grate oneself implies not only the ability to adapt to the existing context but the
ability to use one’s critical capacity to intervene in that context with the intent to
change it. An individual who loses this ability to make choices in life and follows
prescripted choices is no longer integrated in life but has simply adapted to the
context of life. The person who is integrated becomes the subject in life rather
than the adapted individual who is an object, a thing, in life.
To move toward creating an integrated individual, Freire suggests the educa-
tor generate themes by problematizing the current historical epoch. Each historical
epoch is characterized by “a series of aspirations, concerns, and values that want to
be fulfilled” (Freire, 1973, p. 5). It becomes imperative for the educator to engage
in dialogue with her students to facilitate observations that illustrate the epochal
aspirations, concerns, and values and the obstacles to achieving them. Of course,
one of the major themes of our epoch is capitalism. Thus, problematizing and
critiquing capitalism through dialogue becomes essential. It becomes the teacher’s
role to facilitate a critical examination of the dominant ideology of the current
historical epoch, helping to reveal the material connections between the needs of
the capitalist mode of production and the dominant ideology. Secondly, it should
be argued that accepting and adopting the dominant ideology is, in part, the cause
of her own oppression. Freire adds that not only should people realize that the
dominant ideology is the ideology of the oppressing class, but the oppressed should
be “producing and acting upon their own ideas—not consuming those of others”
(Freire, 1973, p. 5). Whether or not people “can perceive the epochal themes and
above all, how they act upon the reality with which these themes are generated
will largely determine their humanization or dehumanization, their affirmation as
subjects or their reduction as objects” (Freire, 1973, p. 5). “For only as men [sic]
grasp the themes can they intervene in reality instead of remaining mere onlook-
ers. And only by developing a permanently critical attitude can men overcome a
posture of adjustment in order to become integrated with the spirit of the time”
(Freire, 1973, p. 5). Reinforcing Freire’s pedagogy is Georg Lukács work.
In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács (1971) suggests that the worker,
not the capitalist, is best able to understand the totality of an issue and, as a result,
is able to become the subject in the transformation of society. Lukács says we can-
not depend upon bourgeois historians to unveil the causes of historical changes and
318 Gregory Queen
their influence upon modern capitalist social relations because bourgeois analysis
begins uncritically with the idea that social change belongs to nature, or eter-
nal objective laws, rather than seeing humans as the cause of social change. The
bourgeoisie see their actions as responses to the objective evolution of society and
they “understand the process [which it is itself instigating] as something external
which is subject to objective laws which it can only experience passively” (Lukács,
1971, p. 63). As Marx says “to them [bourgeoisie and uncritical workers] their
own social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the produc-
ers instead of being ruled by them. This fetishism of commodities and reification
of social relations can only be unveiled to the proletariat” (Lukács, 1971, p. 49).
In the capitalist social relations, Lukács (1971) says that for workers to
become a force of historical change, they must become conscious of their total
existence, not just what is immediate.
The worker can only become conscious of his existence in society

when he becomes aware of himself as a commodity. As we have seen,
his immediate existence integrates him as a pure, naked object into
the production process. Once this immediacy turns out to be the
consequence of a multiplicity of mediations, once it becomes evident
how much it presupposes, then the fetishistic forms of the commod-
ity system begin to dissolve: in the commodity the worker recognizes
himself and his own relations with capital. Inasmuch as he is incapable
in practice of raising himself above the role of object, his consciousness
is the self-consciousness of the commodity; or in other words it is the
self-knowledge, the self-revelation of the capitalist society founded upon
the production and exchange of commodities. (Lukács, 1971, p. 168)
When the worker’s consciousness emerges as the consciousness of the com-

modity, the worker becomes conscious of herself as both the subject and object of
the economic process. As a result, the worker no longer sees capital as natural, but
as the result of an unbroken process of production and reproduction created and
put into motion by the worker. Hence, for the working class, the way is opened
to a complete penetration of the forms of reification. It achieves this by starting
with what is dialectically the clearest form of reification (the immediate relation of
capital and labor). It then relates this to those forms that are more remote from
the production process (education) and includes and comprehends them into the
dialectical totality (Lukács, 1971). “From this standpoint alone does history really
become a history of mankind [sic] for it contains nothing that does not lead back
ultimately to men and to the relations between men” (Lukács, 1971, p. 197).
The superiority of the proletariat must lie exclusively in its ability to see
society from the center, as a coherent whole. This means that it is able
to act in such a way as to change reality; in the class consciousness of
the proletariat, theory and practice coincide and so it can consciously

throw the weight of its actions on the scales of history—and this is
the deciding factor. (Lukács, 1971, p. 69)
Public schools are centripetally located in society to significantly impact

whether the social relations between capitalists and workers are unveiled and then
altered to create more equality and democracy. Using the model of standards-based
education and high-stakes testing will not resolve the inequalities of society gener-
ally and education particularly. As Lukács pointed out, the bourgeoisie cannot solve
the problems it creates through their exploitation. Therefore, models of education
reform created and promoted by the bourgeoisie will not create people and ideas
capable of integrating and transforming society, becoming a force for historical
change, but will create ideas and people that adapt to the existing social structures.
Teachers should play a role in this class struggle.
Educators should acknowledge their working-class status within this strug-
gle between capitalists and workers and consciously act in a partisan manner. It
becomes imperative to employ pedagogies and curricula that not only help to
create individuals who can become agents of change toward the creation of equal-
ity and democracy, but effective resisters of inequality and authoritarianism. This
course of action has risks and the risks vary depending upon the socioeconomic
characteristics of the school and the level of class struggle throughout society and
within the particular school.
To work toward developing more equality and democracy we need to develop
and support curricula within our communities and classrooms that illustrate the
material basis of capitalist wealth and power and unveil the capitalist ideology
justifying it historically and contemporaneously. If students are given an oppor-
tunity to understand how the processes of capitalism work in the historical and
contemporary struggle for control over the processes and products of labor (class
struggle), they will be begin to develop an understanding of what makes history
move and their role in creating that history. Because learning about the primary
exploitative relationship between capital and labor reveals to the student the role
workers play in the creation of value and the inequalities in its control and dis-
tribution, this understanding will tend to develop citizens who see themselves as
active participants and/or potential agents of historical change. I have developed
curriculum based upon the ideas of Freire and Lukács that I believe contributes
to a more liberated, equal, and democratic society. However, because of that, I
have been challenged.
Class Struggle in the Classroom, an Example
Since my first years of teaching history (I still teach in the same district), I have
been free to choose the content of study within the historical time period of
320 Gregory Queen
the class. I have always kept social justice in the foreground of my curriculum
choices. When students are asked to identify major themes of the curriculum,
they list capitalism, exploitation, class struggle, freedom, imperialism, war, revo-
lution, communism, racism, and more. When planning the scope and sequence
of a United States history class called “American Studies, 1960-Present,” I used
the ideas of Freire and Lukács, particularly the notion that curriculum should be
designed to problematize the world by emphasizing the possible roadblocks to a
more equitable, democratic society, which, in my understanding, seems to be the
social relation between capital and labor. As a result, I created an opening unit of
study to stimulate dialogue around the issues of inequality of wealth, capitalism,
globalization, imperialism, and racism. These themes are the organizing principles
of the entire semester. The themes interpenetrate each other, but kids begin to
realize that capitalism is the primary thread and when they understand this, the
other themes make more sense for them. Below, I explain the major lesson in the
opening unit, titled “Themes of American History.”
On the first day of the semester, I open with a discussion of inequality by
leading an activity called “Ten Chairs of Inequality” (Kellog, 1998). This activity
plays a central role in the curriculum and I refer back to it throughout the semester.
The activity visually demonstrates the distribution of wealth in the United States.
Ten students volunteer and each volunteer represents 10 percent of society. Each
sits at his or her own desk, which represents 10 percent of the nation’s wealth.
Since each student has a desk, “wealth” is equally distributed. Next, we discuss
that wealth is not equally distributed throughout society and that it may change
over time. By moving desks and students around, I show them that in 1976, 10
percent of the nation, one person in our simulation, controlled 50 percent of the
nation’s wealth, five desks. Hence, four students needed to get out of their desks
and sit on top of the five desks sharing the wealth that remains for the other 90
percent of society. I tell them that today, at least 70 percent of the nation’s wealth
is controlled by 10 percent of the population and the other 90 percent share the
remaining 30 percent of the wealth. Therefore, one person gets seven desks while
the other nine students find seats upon the remaining three desks.
One of the most important lessons within this activity is transmitted when I
give a simple explanation of how the capitalist system works. I tell them that the
working class wakes up and does their morning routines. Next, they travel to the
capitalist class’s work sites. The working class stays there for eight hours, minimally.
At the end of the day, the capitalists pay the workers. The workers travel back
home to rest, eat, clean, etc. Next, the working class goes to the stores (owned
by the capitalists) and buys the products they made that day. The money the boss
paid the workers goes back into the hands of the capitalists. I then ask—But how
do the capitalists “make” money in this exchange? At this point I present the class
with a cartoon strip by Fred Wright (1975).
The cartoon depicts the following dialogue:
A capitalist is walking through his factory with a friend.

Friend asks, “What did you tell that man just now?”
“I told him to work faster,” answers the capitalist.
“How much do you pay him?” asks the friend.
“Twenty-five dollars a day,” answers the capitalist.
“Where do you get the money to pay him?” asks the friend.
“I sell products,” answers the capitalist.
“Who makes the products?” asks the friend.
“He does,” answers the capitalist.
“How many products does he make in a day?” asks the friend.
“One hundred dollars worth,” answers the capitalist.
“Then,” concludes the friend, “Instead of you paying him, he pays you
$75 a day to tell him to work faster.”
“Huh,” and the capitalist quickly adds, “Well, I own the machines.”
“How did you get the machines?” asks the friend.
“I sold products and bought them,” answers the capitalist.
“And who made those products?” asks friend.
To which the capitalist can only respond to his friend, but also to the
media and to the schools—“Shut up! He might hear you.”1
At the end of the lesson, I ask various questions. For example, who are the
super rich? Where do the super rich get their wealth? Why does wealth concen-
trate into the few hands of the super rich? What do the super rich tell others
to justify their wealth and the inequality that exists? When times are tough for
workers (e.g., low wages, unemployment, increased work) who might the super
rich blame for the tough times? Why might workers accept inequality? How can
workers increase equality? This lesson dramatically brings forward many issues and
creates more questions than answers.
The next class activity, also on the theme of inequality, analyzes two graphs
from Teaching Economics as if People Mattered (Giecek with United for a Fair
Economy, 2007). Each graph illustrates the rate of family income growth by quin-
tile. The first graph shows the rate of family income growth between 1947–1979.
The rate of growth for each quintile is relatively equal at around 100 percent.
The subtitle of the graph is “We All Grew.” The second graph shows the rate of
322 Gregory Queen
income growth between 1979 and 2003. The rate of growth for each quintile is
unequal, with the lowest quintile experiencing a decrease in family income and
the upper quintile experiencing a 51 percent growth in income. The subtitle of
the graph says, “We Grew Apart.” Subsequently, students are asked to judge the
two graphs and determine which time period the author is suggesting is better.
Students say that the 1947–1979 time period seemed better because all quintiles
saw relatively equal growth. I problematize the two graphs. If a family in the top
quintile has an income of $100,000 and it increases 100 percent, their income
would be $200,000 by the end of the time period, a $100,000 increase; whereas if
a family in the lowest quintile making $10,000 experiences a 100 percent increase,
they would be making $20,000, or a $10,000 dollar increase. I explain that, in
my judgment, while the growth of family income represented in the 1947–1979
time period is preferable, the reality is that there is still significant and growing
income inequality. Lastly, I then tell them that, again in my judgment, the rate
of income growth should be unequal in that the lower income quintiles should
see higher rates of growth so that there is more actual income equality, not just
more income growth equality.
I point out to students that the 1970s was the starting point for a major
shift in the standard of living of the working class; from the higher standard of
living enjoyed by many in the 1960s, largely owing to labor struggles in the 1930s
and 1940s, the working class in the 1970s began to experience a decline in their
standard of living. This fact is connected to the shift in wealth discussed in the “Ten
Chairs of Inequality” activity. These two activities conclude the opening discussion
of inequality, and we move on to look at a Marxist critique of the processes of
capitalism and how they contribute to income inequality.
The presentations and discussions of capitalism are complex and some
students do have difficulty digesting the material. I open by pointing out the
similarities and differences among slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, comparing
the master/slave, king/serf and capitalist/worker relations through the concepts of
means of production, labor power, exploitation and surplus. Subsequently, students
read the chapter on capitalism from Mick Brooks’s (1983) outline of historical
materialism. Using two sets of questions, which I created, students work through
this material.
The Brooks chapter explains that capitalists measure their wealth in money
whereas other systems measured wealth in land or slaves. Unlike the slave system
or feudalism, in capitalism, the capitalist must take a large portion of their wealth
and put it back into production to increase the productivity of labor, or find ways
to make the same amount of products in less time or make more products in the
same amount of time. The reason that capitalists try to increase the productivity
of labor is because the capitalists try to decrease the amount of time it takes to
make a product. By saving time in the production of a commodity (including
labor power), the capitalist “creates” wealth—capital—for herself. The reason that
the capitalist creates wealth is because she does not have to pay a worker for the
time saved. If this capitalist does not improve the productivity of labor, another
capitalist will. The latter capitalist will survive the competition and the former
capitalist will not. This is why it is necessary for a capitalist to reinvest in the
productivity of labor creating the dynamic, or motor, of capitalism. The idea that
labor power is similar to a product because it is bought and sold on the market is
also explained. Labor power differs from other products because it has the ability
to create value beyond the value paid the laborer (as described in Fred Wright’s
cartoon strip). It is because the worker is capable of producing more value than she
is paid that the capitalist wants to buy the laborer’s labor power and control the
circumstances in which the laborer produces. By controlling the labor, the capitalist
is better able to control the value created by the laborer. However, the capitalist
and worker struggle daily—firings/strikes, speedups/slowdowns, etc.—over control
of the value created by the laborer.
In class, we also discuss the similarities and differences between necessary
and surplus labor (i.e., the labor that pays for the maintenance of the worker and
the labor that yields unpaid surplus value to the capitalist) and how the distinc-
tion between the two is obscured when combined into the single process of labor
in the factory (as compared to feudal societies, where it was clearer when a serf
or peasant was working for herself or himself and when she or he labored for her
or his lord). We also discuss how capitalists attempt to extract more and more
surplus value from labor by increasing the amount of time worked per worker
(i.e., absolute surplus value) and by decreasing wages or increasing productivity
and intensity of work (i.e., relative surplus value). These are key ideas for students
to understand because absolute and relative surplus labor (and workers’ resistance
to this exploitation) are at the core of the conflict between classes and are rarely,
if ever, analyzed in the social studies curriculum.
In the third theme in the unit, students explore the concept of globalization.
I use a section from Globalization: Who Is in Charge of our Future? (Dube, 1999).
The reading explains that the CEO of Stride Rite Corporation thought that cor-
porations should do more than just maximize profits, and should improve working
and living conditions. Income for workers at Stride Rite was relatively reasonable,
and the CEO tried locating factories in economically depressed communities. How-
ever, in the early 1980s the value of the company’s stock dropped, causing the
owners to push for changes with the goal of profit maximization. As a result, the
CEO was replaced, factories were relocated to China, and distribution centers were
relocated to a state that offered significant tax breaks. From this same material,
students learn that the goals of global capitalist corporations replace the needs of
workers, communities, and the environment through international organizations
such as the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement,
and Free Trade Zones. In the second part of the theme on globalization students
watch and discuss a documentary that deals with sweatshop labor, titled Zoned for
324 Gregory Queen
Slavery: The Child Behind the Label (Bennett, Belle, Kean, Stern, & Kernighan,
1995). This video gives students an opportunity to see how labor is controlled and
workers, particularly in poorer countries, are super exploited by capitalist global
relations. The students identify with the subjects of the video because its authors
dramatically capture how high school–aged children in other parts of the world are
laboring for nickels and dimes. The video reinforces concepts developed earlier in
the unit, such as inequality and capitalism. It becomes clear to the students that
these sweatshops are exploitative and used to enrich capitalist bosses. Our study
of globalization provides a bridge to the unit’s fourth topic—imperialism.
To explain imperialism, I teach about the causes of 9/11 and the war in Iraq.
To provide the necessary background to understand 9/11, students learn that the
Cold War was an inter-imperialist war between the United States and the USSR
and played out as a hot war in Afghanistan between the Soviet military and the
CIA, resulting not only in a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan but also in the
CIA-assisted mujahideen, following the first Gulf War in 1991, “switching alli-
ances” and turning against the United States, culminating in the attacks of 9/11. I
use the first half of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11, which not only provides
both a fantastic example of political propaganda by Moore but also some accurate
information about the U.S. allegiance to Saudi Arabia and how financial and oil
interests may supersede real investigations into the causes of 9/11 (2004).
Once students have been exposed to the background of 9/11, I teach the
background to the second Gulf War. Students learn about the 1953 overthrow of
the democratically elected government in Iran by the CIA, allowing the U.S. to
dominate Iran until the Shah’s overthrow in 1979. In part, the Shah’s overthrow
led President Carter to declare that the United States will use any means necessary
including military force to protect access to Persian Gulf oil. Secondly, students
learn about the duplicitous U.S. policy during the Iraq-Iran war, which led Saddam
Hussein to build one of the largest regional militaries, which he subsequently used
to invade Kuwait, thereby potentially doubling Iraq’s control of Middle Eastern
oil. As a result, the international capitalist class hired the U.S. Army to forcibly
remove the Iraqi Republican Guard from Kuwait, while agreeing to leave Saddam
Hussein in power under international sanctions and a no-fly zone that led to an
additional five hundred thousand civilian deaths. Lastly, students are taught that
the global interests responsible for 9/11 intersected with the global interests respon-
sible for the war in Iraq, and how George W. Bush seemed to use the upsurge in
U.S. nationalism resulting from 9/11to instigate and execute the removal of Sad-
dam Hussein from power under the false pretense that Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction.
The last segment of the imperialism theme argues that the United States had
ulterior motives for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, including the
control of not only Iraqi oil but of military power in the region. I point out that
since President Carter and the Carter Doctrine, the U.S. Government has been
building military bases throughout the Persian Gulf region ultimately surround-
ing the oil-producing countries and the major sea routes transporting the oil to
primarily American, European, and Japanese markets. As a result of this control,
the interests and power of U.S. capitalists particularly and international capitalists
generally are advanced.
The fifth theme, racism, operates as a bridge to the next unit, which explores
the exploitation underpinning racism and the actions taken during the civil rights
movement to challenge this exploitation. Students learn a Marxist interpretation
of racism as a social control mechanism used to divide the working class, which
tends to weaken its ability to organize and effectively challenge the capitalist class
(Bohmer, 1998). To demonstrate this theoretical interpretation of racism, we read
and create cartoon strips to accompany an article titled “At a Slaughterhouse, Some
Things Never Die: Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race,”
which was published as part of The New York Times series on “How Race is Lived
in America” in 2000 (LeDuff, 2000). The main ideas of the article are as follows:
the Smithfield Packing Co., in North Carolina, saw “their profits nearly double
while wages have remained flat. So a lot of Americans here have quit, and a lot
of Mexicans have been hired to take their places. But more than management,
the workers see one another as the problem, and they ‘see the competition in skin
tones.’ ” The intent of assigning this article is to get kids to see the relationships
between race, class, and power. Inevitably, the notion that the Mexican workers
are the cause of this situation comes up, and the idea that the immigrants are
responsible for the lower wages is difficult to challenge, but I push students to
rethink that idea. The point that I try to drive home in using this article is that the
capitalist boss makes wage and employment decisions, not the workers. Hence, the
capitalist class plays a major role in causing/reinforcing class and racial antagonisms.
Near the end of the unit, I present students with a series of “Master/Slave”
questions (Gibson n.d.):
• What does the Master want?

• What does the Slave want?
• What must the Master do?
• What must the Slaves do?
• How do Masters Rule?
• How do Slaves resist?
• What does the Master want the Slaves to know?
• What do the Slaves want the Master to know?
• What does the Master want the Slaves to believe?
326 Gregory Queen
• What does the Slave want the Master to believe?

• Is truth the same for the Master as it is for the Slaves?
• Who has the greater interest in the more profound truths?
Students inevitably ask, “Should we just be applying these to the time when
there were slaves and masters or can we apply it to the capitalist/worker relation-
ship?” This question reveals significant and relevant learning. As a result, students
now have a new sense or understanding of freedom and unfreedom. In my expe-
rience, after this point students begin to see the world from a “class perspective”
and more readily recognize their own class position.
Each of the themes is spiraled throughout subsequent units of the American
Studies class. Some units emphasize one theme more than another. However, the
dominant approach throughout the semester is placing historical moments in the
context of the needs of capitalism. The rest of the course discusses the civil right
movement, the Vietnam War, and the rise of conservatives.
In the unit on the civil rights movement, we examine the roots of slavery in
the United States using the argument put forth by Theodore Allen (1997). Allen
says that the first “workers,” including some from Africa, came to the colony of
Virginia as indentured servants. The Virginia elite’s promise to give freed indentured
servants land caused conflict with Native Americans. The conflict culminated in
Bacon’s Rebellion, which seriously threatened the power of the elite. Subsequently,
the Virginia elite quit using indentured servants as the primary form of labor and
switched to slave labor, but slave labor based on race. Race-based slavery was cre-
ated, in part, to divide the working class, thus allowing the elite to play one por-
tion of the working class against the other and helping the elite maintain power.
Secondly, the unit examines the Radical Republicans’ attempts to create a more
equal political system following the end of slavery and, despite some successes, the
subsequent alleged deal to remove the military from the South in exchange for
Republican control of the presidency, which contributed to the rise of the KKK
and Jim Crow. Thirdly, the unit has students look at the historical roots of the
civil rights movement in the labor organizing of the 1920s and 1930s and how
the events of World War II triggered a passion among primarily African American
citizens to challenge and remove the political barriers to civil equality. Lastly, we
examine the unfinished aspects of the civil rights movement by exploring struggles
against the legacy of racial inequality in the late sixties and early seventies, includ-
ing “riots” and such groups as the Black Panther Party (Hampton, 1987). Students
see how violent racial oppression was during the civil rights era. In my diverse
classroom, this is powerful for all students. African American students feel a sense
of pride in this history; other students form an appreciation and deeper under-
standing of the struggles endured by their classmates’ parents and grandparents.
The next unit of American Studies teaches that the U.S. war in Vietnam
was an imperialist war. Students are taught that the exploitation inherent in the
capitalist system causes the capitalist class to need other countries for markets to sell
goods, invest surplus capital, secure raw materials, and find cheaper labor. Students
learn that World War II disrupted the previous colonial arrangements, opening
up space for Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh to challenge French imperialism.
Because the French attempts to recapture Vietnam as a client state were defeated
at Dien Bien Phu, they subsequently agreed to withdraw and permit nationwide
elections to be held. The United States, knowing that the Viet Minh and Ho Chi
Minh would win the elections, stepped in to prevent these elections by putting in
Ngo Dinh Diem into power with orders to not hold elections. To legitimize his
power, Diem held a rigged referendum, winning 98.2 percent of the vote (Young,
1991). The U.S. Government supported him for the next nine years. However,
his corruption, along with the growth of Viet Minh power, led the United States
to use a murky set of events in the Gulf of Tonkin as a pretext to escalate U.S.
involvement in Vietnam, in an attempt to keep it within the U.S. capitalist sphere
(Zinn, 1980). Students are taught about the antiwar movement, with a slight
focus on the intersection of the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement,
whose actions ultimately led to the instigation and sponsorship of “dirty tricks” by
President Richard Nixon, which in turn caused his eventual downfall. I think it
is essential throughout the unit to remind students of the history of French and
then U.S. imperialism in the region and that the Vietnamese war for indepen-
dence lasted for decades (one might even claim a century). Additionally, this unit
includes a comparison of the events that led to U.S. involvement in Vietnam in
1964 to the events that provided the excuse for U.S. involvement in Iraq in 2003.
The final unit of the trimester course compares and contrasts the social
programs of presidents Roosevelt through Obama. We use Roosevelt’s New Deal
policies (workers’ rights, social insurance programs, and jobs programs) as a litmus
test to judge the location of subsequent presidents on the political spectrum. The
expansion of New Deal programs through increased funding, changes in rules that
increase the numbers eligible for New Deal programs, and/or additional programs
similar to the original programs is considered liberal. Decreased funding, changes
in rules that restrict the number eligible, and/or the elimination of New Deal pro-
grams is considered conservative. Students can see that when it comes to workers’
rights, social insurance programs, and jobs programs, presidents before the 1970s
tended to be moderate to liberal and presidents since the 1970s have tended to
be moderate to conservative. We wrap up the semester analyzing many graphs that
illustrate trends in the post–World War II era. We look at how the poverty rate
is determined, poverty rates, taxation rates, military spending, minimum wage as
compared to poverty, criteria for government assistance programs, welfare expendi-
tures and participation rates, unionization rates, and the number of labor strikes.
In all of these graphs, a pattern is revealed showing that the mid-to-late seventies
was a clear turning point in modern American history. This unit and these graphs
brings us back to the beginning of the semester, especially to the Ten Chairs of
Inequality and the two graphs on the growth of family income and capitalism.
328 Gregory Queen
Knowing that the content students will be studying contains contrasting

perspectives that elicit a variety of opinions, I work to build a classroom ethos
that has a deep respect for differences of opinion. My personal pedagogical goal
is to allow kids to challenge authoritative voices (including my own). I model the
challenge of the authoritative voice through the organization of the curriculum.
At first, many students are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with challenging the ideas
of their teacher, at least initially. When I see students whisper to each other after
another student or I make a comment, I encourage them to share their perspec-
tive. Most times, it is something in opposition to what was just spoken, and by
sharing it, the lesson deepens. Many, if not most, teachers practice a banking
concept of teaching—as Paulo Freire (1970) called it—where kids are to absorb
the content and reproduce it. The student who can most accurately reproduce
the content gains highest marks. However, I do not think any opinion stated in
class should just go unchallenged. Many times, the opinions and perspectives of
students are based upon half-truths or incorrect information (as is typical of what
Otero [2006] refers to as “experience-based concepts” [p. 249]). I do not believe
unexamined beliefs, ideas, or perspectives should be allowed to stand in the class-
room, no matter their source.
There are risks to “being political” in the classroom. I would advise teach-
ers to work quietly until they have developed the trust and support of the com-
munity. I have been teaching for more than twenty years in the same district.
Students appreciate my “voice” in the classroom. They communicate this to their
parents, and I have had many parents call regarding concerns over the content
of the classroom; I do not take these concerns lightly. From my experience, par-
ents are often afraid their children are being indoctrinated because they are being
taught a “one-sided” curriculum. (Interestingly, these parents do not complain
about other teachers who teach only the textbook point of view.) I tell parents
that I struggle very hard to create space in the classroom for discussion and a
variety of perspectives, and they are usually satisfied. However, there have been
times when parents have taken their complaints to higher authorities such as the
building principal, superintendent, and the district board of education (Dueweke,
2004; Wowk, 2004).
During the 2004 election, when I taught content that specifically questioned
George W. Bush’s arguments for invading Iraq, in a mock dialogue titled Daddy
Why Did We Have to Invade Iraq (Bunker, 2003), a parent disagreed with the
content of this dialogue and of the class. His initial claim was that the author of
the piece had a Web site that, if kids visited it, contained things that were inap-
propriate for their age. I did not know the Web site existed, because the piece
was popular enough to have appeared on at least thirty different Web sites and
had been sent to me as an e-mail attachment. The parent was also upset with
the master/slave questions I assigned the students. After a conference between the
parent, my immediate supervisor, and myself, the parent appealed to the district
board of education. Prior to the board of education meeting, someone informed

the local media. The event was covered by a local news broadcast and in both a
metro-wide newspaper and a local tabloid. Despite placing a discipline letter in
my personnel file for one year, for allegedly “not being balanced in my teaching,”
the administration was “supportive.” The building principal advised staff members
to support me, and the president of the board of education said that although
at times I may be outspoken, I was still a good teacher. For the most part, these
challenges to academic freedom have had little impact upon my curriculum choices
and the organization of courses I teach (as long as I am within the parameters of
the time period I am expected to teach).
Today, the threat to academic freedom comes from a more encompassing
force: the standards-based education and high-stakes testing movement.
Standards-Based Education and Challenges to Academic Freedom
Although I have always created my own curriculum within the parameters of the
course’s time period, most topics have matched the topics contained in the state
standardized curriculum. The context I create, within which the topics and details
are couched, is obviously different from the context provided by textbook authors
and/or other teachers. As a result, the meaning of the details will be different and
kids may come to different understandings of the same events, depending upon
the teacher. One goal of the standards-based education movement is to create com-
mon assessments. Using both the curriculum I have organized and a curriculum
that another teacher has organized to create a common assessment is very difficult.
Since I have received tenure (which is less a guarantee today than when
I received it), I have been significantly vocal in resisting standardization in all
its forms, from textbooks to local common assessments to state and nationwide
high-stakes tests. Despite my outspokenness against the standardization move-
ment, I was selected in 2004 by the high school principal to be department
chair. As department chair, I have made a conscious effort to minimize the internal
and external pressures toward standardization of the curriculum and assessments.
Despite being told to create common curricula and assessments in the first year
as department chair, I told department colleagues that we would not be doing
common assessments if I had anything to say about it and that I would take full
responsibility for not having the department follow the orders to create common
curricula and assessments. At the beginning of each school year, the chairs of all
the departments met with the administration and every year all departments were
told to create a common curriculum with pacing guides and a common assessment,
ideally after each unit but at least a common end of course assessment. Because
all members of the social studies department were not initially in agreement with
my position, we had many discussions, in which I would try to persuade my
330 Gregory Queen
department colleagues that it was not in their interest, the students’ interests,
or the interest of the working class to have common assessments. Over the past
seven years, individual department members have created curriculum to make it
look as if we are teaching a common curriculum, but each teacher is teaching in
the order he/she thinks best. Sometimes the course is just driven by the order
of the textbook. However, we do have teachers that have begun to organize cur-
riculum thematically, including myself, of course. Department members have had
an opportunity to experience the empowerment that comes from creating and
implementing their own curriculum to meet the needs of their students (theoreti-
cally). Nonetheless, the pressure to standardize the curriculum and impose common
assessments has intensified.
At the end of the 2009–10 school year, my district was informed that its
high school (where I teach) was a “failing school” according to legislation that
was introduced and passed by Michigan’s state legislature to qualify for Race to
the Top money (which the state never got, but the laws remain). Being labeled
a persistently failing school meant that we were a high school that qualified for
Title I money (which the district was not taking at the high school level) and were
ranked in the lowest 5 percent on math and language arts scores. It was clear that
there would be increased pressure to develop common assessments.
At the beginning of the 2010–11 school year, the administration said to all
department chairs, again, that everybody would be doing common assessments.
However, by this time the only core department not using common assessments
was the social studies department. Obviously, the administrator was talking directly
to me. The 2010–11 school year passed, and about one month before the end of
the school year, this same administrator said he needed to talk to me. I instantly
knew the topic. When he asked if I had understood the directive at the beginning
of the school year, I told him that I had and that the department had collectively
decided that we were not going to do common assessments. Secondly, I told him
we recognized that there was pressure for him to have us create and use common
assessments, so I asked him to tell us what we could do to help him make it look
as though we are doing common assessments when we were really not. That day,
I told all the department members about the conversation and that we need to
prepare ourselves for a future meeting.
Already scheduled on the calendar for the following week was a department
meeting, and not surprisingly the building principal attended our meeting. The
conversation started with our assertion that we were all teaching the state standards
but through our own methods and with different resources, so that that there was
no need to have common assessments. No member budged on the position. It was
a great moment! Our contractual meeting time ended and I brought the meeting
to a close, saying the department would continue the conversation at the next
meeting. Since it was the end of the school year, the administration dropped the
issue for the remainder of the school year.
In the 2011–12 school year, once again, at the beginning of the school year,
all departments were told to create common assessments. However, once again, we
did not. With about three months of school remaining, all departments were given
tasks related to common assessments. The social studies department was given the
task and a timeline to create end of course common assessments in two courses,
and the principal divided us into two groups, one for each course. The principal
attended the meetings of the groups. In my group, we were comparing our end of
course tests for World History One. We were trying to create one multiple choice
question and its correct answer. Of course, determining “an answer” to a question
in a social studies class taught by different people who teach details within differ-
ent contexts using different sources was going to be next to impossible, unless we
wanted to follow the banking model of education that relies on regurgitation of
facts, definitions, dates, etc. Of course, if we were automatons teaching the exact
same thing in the exact same way, we might be able to create a common assess-
ment, but this is social studies, instructed and learned by different human beings.
At the end of our awkward meeting, the principal asked me, as the department
chair, how much time I thought the department might need to complete the
common assessments. I told him that as far as I was concerned, the department
did not need any additional time because we did not and were not going to do
them. He asked if I was prepared to step down as department chair. I said that
if I were expected to force the department to do common assessments, I would
step down as chair, and I told him he would have my letter of resignation the
next morning. I am no longer department chair.
The question that surfaced was who would be department chair. The princi-
pal talked to individual teachers and tried pressuring them into being department
chair. By the last day of the 2011–12 school year, it appeared that there would
not be a department chair. A colleague, whom I’ll call Pat (not the teacher’s real
name), had expressed interest in being chair but said that the issue that “created
this opening has not changed,” and, “I will not be interested in chairing if the
goal of the department next year is to simply implement the same multiple choice
tests in every class for the sake of data.” In response, the principal said
I appreciate your offer and I would like to state simply that the
department will be working on the building/district wide initiative
of common department/course exams. In order to facilitate improved
student achievement through comprehensive and consistent curriculum
common assessments are needed. Common assessments are also a proven
measure to gauge future student achievement on state assessments
such as the MME/ACT [Michigan’s High School standardized tests].
In response, Pat said that as a department we had tried to accommodate the

demand for common assessments while protecting the academic freedom of teachers.
332 Gregory Queen
In addition, Pat said that we have to work together and find some common ground
and that he would like to “have a hand in that.” In personal conversations, Pat felt
that the principal was not going to budge on his demand for common assessments.
As a result, Pat questioned his own desire to serve as chair. However, on the last
day of 2011–12 school year, the principal offered Pat the job as department chair
and the offer was accepted. Bummer! I believe that Pat was mistaken in accepting
the position under the presumption that it would be an opportunity to get differ-
ent results. It most likely will not happen. As quoted above, my principal said, “I
would like to simply state that the department will be working on the building/
district wide initiative of common department/course exams.”
In my opinion, we should not be tools for our own oppression. We should
not be using a model of education that reproduces the capitalist mode of produc-
tion. As argued above, standards-based education with high-stakes testing and com-
mon assessments mirrors the capitalist mode of production and is used to control
the process and product of education labor. We should be creating experiences
that facilitate working-class students in the development of a critical conscious-
ness where they become aware of themselves as both the subject and object of the
educational and economic process. A critical consciousness will give working-class
students analytical tools to integrate themselves into the social, political, and eco-
nomic context with an intent to transform it to create a more free, equal, and
democratic society. To do this, we must not adapt to the dictates of the powers
that be but as educators we must lead and integrate ourselves and develop and
exercise the “strength to confront those dangers instead of surrendering [our] sense
of self through submission to the decision of others” (Freire, 1993, p. 33).
In summary, the bourgeois model of education in the form of standards-based
assessments with high-stakes testing and common assessments is used to intensify
and justify increased inequality. Academic freedom was not granted to education
workers but won with the broader struggles of the working class. Non-education
workers will need to fight back through direct action against capitalist bosses to
create more freedom, equality, and democracy and teachers will need to do the
same, and both will need to do it together. At this juncture in time, the academic
freedom to create the process and product of education by which to unveil the
social relations of capitalism is severely threatened. Educators such as Pat think that
“having a hand” in the creation of the tools of oppression is a form of democracy
and justice. However, the call for standards-based education with high-stakes testing
and common assessments is the tool being used to stop the oppressed (teachers
and students) from producing and acting upon their own ideas and forcing them
to accept, adopt, and consume the ideas of others. In this process, Pat and many
educators are affirming themselves as objects for others rather than being subjects.
In the process, they are dehumanizing themselves and their students and repro-
ducing the capitalist mode of production, which is at the root of inequality and
authoritarianism. To create a freer, more equal and democratic future, struggles for
academic freedom are necessary to unveil the social relations that create inequality,
and they must be linked with a broader working-class struggle against capitalist
domination.
Notes
1. View Fred Wright’s classic “How much do you pay your boss?” cartoon here:
http://links.org.au/node/1785.
References
Allen, T. (1997). The invention of the white race: The origin of racial oppression in
Anglo-America. New York: Verso.
Bennett, J., Belle, D., Kean, K., Stern, R., & Kernighan, C. (1995). Zoned for slavery: The
child behind the label [video]. New York: Crowing Rooster Arts.
Bohmer, P. (1998). Marxist theory of racism and racial inequality. Retrieved from http://
academic.evergreen.edu/b/bohmerp/marxracism.htm.
Brooks, M. (1983, November). Historical materialism. Inqaba ya Basebenzi. Retrieved from
http://www.marxist.com/historical-materialism-study-guide.htm.
Bunker, A. (2003). Questions and answers about foreign policy (and the U.S. invasion of Iraq).
Retrieved from http://www.geocities.com/anarchiebunker/foreignpolicy.htm.
Dube, G. (1999). Globalization: Who is in charge of our future? Vancouver: CoDevelopment
Canada Association.
Dueweke, C. (2004, 20 October). Parent questions materials used in government class.
Warren Weekly (MI), pp. 7A, 14A. Retrieved from http://www.detroitnews.com/2004/
macomb/0410/07c05-296230.htm.
Freire, P. (1973). Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum.
Gibson, R. (n.d.). Master/slave questions. Retrieved from http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/
masterslave.htm.
Giecek, T., & United for a Fair Economy. (2007). Teaching economics as if people mattered.
Boston: United for a Fair Economy.
Hampton, H. (Director). (1987). Eyes on the Prize (Television series). Blackside, inc.
Kellog, P. (1998). Ten chairs of inequality. Rethinking Schools, 12(3). Retrieved from http://
www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/12_03/wealth.shtml.
LeDuff, C. (2000, 16 June). At a slaughterhouse, some things never die: Who kills, who
cuts, who bosses can depend on race. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://
www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/061600leduff-meat.html.
Lukács, G. (1971). History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics. Cambridge:
MIT Press.
McLaren, P. (1994). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of
education (2nd ed.). White Plains: Longman.
Moore, M. (Director). (2004). Fahrenheit 9/11 (Documentary). Westside Productions.
334 Gregory Queen
Otero, V. K. (2006). Moving beyond the “get it or don’t” conception of formative assessment.
Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 247–255.
Sarup, M. (1978). Marxism and education. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Shannon, P. (2001). A Marxist Reading of Reading Education. Cultural Logic, 4(1). Retrieved
from http://clogic.eserver.org/4-1/shannon.html.
Teller-Elsberg, J., Folbre, N., Heintz, J., & The Center for Popular Economics. (2006). A
field guide to the U.S. economy (Revised and Updated). New York: New Press.
Tucker, R. (Ed.). (1978). The Marx-Engels reader (3rd ed.). New York: W.W. Norton.
WGBH Educational Foundation (1998). Africans in America: The Terrible Transformation.
Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/title.html.
Wowk, M. (2004, 7 October). Father irked by son’s anti-Bush lesson. The Detroit News.
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16
Critical Media Literacy and Social Studies

Paying Heed to Orwell and Huxley
Paul Orlowski
Informed citizens are the basis of any democratic society.

—B.C. Ministry of Education Civic Studies 11 Curriculum, 2005
Teaching by its very nature is a political act (Apple, 1990), and teaching media lit-
eracy is especially so. Knowledge is socially constructed, of course, including what is
in the curriculum and what is not. This is also the case with the mainstream media.
The issues the media focus on, the ways in which groups of people are represented
or not represented, the language used to frame debates, and what is omitted from
these debates are some of the ways in which knowledge is socially constructed.
The three main sources of information in contemporary society are the main-
stream corporate media, the Internet, and the public education system. This fact alone
warrants closer scrutiny around the effects the corporate media have upon society.
After all, even a brief moment of reflection leads to the realization that corporate
media have corporate interests. Before the discussion focuses on media literacy, how-
ever, some clarifications are required about what is meant by critical media literacy.
In general, there are three main categories of media literacy. The type that
I find most frequently in schools today (although it is still fairly uncommon)
emanates from a cultural paradigm: this approach analyzes how various groups are
represented in the media, including advertisements. An excellent example of this
kind of media literacy is shown in the documentary film series called Killing Us
Softly (1979, 1987, 2000, 2010), by feminist educator Jean Kilbourne. These films
address the objectification of females in advertising to sell products, and analyze
the subsequent effects on gender construction and gender relations. (I can attest
to the effectiveness of these films as I have used them many times in both the
335
336 Paul Orlowski
high school classroom and teacher education programs.) The second type of media
literacy, also common, is concerned with traditional liberal democratic concerns of
diversity and voices of dissent (Cottle, 2003). This type, similar to the one focused
on representation, is also part of the cultural paradigm in that it explores “symbolic
power” (Cottle, 2003, p. 7) and gives voice to groups that typically do not belong
to the elites. The increasing number of representatives of various cultural groups
in the mainstream media is one aspect that concerns this type of media literacy.
I contend that there is much value in both of these kinds of media literacy, but
they will not be discussed here.
The type of media literacy that I consider to be sorely lacking in social
studies classrooms today derives from what Cottle (2003) calls “media-source
interaction and participation” approaches (p. 7). One of these approaches, the
sociological paradigm, is concerned with how various sources consciously strive for
a “definitional advantage” by utilizing media access (p. 7). This point is crucial
for students’ understanding of how powerful groups control public discourse on
important political and economic issues. It is similar to the analysis of the group
representation approach in that it assumes the social construction of knowledge
and the media’s relationship to “wider structures and systems of power” (p. 3).
This third category of media literacy focuses on hegemonic discourses in
both the mainstream corporate media and alternative media news outlets, the
latter of which are found mainly online. As important as the other two kinds of
media literacy are, I focus on this one because we are living in an era of Orwellian
mega-spin, and the forces behind this mega-spin are wreaking havoc on civil soci-
ety in both the United States and Canada. In order for students to be able to
comprehend how hegemony operates in the media, a focus on political ideology
and a critique of ideology is required pedagogy.
For twenty years, I taught in various high school settings in British Colum-
bia, including courses at many grade levels in social studies, history, and civic
studies. I have also taught for thirteen years in teacher education programs. In
virtually all of these settings, I have employed a critical pedagogy that focuses on
deconstructing hegemonic discourses in text, curriculum, and media. Critical media
literacy is part of this pedagogy. This chapter outlines some of these techniques.
A discussion about the need for critical media literacy will help set the stage for
a description of the pedagogy involved.
The Case for Critical Media Literacy (Part 1):

Turning to Orwell and Huxley
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of
thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because
there will be no words in which to express it.
—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Critical Media Literacy and Social Studies 337
As the quote from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four suggests, the language
used by corporate media outlets is specifically chosen with the intention of stul-
tifying subsequent debate. Orwell was concerned that those in authority would
keep vital information away from the public, that the truth would be hidden
from us, that people would not be able to break free of the constraints imposed
by these hegemonic discourses. Foreshadowing the insights of poststructuralism,
Orwell postulated that the elites would use language to create a captive society,
and fill it with fear if that what was warranted.
Orwell’s contemporary, Aldous Huxley, predicted a different future for West-
ern nations. In Brave New World (1932), Huxley posited a scenario in which no
one would want to read a book, that the truth would be impossible to distinguish
from spectacles of illusion, that people would tend toward irrelevant distraction
rather than comprehension of social forces impinging upon their day to day lives.
In a somewhat prescient manner, Huxley described an irrelevant society, one that
would be fixated on entertainment for the sole purpose of being entertained.
Let’s take a look at the validity of Orwell’s and Huxley’s concerns. Orwell’s
prediction that the authorities would keep citizens in the dark is well founded.
Both George W. Bush administrations were extremely difficult to extract informa-
tion from. According to Lewis Lapham (2004):
The corporate managers of the Bush administration classify their

characters and conduct as a state secret, and they take considerable
pains to conceal from a nominally free people any and all knowledge
apt to excite not only envy and dread but also reasonable doubt and
faint suspicion. (p. 105)
Clearly, Lapham would agree with Orwell’s contention that the authorities will
use whatever means necessary to conceal the truth from the public. Accountability
with the federal Conservative government of Canada is not much better achieved
(Toronto Star, May 12, 2012).
Regarding the manipulative use of language, one only has to go back to
the period of the George W. Bush administration to see egregious examples. For
instance, the Clear Skies Act, despite its name, enables polluting industries to
increase the number of toxins they produce to be released into the atmosphere
(Lakoff, 2004). Likewise, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act allows for more
forests to be clear-cut, some within formerly protected parklands. As a further
example of media spin, numerous educators have criticized Bush’s No Child Left
Behind Act for leaving behind too many marginalized, underprivileged children
(Ravitch, 2010; Shaker & Heilman, 2008). The shift to mega-spin reached new
heights (or lows) with the revelation that the Bush administration had been engaged
in obsequious behavior toward the corporate media: the U.S. Department of Edu-
cation paid influential journalist Armstrong Williams $240,000 to write columns
in support of the controversial No Child Left Behind Act (Goldenberg, 2005).
338 Paul Orlowski
These are only a few of the seemingly infinite number of examples dem-
onstrating Orwell’s profound insights. In a similar fashion, we should pay close
attention to Huxley’s concerns. For example, his prediction that people will not
want to read a book has been borne out: according to the U.S. Census Bureau,
more than 30 percent of high school graduates will never again read an entire
book, while over 40 percent of college graduates will not do so (Hedges, 2009, p.
44). Again, the situation Canada is only slightly better. Moreover, the overall trend
toward lower voting rates in elections in both countries is indicative that more and
more citizens, either uninformed, unmotivated, or both, cannot rouse themselves to
even cast a ballot every few years. Yet, many are able to give the batting statistics
of the local major league baseball team or identify the latest person to be romanti-
cally involved with their favorite celebrity. The tragedy of this situation, according
to social critic Chris Hedges (2009), is that the acute attention paid to the lives
and actions of celebrities results in a citizenry too removed from facing their own
realities and incapable of putting up effective resistance to antidemocratic forces.
If the warnings of Orwell and Huxley are not enough to convince all progres-
sive educators of the dire need for critical media literacy in social studies, however,
the next section should make a clear case for its implementation.
The Case for Critical Media Literacy (Part 2):

Hegemony and the Political Agenda of Corporate Media
Hegemony in the media refers to the ideal representation of the interests of the
most privileged groups as universal interests, which are then accepted by the masses
as the natural economic, political, and social order. This conception of hegemony
explains how social hierarchies and order are maintained within capitalist societies.
Force is not required to maintain these hierarchies if citizens willingly give their
consent to accept them.
The effects of hegemony are difficult to combat because hegemonic discourses
shape how people view life itself through a set of social relations that enables
meaning to be made. Unfortunately for those people not belonging to elite groups,
that is, the majority of Americans and Canadians, this meaning often results,
paradoxically, in an unfair distribution of privilege, wealth, and power. In other
words, resisting hegemonic discourses becomes more difficult as these discourses
colonize the minds of citizens. Hegemonic discourses are particularly effective when
they are placed in tandem with related discourses to create hegemonic discursive
formations. In a subsequent section, the discussion will focus on the discourses in
the corporate media that support the powerful neoliberal discursive formation.
Another important aspect of hegemony that must be considered is false politi-
cal consciousness. This term features prominently in critical theory, and refers to the
purpose served by thought itself in the collective life of humanity. It attempts to
explain why some people (for instance, the working classes) consider themselves
to be politically conscious and yet vote against their best interests.
In What’s the Matter With Kansas? (2004), Thomas Frank contends that
the backlash against progressive politics in many parts of 21st-century United
States is the creation of a corporate elite that has managed to manipulate “cultural
anger . . . to achieve economic ends” (p. 5). He posits that the corporate elites
obtain support from the working classes by trumpeting conservative positions on
moral issues such as gay rights and abortion. Frank further extrapolates that there
is a “primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that
has done incalculable harm to working-class people” (p. 6). Public support for
President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the country’s wealthiest citizens attests
to this, and demonstrates how hegemonic processes work to further entrench the
interests of the elite. It is obvious that progressive teachers have some work to do
in terms of deconstructing false political consciousness.
When one considers the ethics behind some of the media giants that rep-
resent hegemonic interests, one begins to get a glimpse of their political agenda.
During the summer of 2011, citizens in Britain became aware of a “culture of
fear” emanating out of the office of News Corp., the media conglomerate led by
Rupert Murdoch (Orlowski, 2011b). Apparently, British politicians were targeted
to carry out Murdoch’s neoliberal (aka corporate) agenda or risk being personally
attacked in Murdoch’s numerous media outlets. Politicians and celebrities lived in
fear of their reputations being destroyed. In 2011, however, it became clear that
employees of News Corp.’s flagship tabloid, News of the World, were hacking into
the voicemails of regular citizens. Once the British public understood that com-
moners were fair game, they understandably reacted with outrage.
The crucial point in relating this sordid tale is to focus on the Murdoch
media empire’s reliance on fear. George Lakoff (2004), a cognitive linguist, postu-
lates that there are core psychological differences between how conservatives and
progressives see and act in the world. One of these differences pertains to what
the concept of fear does in the thinking of conservative people. Evidence for this
can be seen in the frequently heard tough-on-crime discourse, which is associated
with more police officers and longer jail sentences. In early 2012, the Conserva-
tive prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, commented that he was “fearful”
of the regime in Iran. Within days, a few preservice teachers who self-identify as
conservative spoke about their “fear” of the Iranian government in class discussions.
According to Lakoff, this is precisely how powerful conservatives get their base out
to support controversial policy.
This fear function affects conservative perspectives on economic issues as
well—they seem willing to only support tax increases for a bigger military, more
police, or more prisons. The Murdoch-owned Fox News gives the impression that
conservatives want to see the dismantling of the social welfare state and even
the public education system, or “government” schools, as they are wont to say.
340 Paul Orlowski
Fox News has been instrumental in the creation and development of the suppos-
edly populist Tea Party, a movement which I see as an example of false political
consciousness. The constant Tea Party refrain calling for more tax cuts obviously
benefits the wealthiest people in the United States. This is reason enough for
teachers to employ critical pedagogical strategies in media literacy.
Yet, there are more reasons to do so. One of the most important is the
increased concentration of media ownership within a shrinking group of powerful
corporate entities and media moguls in both countries (Winter, 2002; McChesney,
1999). This has made it even easier to champion the interests of the elite through
the constant repetition of hegemonic discourses. Concentration of media owner-
ship also results in the further marginalization of counterhegemonic discourses.
Orwell, writing in the 1940s, explains how this marginalization process operates:
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which

it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without ques-
tion. . . . Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds him-
self silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable
opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular
press or in the highbrow periodicals. (Orwell, cited in Winter, 2002,
p. xxvi; emphasis added)
Orwell makes it clear that an increased concentration of media ownership

leads to a further entrenchment of hegemonic discourses. Winter (2002) claims
that the corporate media have applied this Orwellian orthodoxy to a massive list
of topics pertinent to economic and social relations: free trade, national debt, tax
cuts, going to war, labor unions, poverty, feminism, and certain kinds of pro-
tests1 (p. xxvii). In other words, the corporate media have become the dominant
influence on the ways many people perceive and think about the world they live
in. Buckingham (2003) concurs: he contends that the media have overcome the
family, the church, and school to become the dominant socializing influence in
society. As a veteran educator, I see an activist role for teachers in helping students
deconstruct discourses that work to undermine civil society.
Many people may question whether this is a role for teachers. I believe it
is, and I will explain why. The two main sources of information in contemporary
society are the mainstream corporate media and the public education system.
Because Canadian and U.S. media have moved to the right (Martin, 2003), I
believe it is the responsibility of educators to provide a counterbalance by pro-
viding a venue where counterhegemonic discourses may take root and develop.
It is crucial that as a society we support the Deweyan notion of developing a
critically thinking citizenry capable of understanding what constitutes a civil soci-
ety. The next section will begin to describe the ways in which I have employed
pedagogical strategies designed with the intention of developing critically thinking

media-literate students.
Understanding Political Ideology
Every social studies course I have taught, in both the high school and university
setting, has focused on the role of political ideology in influencing important
political events and social movements in the past and present. There are reasons
for this focus: first, political ideology is at the root of most debates in our society
on matters of social and economic relations; and second, there is lack of awareness
and general knowledge of political ideology in our society. In order for students
to become media literate, it is crucial for them to have a comprehension of the
major political ideologies in Canada and the United States. This is the first step
toward understanding the hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses that they
are bombarded with.
As a case in point, let’s look at a fairly recent example. During the U.S.
presidential election of 2008, several Republicans, including vice presidential can-
didate Sarah Palin, Missouri congressman Todd Akin, and Ohio senator George
Voinovich, called Democrat Barack Obama a “socialist” (Hertzberg, 2008). I do
not know whether these politicians from the Republican Party really do believe
that President Obama is a socialist. Nor am I aware of their own understanding
of what socialism really is, or if they understand the difference between socialism
and the much more prevalent social democracy.2 But one thing is certain: these
Republicans knew they could frighten a large segment of the American electorate
into believing that President Obama is bringing socialism to their country. This
lack of understanding of the various political ideologies plays right into the hands
of powerful conservatives and corporate leaders: they can enact the fear factor
discussed earlier. Moreover, it speaks to the prescience of Orwell’s assertion that
language will be manipulated in the interests of the elites. Clearly, social studies
teachers need to step up their game in teaching about political ideology.
Ideology is about the “thought-production of human beings” (Giroux, 1981,
p. 19). A political ideology contains “a specific set of assumptions and social
practices” that leads to various “beliefs, expectations and biases” (p. 7). In other
words, a political ideology socially constructs its own knowledge. This has impor-
tant implications for social studies teachers and students. I am arguing for social
studies teachers to be educated in political ideology at a more analytic level (see
Orlowski, 2011a). I begin with brief descriptions of the core characteristics of
the three major political ideologies in Canada and the United States: liberalism,
conservatism, and social democracy or what in the American context Rorty (1998)
refers to as the reformist Left.
342 Paul Orlowski
The first ideology to articulate a new way of perceiving the world and orga-
nizing society through human reason, liberalism, arose during the Enlightenment.
Emancipation of the masses and democracy are the progeny of classical liberalism.
Initially, liberals were quite happy to engage in the pursuit of wealth through lais-
sez-faire economic policy and the conquest of nature. By the early 1900s, however,
classical liberalism in many Western European nations evolved into progressive or
reform liberalism in which a more state-interventionist approach developed (par-
tially to appease growing working-class discontent). Reform liberalism, based upon
Keynesian economics, also included a tempered individualism, which developed
out of the inevitable tension between an ideal of liberty and an ideal of equality.
In North America, only during and after the Great Depression and World War
II did classical liberalism give way to the more progressive version of liberalism.
Socialism can be seen as a spinoff ideology from liberalism, another attempt
to realize the goal of emancipation. For Marx, liberalism’s major flaw was its
emphasis on the individual as the most important unit in society. Because of
the great disparities in wealth, socialists considered social class to be the crucial
aspect of a person’s identity. As the capitalist system demonstrated its resilience
by surviving the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the extent of the atrocities
of the Stalin-led Soviet Union became known to people in Western nations, the
popularity of socialist ideology began to wane. Over time, a new leftist political
ideology gained currency in Canada and to some extent in the United States,
a hybrid of socialism and liberalism merging to form social democracy (Rorty,
1998). The basic tenets of social democracy include an acceptance of capitalism
with the intention to help those social groups that have little hope to better their
economic standard of living. It also shares with liberalism a respect for the rights
of the individual,3 something that most other forms of socialism do not value to
the same extent.
A central tenet of conservatism is that society should be led by a stable
group of people who, through past experience, have the ability to do so wisely.
For them, human nature is flawed. For conservatives, tradition gains strength from
the long-held views inherent in the common sense of the community. Authority
should be respected. The idea of each person accepting their place in society at
least partially explains why there has been a vociferous conservative backlash against
feminism, multiculturalism, and trade unions in recent years. Today, conservatism
has evolved into an ideology that promotes traditional social values with aggressive
support for the interests of the economic super-elite. The Tea Party movement is
a striking example of this evolution.
These three political ideologies—conservatism, liberalism, and social democ-
racy—are the major ones vying for power in Canada. In the United States, the
ideological struggle is a binary one between conservatism and liberalism. Yet, as
Rorty (1998) explains, social democracy or the reformist Left has also made many
contributions to American society.
In recent years, however, a new phenomenon has appeared in both the

United States and Canada. It is called neoliberalism, and many will recognize its
traits as aspects of the corporate agenda.
Neoliberalism: Laissez-Faire Economics Revisited
[E]verything that’s happened in the past several years has gone to further
empower and enrich the 1 per cent (or maybe the 5 per cent) at the
expense of the rest of us. Look anywhere you want. What else does
the universal demand for austerity programs mean? What else does the
sudden concerted attack on public sector workers mean? What else
does the intransigent line taken by multinational corporations against
their unions mean? What else does the demand for “right-to-work”
laws mean? What else does the widespread attack on seniors’ pensions
mean? (Caplan, 2012, para. 2)
Neoliberalism can be a confusing term for students to comprehend. After all,

progressive Americans and Canadians accept the basic tenets of liberalism in terms
of individual rights. Neoliberalism, however, only refers to economic issues, not
social issues. The “liberal” part of neoliberalism refers to its association with clas-
sical liberalism in terms of liberalizing the movement of money. Adding to the
confusion, both liberal and conservative governments in the United States and
Canada have passed pro-corporate and antiunion legislation.
The key components of the neoliberal agenda are deregulation of the econ-
omy, tax cuts (especially for corporations and the wealthy), privatization of the
commons, union busting, free markets, and free trade. As a veteran educator who
has covered the Industrial Revolution to the 1930s many times in high school
social studies, I am struck by the similarities between past economic policy and
contemporary neoliberal policy. This sense of déjà vu is understandable when one
realizes that an economic model similar to neoliberalism had fallen out of favor
with all Western nations during the Great Depression of the 1930s. This system
used to be called laissez-faire economics.
In high school social studies, students learn that income inequality, inhu-
mane conditions for workers, and the lack of social safety nets were features of
laissez-faire economics. Government-imposed regulations on industry were seen as
impediments to financial profit for the capitalist class, and consequently, were unac-
ceptable. Supporters of this doctrine in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries
preferred the invisible hand of the market to influence economic arrangements and
were hostile to the state intervening in economic affairs, especially around regula-
tion of industry. It is clear that similar thinking has permeated the perspectives of
many of the economic and political elites today.
344 Paul Orlowski
The crisis that befell most Western economies in 2008 focused once again
on this very same issue, namely, the regulation (or nonregulation) of industry in
general, and the financial industry in particular. Paradoxically, this near economic
collapse has resulted in calls for even greater austerity measures against the down-
trodden and more economic opportunity for those who were doing well in the first
place (Frank, 2012). With a seemingly masochistic streak, even some middle- and
working-class people support these calls. An understanding of a powerful current
hegemonic discursive formation offers a partial explanation.
One particularly effective discourse emanating out of corporate media pro-
pagandists is the infamous “trickle-down” discourse. This discourse states that the
deregulated economy will create a rising tide of prosperity and all boats, big and
small, will rise with it. Another current powerful discourse in support of corporate
tax cuts touts corporations as job creators. Despite research that shows corporations
do not use money from tax cuts to create more jobs (Stanford, 2011), the job
creator discourse works in tandem with another that claims public sector workers
such as teachers have a sense of entitlement. It is easy to see how this discourse
can lead to an attack on all public sector workers.
Under the banner of fiscal responsibility, neoliberal supporters in govern-
ment, in the private sector, and in the media want opportunities for the few to
profit from privatizing the commons. They want funding cuts to public education
in all countries receptive to neoliberalism (Hill, 2009), which more often than
not are the English-speaking Western nations. Charter schools continue to be in
vogue in the United States. In Canada, entrepreneurial forces are pushing for the
creation of a two-tiered healthcare system to replace its treasured universal public
healthcare system and on the introduction of “Medical Services Plan” fees to erode
the notion of a free, public service. Pension plans for public sector workers in both
countries are very much in peril. The reason given to the public is that it is no
longer affordable to fund these public institutions and programs through taxes.
Ironically, much of the public does not seem too disturbed at these discourses
during a period in which the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing to
grotesque proportions in both countries. Yet, the Occupy Wall Street movement
indicates that a significant segment of society is beginning to assert some powerful
connections among new coalitions.
For several decades, the economic elites of the United States and Canada have
dismissed any notion that they have been implicated in any kind of class warfare.
Indeed, the elites and the media pundits working on their behalf will use the term
class war whenever they detect “public contempt for investment bankers” (Frank,
2012, p. 37). Yet, despite the media’s attempt at obfuscation, when one considers
increasingly massive gaps in wealth, there can be little doubt that neoliberalism
is indeed “a project aimed at the restoration of class power” (Anijar & Gabbard,
2009, pp. 45–46). Harvey (2005) states that “if it looks like class struggle and
acts like class war then we have to name it unashamedly for what it is” (p. 202).
Neoliberalism provides the basis for a new class war, one that is attempting
to replace the Fordist arrangement between capital and labor, and end the influ-
ence of Keynesian economics. Evidence suggests that there has been a class war
enacted by the economic and political elites for more than thirty years—first, the
victims were working-class families, and in recent years the middle class has been
targeted (Freeland, 2012; Monsebraaten, 2011; OECD, 2011; Yalnizyan, 2011). A
false political consciousness is leading many working- and middle-class people to
support neoliberal policies for deregulation, privatization of the commons, union
busting, and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest citizens (Frank, 2012).
Neoliberalism emphasizes that the role of the state must include creating markets
in areas such as education, healthcare, social security, and environmental pollution
(Harvey, 2005). If citizens understood this, it is unlikely that the majority would
support the neoliberal project.
A flawed social studies curriculum that has led to an uninformed citizenry
is at least partially to blame. One of the ways in which I teach to counteract this
trend is described in the following section. It includes an assignment I have used
in both high school and university settings.
Teaching for Understanding Political Ideology
Left-wing ideas in Western democracies are rooted in a sense of freedom, equality,

egalitarianism, human rights, and social justice. In the main, these ideas champion
the rights of women, gays, and nonwhite peoples, and a strong social welfare state.
The ideas of the right wing, on the other hand, have evolved to include policies
that encourage the individual to advance economically and socially on their own
accord, without help from the state. As well, the right wing is dismissive of claims
by various minorities that the system is inherently unfair. Conservatives and right
wing liberals have co-opted the notion of meritocracy in order to maintain privilege
in current day social, political, and economic hierarchies.
An effective way to get students to understand what is meant by the Left
and the Right in political terms is to consider all issues as either economic or
social. Economic issues are those that represent significant amounts of money,
while social issues do not. For example, tax reform is an economic issue while
capital punishment is a social issue. Some issues such as healthcare are both social
and economic, yet, to keep from getting mired in semantics, the basic economic/
social distinction is useful (see Fig. 16.1).
With political ideologies and political issues divided into the economic and
the social, students are able to make headway toward understanding why certain
media are called left wing by some and the very same media outlets are called right
wing or right leaning by others. For example, during the past few federal elections
in Canada, leaders of the federal Liberal Party have appealed to social democrats
346 Paul Orlowski
Social
LW RW
—pro-choice —pro-life
—anti-death penalty —pro-death penalty
—pro-minority rights —anti-minority rights
Economic
LW RW
—strong social welfare state —anti–social welfare state

—pro–publicly funded universal healthcare —for-profit healthcare
—pro-union —antiunion
—wealthy pay higher tax rate —tax cuts for all
Figure 16.1. Left and Right on Social and Economic Spectra
(that is, supporters of the New Democratic Party) by presenting themselves as

having values that appear to express the same concerns for justice as those held
by the New Democrats, and the latter should switch their votes to the Liberals to
stop the Conservatives from forming government. The truth of the matter is that
on social issues, they are correct. On economic issues, however, the two parties
diverge significantly—the Liberals are to the right of center, closer to where the
Conservative Party are positioned, while the NDP are to the left of center. Yet,
this distinction of the Liberal Party being left wing on social issues and right wing
on economic issues is rarely mentioned in the corporate media.
In the United States, the media usually refer to the Democrats as left wing,
and on social issues they do champion the rights of minorities. Yet, on economic
issues, both parties develop policy supported by the corporate sector and most
wealthy individuals. In other words, neither of the two major American parties
should be considered left wing on economic issues.
All adherents to the political ideologies discussed in this chapter, whether
on the left or on the right, compete to garner support for their way of seeing the
world and their plans to organize society through discourse.
Research the platforms of the following American political parties: The Republi-
can Party; The Democratic Party; The Green Party of the United States; and/or
the platforms of the following Canadian political parties: The Liberal Party; The
Conservative Party; The New Democratic Party; The Bloc Quebecois; The Green
Party of Canada.
Use the social scale and the economic scale to place the various political parties.
Be prepared to explain why you placed each one where you did.
Social
LW RW
Economic
LW RW
Using a separate set of axes to represent the economic and social scales, place the
letter representing each of the following issues on one of the scales. Be prepared
to explain why you placed each one where you did.
A—capital punishment
B—increased rights of gay people
C—gun control
D— tax cuts for all
E—increased funding for public education
F—pro-life
G—pro-choice
H—regulating the financial industry
I—increased military spending
J—increased social welfare spending
K—publicly funded healthcare system
L—subsidized daycare
M—the UN Declaration of Human Rights
N—“pull yourself up by the bootstraps” philosophy
O—support for unions
P—free trade with Mexico
Q—increased rights for Aboriginal land treaties
R—martial law
S—progressive tax reform
T—support for replacement workers during a strike
348 Paul Orlowski
Ideology Critique & Critical Media Literacy
A counterhegemonic strategy that I have found successful in the high school class-
room involves students accessing and assessing media sources and determining
the ideology of the journalist and the discourses used in the article. Discourse is
always connected with desire and power. As Norman Fairclough (1989) puts it,
“Discourse can never be ‘neutral’ or value-free; discourse always reflects ideologies,
systems of values, beliefs, and social practices” (p. 21). In other words, discourse
can work toward either sustaining unequal relations of power or challenging them.
Powerful dominant discourses today support the agendas of economic, social, and
political elites.
Students demonstrate the degree to which they have become adept at explain-
ing cultural struggles in ideological terms in their “current events” presentations.
Each chooses an article from one of the mainstream newspapers or from an alter-
native news source (such as Alternet.org or thetyee.ca), most of which are found
on the Internet. The chosen article must address a cultural issue, namely, race,
class, gender, sexuality, or war. Each student provides a one-page written analysis
addressing issues of bias, to show which groups benefit and which ones lose from
the given ideological perspective. They must offer their thoughts about who was
quoted and why, and which affected groups were excluded. Each student must also
present his or her findings to the class with a four to five minute presentation.
Some students choose articles from mainstream sources, while others will-
ingly search the alternative sources. For a recent example, students compared how
Fox News and similar media outlets covered the Tea Party and Occupy movements.
This has worked well pedagogically because students often choose articles on similar
topics—the 2004 American election and the Iraq war were two favorites—and
the ideologies emanating from mainstream and alternative sources are not difficult
to discern. Media bias is quite apparent with such pedagogy. These assignments
offer students a framework in which to critique the media in terms of the ideo-
logical influences of journalists, and in the process they understand how most of
the mainstream media often reflect the views of powerful interests. Indeed, when
students challenge the language and the assumptions that many journalists use,
they see how the hegemonic function of the media works in the interests of large
corporations and other privileged groups. Some are able to see past the effects of
language manipulation.
Students come to understand that the dominant discourses used in corporate
media support the interests of elites over the common good. The dominant neo-
liberal discourses in the corporate media for the past twenty-five years—regarding
tax cuts, deregulation, debt reduction, cuts to social programs, and free global
markets—have been the building blocks for a resurgence in economic and political
power for the elites in North America. Countless working-class people, as well as
much of the middle class, have had their lives significantly disrupted by this series
of economic policy shifts supported by the corporate media.
Reframing Discourse
In recent years, I have been experimenting with a more sophisticated kind of

media literacy, one based on reframing political discourse from different ideological
perspectives (Lakoff, 2004). Individuals must recognize contemporary media frames
and realize that with every piece of information, there exists a certain message,
often one that benefits some people at the expense of others.
The basic theory behind reframing is to address the observation that people
who are strongly influenced by one ideology cannot hear certain facts that might
shake their beliefs. The facts do not seem to matter; they seem to bounce off the
intended listener. Rather than become frustrated, progressive ideologues need to
use positive discourses on policy that rely on progressive values and language. In
other words, rather than using the familiar frames of the conservatives, progressives
use ones based on progressive values.
One example from the teacher education curriculum that I use may help
to explain the value in reframing. For the neoliberal agenda to continue, signifi-
cant numbers of poor and working-class people must vote against their own best
interests—or not vote at all. The necessary reframing efforts on the part of neo-
liberal conservatives were successful because a commonly held belief today is that
conservative ideas are populist, while liberal or progressive ideas are elitist (Frank,
2012). To counter this, I use a critical pedagogy with the preservice teachers in
which they reframe conservative arguments using progressive values. For example,
conservatives often attack any notion of increasing the mandated minimum wage
by calling it antithetical to business success. Instead of defending an increase in
the minimum wage, one student reframed the debate and focused on the value of
“prosperity for all who work hard.” This is an idea that people across the ideologi-
cal spectrum could support.
Another student produced a defense of taxes not by buying into the con-
servative frames of “tax relief ” or “taxes as burden,” but by using a progressive
frame—“fair tax reform”—which indicates that wealthy people should pay their
fair share and that taxes are an investment for the future prosperity of everyone’s
children. Yet another student focused on the neoliberal attack on unions and their
members. He found that the common perception was that what the corporate
media call “work stoppages” are union-called strikes. However, most Americans are
likely unaware that while the “number of strikes has declined to just one-sixth the
annual level of two decades ago . . . [l]ockouts, on the other hand, have grown
to represent a record percentages of the nation’s work stoppages” (Greenhouse,
2012). This example seemed to resonate with the rest of the students: they could
see the dangers to civil society from the neoliberal agenda and also comprehend
the corporate media’s role in exacerbating this class warfare.
Of course, media access and media compliance are important obstacles to
these progressive frames becoming commonly accepted. For now, however, if teach-
ers can discern neoliberal discourses, they should be better able to help their
350 Paul Orlowski
students deconstruct media bias. After all, a major objective of critical media
literacy is to help students interpret the news rather than simply absorb it without
reflection. This is a crucial pedagogical strategy to develop a political consciousness
in which individuals understand and defend their own best interests.
Some Final Reflections
This chapter is a call for progressive educators to engage in a type of critical

media literacy that also demands a political consciousness in both the teacher
and the students. Social studies is clearly the best subject to engage in this critical
pedagogy. The basic building blocks for this critical pedagogy includes an
understanding of the influence of political ideology on economic and social issues,
and how manipulation of the citizenry can occur when powerful political forces
obfuscate these issues to attain even more power. In order to combat this, citi-
zens need to understand the various positions of conservatives, liberals, and social
democrats on economic and social issues. Moreover, it is imperative that they
come to understand that neoliberalism is the biggest threat to civil society and
our democratic traditions in both countries.
The inclusion of Orwell and Huxley in the chapter title was not frivo-
lous—because of their dire warnings, both should be considered prescient. Orwell
foretold that language itself would be manipulated in such a way that society’s
most powerful would be able to gain even more power. American social critic
Thomas Frank (2012) has described the ways in which language has altered the
meanings of words in this era of grotesque wealth gaps. The term elite now refers
to the educated rather than the extremely wealthy. This acts as a smokescreen for
conservative voters. Moreover, the pseudo-populist Tea Party movement also creates
blinders for many as small business people and their rallying cry for corporate tax
cuts gets prime time coverage on Fox News and other corporate media sources.
Students come to comprehend how such Orwellian manipulations of language
further the neoliberal corporate agenda.
We should also pay heed to Huxley’s warnings of a politically apathetic
citizenry. Of course it is true that many people escape into the illusory spectacle
of professional sports and other forms of celebrity culture. Yet, it has been my
experience that students appreciate being able to turn a critical gaze toward even
pop culture itself. This, in turn, leads to a much greater interest in the media,
in politics, and in society itself. Indeed, if critical educators wish to work toward
strengthening our waning democracies and civil societies, this version of critical
media literacy holds much promise.
It is important to understand that wherever there is power, there is resis-
tance to that power. Progressive educators should employ pedagogy that focuses
on political ideology and ideology critique, and design lessons and assignments
with the goal of deconstructing hegemonic discourses in the media and fostering
counterhegemonic discourses. A critical social studies is where much hope resides!
Notes
1. When one observes the Murdoch-owned Fox News, it is obvious that it is sup-
portive of the Tea Party protests that blame the recent economic crisis on the government,
and condemns the Occupy Wall Street protests that pointed to the major banks for causing
the same crisis.
2. The United States is the only Western nation without a major social democratic
political party. This is likely related to the “witch hunts” of McCarthyism.
3. Individual rights was one of the major victories toward building a civil society
in Western nations in the post–World War II period. This term is often confused with the
rugged individualism promoted by certain American propagandists. Whereas the first itera-
tion refers to basic human rights around economic and especially social issues, the second
one is an Orwellian play on promoting a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” approach.
This translates into dismantling the social welfare state.
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17
Teaching Democracy
What Schools Need to Do
Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer
Which of the following headlines never appeared in a daily newspaper?
1. Capital City Students Show No Gain in Reading, Math—Governor

Threatens Takeover
2. Middletown Schools to be Taken Over by State for Failure to
Develop Democratic Citizens
If you answered 2, you not only answered correctly, your response also reflected
an important challenge facing our democracy today: while we say that we value a
democratic society, the very institutions expected to prepare democratic citizens—
our schools—have moved far from this central mission. There is now frequent talk
of “state takeovers” of schools that fail to raise test scores in math or reading, but
it is unimaginable that any school would face such an action because it failed to
prepare its graduates for democratic citizenship.
The headlines we read instead are about test scores, basic skills, and the role
schools play in preparing students for jobs in the information age. The vast bulk of
school resources are going to literacy, mathematics, science, and vocational educa-
tion. In 2003, for example, federal expenditures by the Department of Education
on civic education totaled less than one-half of 1 percent of the overall department
budget and little has changed in the decade since.1
And when it comes to assessment, civic goals get very little attention. The No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act mandates yearly testing in math and reading and,
beginning in 2005, science. Under the more recent Race To The Top legislation,
353
354 Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer
the focus has remained much the same because, as before, state assessments tend
to test students’ math and reading skills only. Social studies and civic education,
the areas of the curriculum most tied to the democratic mission of schools, share
no such requirements. Similarly, the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP), which is often referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card,” measures per-
formance in math and reading annually, but administers a civics assessment only
once every ten years. Clearly, math, reading, and science are important, but, from
the standpoint of supporting a democratic society, academic subject matter, when
disconnected from its social relevance, is insufficient.
This chapter is concerned with what is not being discussed in the newspapers.
We are concerned with an important gap in our educational agenda: preparing
students to be effective democratic citizens.
For two and one-half years, we studied ten educational programs funded
by the Surdna Foundation that were unusual in that they put the challenge
of educating for democratic citizenship at the center of their efforts (Kahne &
Westheimer, 2003; Westheimer, 2004; Westheimer & Kahne, 2003, April; 2004;
in press).2 We studied tenth graders evaluating a juvenile detention center, ninth
graders studying the feasibility of curbside recycling, and eleventh graders report-
ing to the public on the availability of affordable housing in their community.
We examined programs that exposed university students to community develop-
ment projects in Silicon Valley, brought theology majors to a reservation to study
the history of Native American experience, and led students interested in social
movements on an intensive journey through historical sites of the civil rights
movement. We visited an adult education program with a seventy-year history
of working for social and economic change through education and democratic
action. All in all, we interviewed dozens of instructors and students, administered
more than five hundred surveys, observed pedagogical practices, and examined
portfolios of student work.
These programs share an emphasis on helping students to identify and act
on issues of importance to themselves and to society. The words of a high school
teacher from one program echo those of many others we interviewed: “My goal is
to empower students to rectify problems, to come up with solutions, and to join
with other people so that they can become truly active citizens.”
By studying these programs and their impact, we have been able to learn
a great deal about how such goals can be attained. The programs we studied
approached the development of democratic citizens in different ways and worked
with varied populations, but common curricular components emerged from our
analysis. Unfortunately, neither these goals nor these curricular components are get-
ting much attention in most current school reform efforts. Social studies educators
can fill this gap. We believe that, if schools are to fulfill their historic ideal of laying
the foundation for a democratic society, these goals and curricular components
must be given much more attention.
Teaching Democracy 355
Why Teach Democracy?

Targeting what people don’t know about how our government works has become
a favorite pastime not only of Jay Leno but also of educators and politicians: one
study, by the National Constitution Center, found that only 38 percent of respon-
dents could name all three branches of government while a separate poll conducted
two years earlier found that 59 percent of all Americans could name the Three
Stooges (Dudley & Gitlesen, 2000). Yet even if Leno discovered an impressive show
of factual knowledge among the nation’s young people, democracy would still face
significant hurdles.
The numbers that chronicle declining civic engagement are becoming increas-
ingly familiar. Twenty-five percent fewer citizens go to the polls today to vote than
did in 1960, and the largest declines are among young people. Political participa-
tion, such as working for a political party, is at a forty-year low. Broadly speaking, as
Robert Putnam (2000) demonstrates, “Americans are playing virtually every aspect
of the civic game less frequently than we did two decades ago” (p. 41). Although
young people’s voting rates increased somewhat in the November 2004 elections
in the United States, youth voters remained roughly the same proportion of the
total electorate and we do not yet know if this rebound in overall participation
represents a unique occurrence or the beginning of a sustained trend.
It’s not that citizens are incapable of keeping up with current affairs or of
acting on their views. When the Coca Cola Company announced it was changing
the recipe of its signature soft drink, its Atlanta headquarters received forty thou-
sand letters of protest and fielded five thousand phone calls per day for months
(Thomas, 1990). More than twenty-four million young Americans cast votes to
elect last season’s “American Idol” (Paskoff, 2003). The problem instead is that
citizens (and particularly young citizens) are often disengaged from politics.
Young people need to be taught to make democracy work, to engage civically,
socially, and politically. At the same time that lobbyists are spending hundreds of
millions of dollars, many ordinary citizens are passive and apathetic when it comes
to major issues that affect their lives. If policies regarding the environment, taxes,
military spending, and health care—to name just a few—are to reflect public senti-
ments rather than the interests of well-financed lobbyists, they require the attention
of ordinary citizens. Improving society requires making democracy work. And making
democracy work requires that schools, and social studies educators in particular, take
this goal seriously: to educate and nurture engaged and informed democratic citizens.
What Is a Democratic Citizen?

While most may agree that civic participation is in decline, when we get specific
about what democracy requires and about what kind of school curricula will best
promote it, much of the consensus falls away. For some, a commitment to democ-
racy is a promise to protect liberal notions of freedom, while for others democracy
is primarily about equality. For some, civil society is the key, while for others, free
markets are the great hope for a democratic society. For some, good citizens in a
democracy volunteer, while for others, they take active parts in political processes
by voting, protesting, and working on political campaigns.
These visions of citizenship are not always in conflict. A citizen who volun-
teers can simultaneously be a good neighbor and work to change unjust laws, for
example. But when it comes to decisions about curriculum, these goals do not
necessarily go together; activities that address the goals of one vision of citizenship
do not necessarily address goals related to another vision. So before we report on
ways successful programs we studied developed democratic citizens, we should
clarify what we mean by a democratic citizen.
A strikingly large number of school-based programs embrace a vision of citizen-
ship devoid of politics. This is particularly true of the community service and charac-
ter education initiatives that have garnered so much recent attention. These programs
aim to promote service and good character, but not democracy. They share an orien-
tation toward developing individual character (honesty, integrity, self-discipline, hard
work), volunteerism, and charity and away from teaching about social movements,
social transformation, and systemic change. The Character Counts! Coalition, for
example, advocates teaching students to “treat others with respect . . . deal peace-
fully with anger . . . be considerate of the feelings of others . . . follow the Golden
Rule . . . use good manners” and so on. It wants students not to “threaten, hit, or
hurt anyone [or use] bad language” (Character Counts, 1996). Other programs hope
to develop compassionate citizens by engaging students in volunteer activities. As
illustrated in the mission of the Points of Light Foundation, these programs hope
to “help solve serious social problems” by “engag[ing] more people more effectively
in volunteer service.”3 These programs privilege individual acts of compassion and
kindness over collective efforts to improve policies and institutions.
The emphasis placed on service and character is also reflected in college-based
service learning programs. In a recent analysis by the Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) of 599 college programs, researchers found that 50
percent involved direct service, including tutoring, serving food, clothes collections,
and blood drives. Another 42 percent provided technical assistance such as com-
puter training and leadership classes. A mere 1 percent involved political advocacy
such as building tenant councils, drafting legislation, and so on (US Department
of Housing and Urban Development, 1999, cited in Robinson, 2000).
Democracy Requires More Than Good Deeds
While programs that emphasize service and character may be valuable for support-
ing the development of good community members, they are inadequate for the
challenges of educating a democratic citizenry.
First, emphasizing individual character and behavior obscures the need for
collective and often public sector initiatives. Volunteers can help the elderly cope
with daily difficulties, but it took Social Security to reduce the proportion of senior
citizens living in poverty from one in two (the highest rate of poverty for any
demographic group) to fewer than one in eight (Porter, Larin, & Primus, 1999).
Second, this emphasis on individual character distracts attention from eco-
nomic and political obstacles to remedying social ills. For example, programs that
rely on character training to bolster democracy do not encourage participants to
explore whether people are poor because of personal “character flaws” or because
there are far fewer jobs that pay living wages than there are people to fill them
(Kohn, 1997; Lafer, 2002).4 To the extent that these character development pro-
grams detract from other important democratic priorities, they hinder rather than
make possible democratic participation and change. Emphasizing loyalty, patrio-
tism, or obedience (common components of character education as well) can lead
to antidemocratic forms of civic education if it constrains the kind of critical
reflection, dialogue, and action that are essential in a democratic society. Indeed,
government leaders in a totalitarian regime would be as delighted as leaders in
a democracy if their young citizens learned the lessons put forward by many of
the proponents of these citizenship programs: don’t do drugs, show up at school,
show up at work on time, say the pledge of allegiance, give blood, help others
during a flood, recycle, pick up litter, clean up a park, treat elders with respect,
and so on. Chinese leader Hu Jintao and George W. Bush might both argue that
these are desirable traits for people living in a community. But they are not about
democratic citizenship.
Third, volunteerism is often put forward as a way of avoiding politics and
policy. As Harry Boyte (1991) notes, “Volunteers usually disavow concern with
larger policy questions, seeing service as an alternative to politics” (p. 766; empha-
sis in original). Research bears out these concerns. A study commissioned by the
National Association of Secretaries of State (1999), for example, found that less
than 32 percent of eligible voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four
voted in the 1996 presidential election, but that a whopping 94 percent of those
between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four believed that “the most important thing
I can do as a citizen is to help others.” In a very real sense, then, young people
seem to be “learning” that democratic citizenship does not require government,
politics, or even collective endeavors. The vision promoted by most of these educational
initiatives is one of citizenship without politics or collective action—a commitment to
individual service, but not to democracy.
The Democratic Citizen
Certainly, honesty, responsibility for one’s actions, and a willingness to help out
voluntarily are valuable character traits for good neighbors and citizens, but these
traits are not inherently about democracy. If democracy is to be effective at improv-

ing society, people need to exert power over issues that affect their lives. Although
citizens can and should volunteer to help out when help is needed, these activities
will not ensure that governmental policies and practices are effective or that they
reflect public preferences. A democratic citizens’ effectiveness is buttressed by the
skills needed for civic engagement (for example, how to work in a group, speak in
public, forge coalitions among varied interests, and protest or petition for change).
Opportunities to connect academic knowledge to analysis of social issues are
also essential for informed decision making. In addition, knowledge of democratic
processes, of particular issues, and of how to attain and analyze information is cru-
cial. Democratic citizens are, for example, able to examine structural causes of social
problems and seek solutions, work that might be informed by their knowledge of
social movements and various strategies for change. Finally, democratic values of
tolerance, respect for individual and group identities, and concern for the greater
good are all fundamentally important. Since conceptions of that greater good will
differ, citizens must be able to dialogue with and learn from those who hold dif-
ferent perspectives and, at the same time, know how to effectively promote their
own goals in contentious political arenas (Gibson & Levine, 2003; Parker, 2003).5
Is this too tall an order? We don’t think so. Is it possible for education
programs to develop citizens prepared to strengthen our democracy? Absolutely.
Programs with goals such as these are not as common as community service and
character education programs, but where they exist they have demonstrated impres-
sive results.
Beyond Service and Character: Programs that Teach Democracy
To illustrate models for teaching democracy that move beyond service associated
with citizenship, we showcase three of the programs we studied. The first (The
Frederick County Youth Service League) is part of a high school U.S. government
course, the second is a college-level program (The Overground Railroad), and the
third is an adult education program (The Highlander Democracy Schools Initiative).
Each program highlights curricular strategies that can be used by social studies
educators and others when teaching democracy.
The Frederick County Youth Service League
The Frederick County Youth Service League is part of a high school govern-
ment course that places students in internships in local county offices, where
they undertake substantive, semester-long projects. It was organized with support
from the Close-up Foundation. One group we observed investigated the feasibility
of curbside recycling in their county by conducting phone interviews, examining
maps of the city’s population density, and analyzing projected housing growth and
environmental impacts. Another group identified jobs that prisoners incarcerated for
less than ninety days could perform and analyzed the cost and efficacy of similar
programs in other localities. Other students identified strategies to increase immuniza-
tion rates for children, and still others examined the availability of adequate affordable
housing in their county. In all of these projects, the students took on responsibilities
that required interpersonal, work-related, and analytic skills. These experiences also
provided an up-close look at the ways government organizations interact with the
public and with private businesses in formulating policies that affect the community.
The Overground Railroad
Students and faculty members from six colleges came together over the summer
to learn in intensive and experiential ways about the civil rights movement and
its implications for citizenship today.6 For three weeks, students in the Over-
ground Railroad project traveled throughout the South, visiting historic sites of
the civil rights and antislavery movements and meeting with historic leaders of
these movements and with others engaged in similar efforts today. They saw films
about civil rights, read related academic literature, and discussed and analyzed their
experiences. The students talked with Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a civil rights
leader, about events in Birmingham in the 1960s and his role in the movement.
They spoke with a sanitation worker in Memphis who participated in the strike
in 1968 and with Judge Sugarman, a lawyer who had worked on the sanitation
workers’ case. They traveled to Selma to meet with a woman who had been part
of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and with a former leader of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. When they returned to their respec-
tive campuses in the fall, they initiated projects that were informed by the ideas
and strategies they studied.
The Highlander Democracy Schools Initiative
A third project we studied worked with adults who were already active in their
communities. Drawing on the Highlander Center’s long history of community
education and change (see Horton, 1997), the Democracy Schools Initiative was
designed to help rural communities in Appalachia devise grassroots strategies about
how to “revitalize democracy in all areas of people’s lives: family, community,
government and economy.” Consisting of a series of four weekend retreats, the
curriculum mixed training for political analysis and action with opportunities to
meet others doing similar work. For example, one weekend included sharing the
work going on in each participant’s community, strategic planning for effecting
change, brainstorming on resources and skills required, and learning from guest
presenters and panelists about community change strategies.
What We Learned About How to Teach Democracy
Using before and after (pre-post) surveys and systematic analysis of observations,
interviews, and portfolios of student work, we were able to track changes in stu-
dents’ commitments to and capacities for democratic participation. In a survey
designed to measure commitments to civic involvement, we documented statisti-
cally significant increases in students’ ability and desire to understand and act on
pressing social needs, in their willingness to devote time to addressing these needs,
and in their confidence in being able to act on their beliefs as a result of their
participation in these programs (Westheimer & Kahne, 2002).
Student interviews reinforced these survey findings. For example, James, a
lifelong resident of Montgomery County, West Virginia, reported that his participa-
tion in Highlander’s Democracy School “influenced how I view my responsibility
as a citizen and as a person in the community.” And Stephanie, a college student,
explained that, after her intensive Overground Railroad experience, she could not
go back to turning a blind eye to civil rights and moral obligations. “I know I
can’t save the whole world,” she told us, but “when I see something go wrong, I
need to say something. I just can’t keep my mouth shut, because this experience
has changed me.”
Perhaps most interesting were the programs in which the students started
without any particular commitment to community involvement. Indeed, many in
the Frederick County Youth Service League told us that they had previously had
little interest in community affairs and had been quite skeptical of local govern-
ment and related community institutions. As a result of their experiences, however,
their perspectives changed markedly. Indeed, during the interviews following their
participation in the program, we asked students to identify a community prob-
lem. More than 50 percent surprised us by stating “lack of involvement in the
community.” As one student told us, “I think if more people were aware of what
has happened in the government we wouldn’t have as many problems, because they
would understand that people do have an impact.”
How did the programs accomplish these goals? What curricular features
seem most promising? In what follows, we discuss answers to these questions that
emerged from our research.
Why We Want “C” Students:

Civic Commitment, Capacity, and Connection
Pedagogical and curricular strategies for supporting the development of demo-

cratic citizens are numerous and range from leadership courses, to courses in U.S.
history, to such experiences as participation in a Model United Nations (Billig,
2000; Gibson & Levine, 2003; Torney-Purta, 2002). As we looked for common
features of the successful programs we studied, however, three broad priorities

emerged: promoting democratic commitments, capacities, and connections to others
with similar goals. Below we describe these priorities and some of the ways they
were pursued. (See Table 17.1 for a schematic presentation of the relation of these
features to civic education.)
Commitment
“It’s Boring”
“We don’t care about it.”
These are the kinds of responses we heard when we asked a focus group of high
school seniors in a traditional government class what they felt about government
and politics (see also Kahne, Chi, & Middaugh, 2003). Perhaps it should not be
surprising, then, that the fraction of citizens who reported caring about current
political affairs has declined from about 25 percent between 1960 and 1976 to only
Table 17.1. Common Features of Successful Civic Education Programs
What Students Ask Teaching Democracy Results

COMMITMENT
Why should I be For example: show students I am committed to civic

committed to that society needs improving engagement because I know
actively engaging and provide positive about problems in the
issues in my experiences seeking solutions. community and I know
community and that I can help because
beyond? I’ve done it and enjoyed it
How can I engage For example: engage students I have the skills, knowledge,
CAPACITY
issues? in real world projects; teach and networks I need to act

civic skills and provide effectively for change in
knowledge through workshops my community and beyond.
and simulations so students
can be effective civic actors.
Who is going to For example: provide a I know and admire people

CONNECTION
engage issues with supportive community of who have made a difference

me? peers and connections to role in the past and feel
models. connected to those who
want to make a difference
now, and I want to join
them.
5 percent by 2000 (Gibson & Levine, 2003). This context helps explain why all of
the successful programs we examined emphasized developing students’ commitments
to actively engaging social issues and working for change. In pursuing this goal,
they often employed two strategies: they helped students identify social problems in
need of attention, and they provided motivating experiences in working for change.
SHOW STUDENTS THAT SOCIET Y NEEDS IMPROVING BY EXAMINING

SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES
It is common for educators to talk about preparing students to be informed citizens,

capable of active participation in our democratic system. It is much less common
for them to help students understand why they should bother. This omission is
costly. Again and again in our student interviews we heard that exposure to and
discussion of instances of injustice motivated students to act. As a student in the
Overground Railroad program told us: “Once you see the issues, you feel compelled
to do something and not just be part of the system.” Another student reported
“We have this information, and we all feel like we have to go and do something.
I feel a big responsibility placed on me.”
The lesson may seem obvious, but it is not reflected in many social studies
classrooms: a clear and compelling case that things need changing motivates and
informs commitments to participate.
Knowing what needs changing, however, is not always straightforward. Many
educators are understandably hesitant to expose students to troubling problems
such as poverty, race or gender discrimination, and environmental degradation.
There is a tendency to avoid burdening students with these weighty problems—and
to avoid controversial issues that might bring concerned parents and others to the
principal’s door. Unfortunately, such hesitancy is likely to deter students from active
engagement with community issues by concealing from them the gravity of the
problems and their compelling nature.
Although care is certainly warranted when discussing controversial issues, our
study revealed that keeping social issues out of the classroom is not. The sense
that something is wrong is compelling, especially to adolescents who are already
developing their own critiques of the world. Students need not agree with each
other or with the teachers in their analysis of social and political issues. Simply
discussing issues in classroom contexts recognizes their importance and at the same
time helps make connections between critique, analysis, and action (Hess & Pos-
selt, 2002). Students begin to see the value not only in studying these problems
but also in doing something to try to address them. As the progressive educator
Harold Rugg observed:
To guarantee maximum understanding, the very foundation of education

must be the study of the actual problems and controversial issues of
our people. . . . [T]he avoidance of controversy is a travesty of both

knowledge and democracy. To keep issues out of the school, therefore,
is to keep thought out of it; it is to keep life out of it. (Rugg, 1941,
That Men May Understand, quoted in Fine, 1995)
Why would we expect students to commit to involvement if there are no

problems in need of attention? In all of the programs we studied, teachers embraced
controversial social and political issues—indeed, they sought them out—with the
same commitment and gusto that other educators have shown in avoiding them.
The teachers in the programs we studied consistently made efforts to expose stu-
dents to compelling social problems and overcome what John Dewey warned is
the “divorce between . . . knowledge and social action” (1975, p. 41).
PROVIDE POSITIVE EXPERIENCES IN CIVIC PARTICIPATION
It’s hard to be committed to something you’ve never experienced. This simple tru-
ism has significant implications for educators, but many who espouse commitments
to developing active citizens for a democracy neglect this basic reality. Often, field
trips to City Hall and other opportunities to learn about “how government works”
fail to demonstrate the power and significance of civic/democratic action. Schools
provide opportunities “to know” but few opportunities “to do”—an unfortunate
oversight when it comes to fostering civic commitment.
We found that positive experiences in civic participation strengthened stu-
dents’ commitments. The Youth Service League students, for example, consistently
emphasized the impact of their experiences both on the community and on them-
selves. As one student explained about a curbside recycling project:
I thought it was just going to be another project. You know, we do

some research, it gets written down and we leave and it gets put on
the shelf somewhere. But, this is going to be a real thing. It’s really
going to happen.
Another student from the same project told us, “I didn’t realize this was
going to be as big as what it is. I mean, we’ve been in the newspaper four times.”
Perhaps most importantly from the standpoint of commitments to civic
involvement, students linked their positive experiences to their desire for continued
participation. For example, one student noted, “I didn’t realize we could have as
much influence as we did. One person can really make a change in the community.”
When we asked him whether this experience changed the way he thought about
being a citizen, he replied that his project showed him that all citizens “have a
responsibility to voice their opinion by either writing letters or talking to people
who control the county, state, or federal government.” Other students expressed
similar satisfaction from what they accomplished, as well as the intent to remain
engaged in civic affairs in the future.
While most programs in our study prompted similar gains in students’ com-
mitment to civic engagement through educational experiences in the community,
this outcome was not guaranteed. Indeed, in one of the programs we studied,
frustrating experiences trying to bring about change led to statistically significant
decreases, rather than increases, in commitments to future civic involvement. These
decreases were reflected in both our survey data and our interviews with students.
This student’s response about her experiences was typical: “We were trying to get
anyone to listen to us, but we kept running into all this red tape that said, ‘No
you can’t do that,’ or, ‘Oh, you want to do that, well you’ll have to go to that
office over there.’ I just kind of got the impression that nobody really wanted to
do anything about it.”
For this group of students, the sense of frustration was widespread. In
response to interview and in-class reflection questions such as “What did you learn
from these activities?” the students answered, “If you go out into the community
and try to do good, someone will pull you down,” “Basically, they were wasting
our time and theirs too,” and “It’s hard to get anyone to listen to you.” Although
experience may be a powerful teacher, when working in the often frustrating area
of social change, careful planning and attention are needed to avoid producing
a sense of discouragement or hopelessness. While students will always encounter
challenges and barriers, it appears crucial to structure opportunities so that students
can maintain a sense of hope through the realization of short-term successes and
ample opportunities to reflect collectively on discouraging experiences (Kahne &
Westheimer, 2003).
Capacity
It is hard to see yourself as a carpenter if you don’t know how to design a cabinet
or a bookshelf and lack the woodworking skills to translate a design into prac-
tice. Effective citizenship in a democracy is no different. Teaching students to see
themselves as participants in civic affairs and enabling them to engage civic and
political issues effectively requires helping students develop capacities and skills that
make such an identity meaningful. Yet recent studies show an alarming dearth of
knowledge and skill with regard to civic participation among youth and young
adults. For example, 36 percent of high school seniors tested below the basic level
on the 2010 NAEP civics test with another 40 percent at the Basic basic level
and only 4 percent at the advanced level (National Center for Education Statistics,
2011). If students are to see themselves as capable of participation then they will
need to develop the skills and knowledge that make that possible. The programs
we studied understood this, although they pursued these goals in different ways.
Some had their students plunge into real-world projects, while others taught skills
through workshops and simulations.
ENGAGE STUDENTS IN REAL WORLD PROJECTS
Programs such as the Frederick County Youth Service League taught strategies for
community change through projects that required students to develop such skills
as speaking in public, using visual aids, facilitating meetings, conducting research,
canvassing a community, and designing surveys. Each group of students, working
closely with their teacher and the field site supervisor, culminated its project with
a presentation to the County Board of Supervisors. Each group got tips on how to
make its brief presentation interesting, on how to use presentation software, and on
how to ensure that the primary message was communicated. As the students devel-
oped these skills, they increasingly viewed their own participation in civic affairs as
more plausible and appropriate. In this sense, each student’s identity as an engaged,
democratic citizen followed his or her capacity to be one.
TEACH SKILLS AND PROVIDE KNOWLEDGE THROUGH

WORKSHOPS AND SIMUL ATIONS
Rather than engage students in actual projects of civic importance, other programs
successfully developed students’ civic skills and knowledge through workshops,
simulations, and classroom instruction. For example, many of the programs con-
nected preparation and motivation for civic and political engagement with tradi-
tional content (e.g., how a bill becomes a law) as well as with content knowledge
linked to particular issues.
Skill development also received substantial attention. During a three-day
workshop, the Highlander Democracy Schools Initiative taught students strategies
for effecting change in their home communities. Groups of workshop participants
chose scenarios. For example, imagine that you just found out that your school
is eliminating its breakfast and free or reduced-price lunch program. Or imagine
that you just found out that banks are not lending money to anyone who wants
to buy a house in your part of town. What would you do?
The Highlander program also taught skills directly, and then applied what
students had learned to discussions of actual problems in their home communi-
ties. In interviews, participants in the Highlander program and in other similar
programs stressed the importance of learning practical skills, something that, as one
student put it, “I can take away and tomorrow hit the ground running with it.”
In other words, the skills, knowledge, and strategies for change that participants
acquired enabled them to develop meaningful civic identities by employing these
new capacities to actually make a difference.
Connection
Ask someone active in his or her community to describe a powerful experience

working for change, and you will probably get a story heavily infused with a sense
of camaraderie, collaboration, and connection to others doing similar work. Stu-
dents need to know that civic engagement is not an individual, private endeavor.
Indeed, if we say that the goal for civic educators is to “teach every student good
citizenship,” we risk implying that “good and effective” citizenship is derived exclu-
sively from personal attributes rather than enabled and shaped through interactions
and connections among individuals within a community.7 Moreover, psychologists,
sociologists, and anthropologists have long recognized that an individual’s values
and commitments are not predetermined human characteristics but rather are
products of family, community, and the social setting (Berman, 1997). Cultivat-
ing commitments to democratic citizenship requires associating with others who
recognize and reinforce the importance of these priorities.
These connections are especially important in a culture that does little to
reinforce the value of civic participation. Consider that for most school-age chil-
dren, the number of trips to the mall is exponentially higher than those to the
voting booth, to community meetings, and so on. Despite the importance of
connections to others who deem civic participation exciting and valuable, few edu-
cational programs make developing a supportive community an explicit curricular
goal. The programs we studied, however, consciously developed communities of
support and fostered connections with role models who could exemplify a life
filled with civic engagement.
COMMUNITIES OF SUPPORT
Each of the ten programs we studied—both those based in schools and those situ-
ated outside of them—took seriously the notion that teaching civic engagement
requires the creation of a social milieu that reinforce values and behaviors consistent
with active civic involvement. Students need to be part of social communities that
have the strength to counter the prevailing cultural emphasis on individualism and
personal gain. A student from Highlander described the connection she felt work-
ing with others who believe in the same things she did. “Without Highlander,”
she observed, “I probably would have been back in a corporate job that wouldn’t
let me create change in my community in the ways that are so important to me.”
Another Highlander participant made clear the sense of identity he derives from
being a part of a community of civic actors: “I cannot separate Highlander from
who I am, and I cannot tell you when it made an impact or how because it is so
integrated with who I have become.”
Like sports teams and religious groups, communities of civic actors unite
people around a common sense of purpose. Instead of winning a pennant, these
communities focus on advancing democratic citizenship and achieving specific

social goals—securing more funding for HIV research, protecting the environment,
and so on. Even for those already engaged in efforts to bring about change, the
value of community membership can have clear practical significance as well. “I
know that folks with a lot of technical expertise are a telephone call away,” one
participant explained. “If I get into trouble, there is a whole network that can
come running, and I’ve made that call. But even if I had never had to, that would
still be the most important thing to know: that I was not alone.”
CONNECTIONS TO COMPELLING ROLE MODELS
Many programs emphasize exposure to compelling role models to help students

develop a vision for a life filled with civic commitments. Some of the programs
we studied teamed students with accomplished civic actors; some invited role
models to speak to the class; and others had highly accomplished civic actors
facilitate the entire curriculum. Each offered a connection to history and served
as an example of the possibility of creating and the responsibility to work toward
a better society.
As part of their Overground Railroad program, for example, students heard
a talk by Reverend Teresa Jones, who recalled personal experiences of intimida-
tion and violence during the early 1960s, when she was helping to register black
voters in hostile Southern counties. Interviews with and surveys of participants in
the Overground Railroad indicated that students drew substantial strength from
these kinds of encounters—strength that helped them imagine choices that often
conflicted dramatically with the norms and priorities of their peers. One student
recognized that, when Reverend Jones helped to organize the voter registration
drive, she was not much older than the students themselves. He observed that
these “teenagers were willing to put their life on the line so that I could sit here
and hold a conversation with you.” Or as a different student explained,
What’s been most important is meeting people who really dedicated

their lives. It’s not a side-line thing, on weekends or something. This
is their life. That means a lot to me, because I often get discouraged
or think that after college I’ll have to go into the real world and get
a suit and what have you.
Indeed, since one of the main tasks for students in high school and college
is to figure out who they want to become and how they hope to engage in their
communities, exposure to inspiring role models can be quite powerful. Just as it
is natural to introduce aspiring students to architects or scientists or social work-
ers, if our goal is for all students to become engaged democratic citizens, then
we need to expose them to role models of civic engagement. As another student
explained, “I’m in this point in time where I’m trying to figure out what to do
with my life, and it’s good to see role models like that.”
While the value of such exposure may not be surprising, it is interesting that
several students emphasized that exposure to “ordinary” individuals, rather than to
“famous” individuals often had the greatest impact. In contrast to the ubiquitous
school programs that hold up Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero to be respected
(but not necessarily emulated), these programs offered role models appeared to
be ordinary people—not unlike the students. Encountering such people spurred
students to imagine themselves as civic actors formulating and pursuing their own
civic goals. When Reverend Jones ended her presentation about what happened in
the 1960s, she added, “That’s what we did when we were in college. Now it’s your
turn.” Her message was clear: her stories were not to be dismissed as titillating
tidbits of a nostalgic past but rather stories about what is possible when citizens
commit to act. Many programs we observed used connection to the past to show
students the possibilities for the future, that ordinary people can work together
to improve society and achieve extraordinary results. “Now it’s your turn” was an
appeal these students took seriously.
The Challenge of Teaching Democracy
If we believe that democratic processes—slow and imperfect as they are—are our

best hope for securing a just and dynamic future, then social studies educators
have an important role to play. Unfortunately, while superintendents and school
mission statements mention such priorities, that’s frequently as far as it goes.
Policymakers and district leaders are focused on academic priorities—particularly
those measured by high-stakes exams (Ohanian, 1999, 2000). Is it important to
learn math, history, English, and science? Yes. Is this focus enough to sustain a
democratic society? No.
Having studied programs that effectively promote democratic goals, we find
ourselves confronting a relatively straightforward conclusion: bolstering our efforts
to teach the academic disciplines—whether pursued through high-stakes exams or
well-crafted curriculum frameworks—will, on its own, be insufficient to further
the goals of teaching democracy. Indeed, Gandhi, when asked what made him
saddest in life, replied, “The hard heart of the world’s most educated.” Academic
study (even in the social studies) does not guarantee our humanity, and it will not
sustain our democracy. If we care about educating democratic citizens, we must
enlarge and enrich both our educational priorities and our practices.
Fortunately, there are other options. The approaches we witnessed, while they
varied to match particular contexts, shared a focus on civic commitment, capac-
ity, and connections and often pursued these goals in similar ways. The programs
pursued the development of civic commitment by exposing students to problems in
society and by creating opportunities for students to have positive experiences while
working toward solutions. Students’ civic capacity was developed by providing spe-
cific opportunities for them to learn skills and acquire the knowledge they needed
in order to participate in democratic deliberation and action. And civic connections
were pursued through the creation of supportive communities and exposure to role
models. In these ways students developed a sense of the history of social change,
of who they might become, and of how they might fit into contemporary efforts
to improve society. By developing commitment, capacity, and connections, each
of these programs helped teach democracy.
Social studies courses are especially well suited to further these goals. For
example, social studies educators could make a systematic effort to expose students
to five compelling civic role models a year. Similarly, it would not be hard to
integrate into the curriculum discussions of social problems, current events, and
controversial issues that students find compelling. Moving in this direction would
help expose the fallacy of a zero-sum or either/or relationship between academic
and democratic purposes of education. Democratic and academic goals can be
pursued simultaneously. There are also many existing social studies curricula suit-
able for large-scale implementation that use community projects, simulations, and
related approaches to integrate academic and democratic priorities. Specifically, the
Constitutional Rights Foundation’s CityWorks curriculum and the Center for Civic
Education’s We the People curriculum have both demonstrated their effectiveness
in relation to civic goals (Leming, 1993; Kahne, Chi, Middaugh, 2003).
Democracy won’t run on autopilot. Fortunately, we already know how to
do much that needs to be done, and social studies educators are well positioned
to lead the way. What we currently lack is an adequate educational commitment
to democracy. What we need to make democracy work are teachers committed to
developing students’ civic commitment, capacity, and connections and educational
policymakers who will support their efforts.
Notes
1. U.S. Department of Education Budget, available at www.ed.gov/offices/OUS/
Budget04/04app.pdf.
2. This chapter is based on an article that appeared in the September 2003 issue of
Phi Delta Kappan. It is one of a set of articles and book chapters reporting on a study of
programs that aimed to promote democratic values and effective citizenry. For an analysis
of the politics that underlie different conceptions of citizenship, see Westheimer & Kahne
(2004). For our findings on the role efficacy plays and the limits of deliberately structuring
programs to be successful, see Kahne & Westheimer (2003). For a discussion of neutrality
and indoctrination, see Westheimer & Kahne (2003). Finally, for a discussion of the chilling
effects of post 9/11 patriotic sentiments on democracy in K-12 schools, see Westheimer
(2004). All of these articles are available at: www.democraticdialogue.com.
3. Points of Light mission statement. www.pointsoflight.org. May 2003.
4. For a critique of character education programs along these lines, see Kohn
(1997). For analysis of the job market and its disconnect from character-building job
training programs, see Lafer (2002).
5. For a well-conceived description of goals for civic education, see Gibson and
Levine (2003); for a description of the complexities of pursuing democratic goals amid
diversity, see Parker (2003).
6. The Overground Railroad/Agora Project was a collaboration between six private
colleges in Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Ohio, with Berea (Kentucky)
College and the College of St. Catherine coordinating. The colleges came together in an
effort to create opportunities for students that promote democracy and public works. The
students receive college credit through their participation.
7. Indeed, despite the importance of social relations in democratic action, school
textbooks and curricula most often turn the history of collective efforts into myths about
individual heroes. See for example, Herb Kohl’s comparison of the Rosa Parks story as
told in children’s history textbooks with the history recognized by historians and by Parks
herself (Kohl, 1996).
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Part IV
Conclusion
18
Remaking the Social Studies Curriculum
E. Wayne Ross
Deciding What Ought to Be the Case
One of the earliest uses of the term social studies to refer to school subjects is
attributed to Thomas Jesse Jones in an article that appeared in the Southern Work-
man in 1905 (Tabachnick, 1991). Jones expanded the article into a book, Social
Studies in the Hampton Curriculum, in which he expressed his concern that young
African Americans and Native Americans “would never be able to become integral
members of the broader society unless they learned to understand the society, the
social forces that operated within it, and ways to recognize and respond to social
power” (Tabachnick, 1991, p. 725). Jones’s concern might be understood in dif-
ferent, even contradictory, ways. While Jones himself was promoting an accomoda-
tionist perspective—that African Americans and Native Americans understand and
adapt to the asymmetrical power relations of the status quo—one might invoke the
same stated purpose for social studies aimed at reconstructing society for political,
economic, and social equality.
The apparent consensus that citizenship education is the primary purpose
of social studies suffers the same fate as Jones’s declaration. While nearly all social
studies educators agree that the purpose of social studies is to prepare young people
so that they possess the knowledge, values, and skills needed for active participation
in society, the devil is in the details.
Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916) opens with a discussion of the
way in which all societies use education as a means of social control by which adults
consciously shape the dispositions of children. He goes on to argue that education
as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind
of society we have in mind. In other words, there is no “scientifically objective”
answer to the question of the purposes of social studies education, because those
purposes are not things that can be discovered.
375
376 E. Wayne Ross
In Normative Discourse, Paul Taylor (1961) succinctly states a maxim that

has the potential to transform our approach to the social studies curriculum: “We
must decide what ought to be the case. We cannot discover what ought to be
the case by investigating what is the case.” We—educators and citizens—must
decide what ought to be the purpose of social studies. That means asking what
kind of society (and world) we want to live in. And, in particular, in what sense
of democracy do we want this to be a democratic society? In order to construct
meaning for social studies as citizenship education, we must engage these questions
not as merely abstract or rhetorical, but in relation to our lived experiences and
our professional practice as educators.
The question we face in defining the purposes of the social studies curricu-
lum, though, is not one of means alone, but of the ends—whether social studies
should promote a brand of citizenship that is adaptive to the status quo and
interests of the socially powerful or whether it should promote citizenship aimed
at transforming and reconstructing society. This a question that has fueled debates
since Jones first employed the term social studies (see Barr, Barth, & Shermis, 1977;
Hertzberg, 1981; Hursh & Ross, 2000; Nelson, 1994; Shaver, 1977; Stanley &
Nelson, 1994). The various approaches to the social studies curriculum discussed
in the preceding chapters are not necessarily at odds with one another. In fact,
these authors, while perhaps not gathered together in one accord, represent a
more coherent view of social studies than one might expect to find in the field in
general—a view that favors social studies as a tool in the reconstruction of society
so that is it more democratic and socially just.
The tapestry of topics, methods, and aims we know as social studies edu-
cation has always contained threads of social reconstructionism (Hursh & Ross,
2000). Social reconstructionists such as George S. Counts, Harold Rugg, and,
later, Theodore Brameld argued that teachers should work toward social change
by teaching students to practice democratic principles, collective responsibility, and
social and economic justice. John Dewey advocated the democratic reconstruction
of society, and aspects of his philosophy inform the work of many contemporary
social studies educators, as is obvious in the preceding chapters. The traditional
patterns of social studies teaching, curriculum, and teacher education, however,
reflect little of the social reconstructionist vision of the future, and current practices
in these areas are more often focused on implementing curriculum standards and
responding to high-stakes tests than developing and working toward a vision of a
socially just world (Ross, 2000; Ross, Gabbard, Kesson, Mathison, Vinson, 2004).
Traditional Patterns of Social Studies Education,

Cultural Transmission, and Spectator Democracy
Within the context of tensions between a relative emphasis on transmission of the

cultural heritage of the dominant society and the development of critical thought,
Remaking the Social Studies Curriculum 377
social studies education has had a mixed history—predominately conservative in

its purposes, but also at times incorporating progressive and even radical purposes
(Stanley & Nelson, 1994). Various schemes have been used by researchers to
make sense of the wide-ranging and conflicting purposes offered for social studies.
Researchers essentially agree that citizenship transmission or conservative cultural
continuity is the dominant approach practiced in schools (see chapter by Ross,
Mathison, and Vinson in this book for more on how different frameworks attempt
to define the purposes of social studies education).
The dominant pattern of social studies instruction is characterized by text-ori-
ented, whole-group, teacher-centered approaches aimed toward the transmission of
“factual” information. While many social studies educators, including contributors
to this volume, have long advocated instructional approaches that include active
learning and higher-order thinking within a curriculum that emphasizes antira-
cism, gender equity, multiculturalism, social critique, etc., the dominant pattern
has persisted. Giroux (1978) has argued that social studies is characterized, in part,
by a pedagogy that produces students who are either unable or afraid to think
critically. For example, the chapter by Nelson and Pang in this book illustrates
how the social studies curriculum can serve the contradictory purposes of fostering
oppression, racism, and prejudice or liberation and cultural equality. The existing
patterns of social studies pedagogy and curriculum result from socioeconomic reali-
ties—many, but not all, of which are beyond the direct control of teachers—that
produce conditions such as classes with large numbers of students, a lack of plan-
ning time for teachers, the culture of teacher isolation, and a strong emphasis on
standardized test scores as the only legitimate measure of educational achievement.
The traditional pattern of social studies instruction is, however, also sustained by
the fact that it is easier for teachers to plan and teach in accordance with a direct
instruction approach that focuses on information transmission, coverage of content
and that encourages teachers’ low expectations of students.
Reinforcing these tendencies is the conservative restoration of the past three
decades that has produced the standards-based education reform movement—to
which both liberals and conservatives subscribe—which has placed an emphasis on
student recall and identification of social studies facts, persons, and events, diverting
attention away from the ways in which the conditions of teaching and learning
might be transformed to encourage critical, active, and democratic citizenship (see
chapters in this book by Ross, Mathison, & Vinson and Ross & Vinson as well
as Ross, Gabbard, Kesson, Mathison, & Vinson, 2004).
Leming (1992) argues that the majority of social studies teachers agree with
the aims of the conservative approach to social studies education as opposed to
the progressive critical position of college and university professors of education.
Leming’s “two cultures” argument represents “an academically-oriented cultural
ideology that is substantially at odds with the ideology and culture that pervades
K-12 social studies classrooms” (Whitson & Stanley, 1994, p. 27). Leming (1994)
rejects critiques of the traditional pattern of social studies instruction (e.g., Cuban,
378 E. Wayne Ross
1991; McNeil, 1988; Marker, 2006; Newmann, 1991), because, he argues, that
pattern is the result of social studies teachers who have thought carefully about
their approach to social studies instruction. Leming also argues that this pattern
of instruction is justified because it is ideally suited to the context of social stud-
ies teaching: the classroom. As for the content of the social studies curriculum,
Leming endorses “memorization of factual information.”
Leming and the self-described social studies “contrarians” (Leming, Ellington,
& Porter-Magee, 2003), advocate the “transmission” of “facts” and reject pluralism
in favor of nationalism and monculturalism. Thus, one would assume Leming et
al. reject much (if not all) of what is recommended in this book about the social
studies curriculum (see Marker 2006; Ross, 2004; Ross & Marker, 2005a; 2005b,
2005c).
The difference between the two cultures, however, is not as great as Lem-
ing might have us believe. An “ideology of neutrality” has been internalized in
the consciousness of many social studies researchers/teacher educators and class-
room teachers. The linkages among political agendas, classroom pedagogy, as well
as research on teaching have been blurred (Popkewitz, 1978). Many educational
research studies accept the objectives of pedagogical programs and are organized
to “explain” how the objectives were reached. For example, research on “effec-
tive teaching” extols the values of direct instruction over teaching that promotes
student-to-student interaction, democratic pedagogy, and a learning milieu that
values caring and individual students’ self-esteem. The results of such research do
not question the assumed conception of student achievement—efficient mastery of
content as represented by test scores. Left unquestioned are such issues as the cri-
teria for content selection, the resultant mystification and fragmentation for course
content, linkages between unproved test scores and national economic prosperity,
and the ways in which the social conditions of schooling might unequally distribute
knowledge. As another example, “critical thinking” in social studies most often
focuses on procedural problem solving (e.g., distinguishing “facts” from “opin-
ions”) rather than problem posing. As a result, “critical thinking” stops short
of preparing students to question, challenge, or transform society and serves to
socialize students into accepting and reproducing the status quo. A third example
is the logic of standards-based curriculum reform (see Ross, Mathison, & Vinson’s
chapter in this book).
Another commonality between these two cultures is the conception of
democracy and democratic society that students are being prepared to participate
in. Throughout the 20th century, “progressive” intellectuals and media figures (e.g.,
Walter Lippmann, George Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, and many Deweyites) have
promulgated spectator democracy—in which a specialized class of experts identify
what our common interests are and then think and plan accordingly (Chomsky,
1997b). The function of those outside the specialized class is to be “spectators”
rather than participants in action. This theory of democracy asserts that common
interests elude the general public and can only be understood and managed by
an elite group. According to this view, a properly running democracy is one in
which the large majority of the public is protected from itself by the specialized
class and its management of the political, economic and ideological systems and
in particular by the manufacturing of consent—e.g., bringing about agreement on
the part of the public for things that they do not want.
Spectator democracy is promoted in social studies classes through curriculum
standards and the traditional instructional patterns described above (which situate
students and teachers outside the knowledge-construction process as passive recipi-
ents of prepackaged information) as well as in the conceptions of democracy that
dominate much of the content of social studies courses. For example, democracy
is often equated with elections and voting. The procedure of allowing individuals
to express a choice on a proposal, resolution, bill, or candidate is the perhaps the
most widely taught precept in the social studies curriculum. In this conception
of citizenship, individual agency is construed primarily as one’s vote, and voting
procedures override all else with regard to what counts as democracy. Democracy,
in this case, is not defined by outcomes but by application of procedures. Democ-
racy based on proceduralism leaves little room for individuals or groups to exercise
direct political action; this is a function left to a specialized class of people such as
elected representatives and experts who advise them. Yes, citizens can vote, lobby,
exercise free speech and assembly rights, but as far as governing is concerned, they
are primarily spectators.
Perhaps then apparent consensus on the purpose of social studies as citizen-
ship education is not, as previously suggested, meaningless. And while there may be
an “ideology gap” between social studies teachers and teacher educators/researchers
(although Vinson’s (1998) research calls into question Leming’s two cultures thesis),
traditional liberal-democratic thinking and the spectator democracy it engenders
has dominated the practice of both groups.
Social Studies for Social Justice and Democracy
Defining the visions to be pursued in social studies is not something that can (or
should) be done once and for all, or separated from the experience of everyday
life in a specific time and place. We can, however, identify pedagogical means that
will put educators, students, and parents on track to undertake education for social
justice and democracy. Dewey’s oft-quoted, seldom-enacted definition of reflective
thought is a good starting point: the “active, persistent, and careful consideration
of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that
support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey, 1933, p. 8).
Teaching from this standpoint means focusing on outcomes and consequenc-
es that matter (e.g., everyday life circumstances as opposed to standardized test
380 E. Wayne Ross
scores) and interrogating abstract concepts such as democracy for more meaningful
understandings.
Democracy? Yes!
“Democracy” is most often taught, and understood, as a system of government

providing a set of rules that allow individuals wide latitude to do as they wish.
The first principle of democracy, however, is providing means for giving power to
the people, not to an individual or to a restricted class of people. “Democracy,”
Dewey said, is “a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience”
(Dewey, 1916, p. 87). In this conception, democratic life involves paying attention
to the multiple implications of our actions on others (Boisvert, 1998). In fact,
the primary responsibility of democratic citizens is concern with the development
of shared interests that lead to sensitivity about repercussions of their actions on
others. Dewey characterized democracy as a force that breaks down the barriers
that separate people and creates community:
The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in

an interest so that each had to refer his own action to that of others,
and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to
his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class,
race, and national territory which kept men [sic] from perceiving the
full import of their activity. (Dewey, 1916, p. 87)
In this light, it is nearly impossible to think about or teach democracy without

placing the pursuit of social justice and a critical examination of existing social,
economic, and political inequalities at the center of the endeavor.
Boisvert (1998) distills from Dewey’s work three criteria for determining
the degree to which a society (e.g., individuals in association) is moving in the
direction of the democratic ideal:
• participation in formulating policy is widespread;

• groups that make up society encourage and actively elicit the devel-
opment of latent powers/talents in their members; and
• relations among social groups are multiple and supple.
The more porous the boundaries of social groups, the more they welcome participa-
tion from all individuals, and as the varied groupings enjoy multiple and flexible
relations, society moves closer to fulfilling the democratic ideal.
How does contemporary society (as well as stakeholders in the education
community) measure up to the guiding ideals of the above criteria? Achieving
perfection in democracy and education will, of course, remain elusive, but without
examining our circumstances in light of guiding ideals we could never engage in
the work to eliminate the “restrictive and disturbing elements” that prevent the
growth of democratic life (Dewey, 1927; Boisvert, 1998).
A close examination of theories of knowledge and conceptions of democracy
that operate widely in social studies education can illuminate elements of cur-
riculum and teaching that prevent growth of democracy and obscure the political
and ideological consequences of teaching and curriculum (see Nelson & Pang, in
this book; Ross, 2000; Ross, Gabbard, Kesson, Mathison, & Vinson, 2004; Ross
& Vinson, in this book). These consequences include conceptions of the learner
as passive; democratic citizenship as a spectator project; and ultimately the main-
tenance of status quo inequalities in society. Oftentimes social studies educators
eschew openly political or ideological agendas for teaching and schooling as inap-
propriate or “unprofessional”; however, the question is not whether to encourage
particular social visions in the classroom, but rather what kind of social visions
will be taught.
. . . But What Kind of Democracy?
From a Deweyan perspective, democracy is not merely a form of government nor is

it an end in itself; it is the means by which people discover, extend, and manifest
human nature and human rights. For Dewey, democracy has three roots: (1) free
individual existence; (2) solidarity with others; and (3) choice of work and other
forms of participation in society. The aim of a democratic society is the production
of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality.
Dewey’s conception of democracy contrasts sharply with the prevailing polit-
ical economic paradigm: neoliberalism. While the term neoliberalism is largely
unused by the public in the United States, it references something everyone is
familiar with—policies and processes “whereby a relative handful of private interests
are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize
their personal profit” (McChesney, 1998, p. 7). Neoliberalism is embraced by
parties across the political spectrum, from right to left, in that the interests of
wealthy investors and large corporations define social and economic policy. The free
market, private enterprise, consumer choice, entrepreneurial initiative, deleterious
effects of government regulation, etc. are the tenets of a neoliberalism. Indeed,
the corporate–controlled media spin would have the public believe that the eco-
nomic consequences of neoliberal economic policy, which serves the interests of the
wealthy elite, is good for everyone (Ross & Gibson, 2007; Queen, in this book).
In fact, neoliberal economic policies have created massive social and eco-
nomic inequalities among individuals and nations. For example, the same com-
bination of growing personal debt and widening wealth gap that preceded the
Great Depression underlies today’s economy and is fueled by declines in wages,
382 E. Wayne Ross
savings rates, and the number of workers covered by private pension plans. Income
inequality in the United States and Canada is now at its highest level since the
Great Depression and growing as in recent years the rich have gotten richer and
the middle class and poor have lost share. A 2013 study found the richest 10
percent of society in OECD countries made nearly ten times as much income
as the poorest 10 percent (an increase of nine times since 2007). This study also
found that the United States has one of the widest gaps between rich and poor
in the world, along with Chile, Mexico, and Turkey (Wealth gap widens, 2013).
Globally, the 85 richest people in the world own more wealth than the 3 billion
poorest people combined, that is, the bottom half of the entire world population
(Oxfam, 2014). And the rich are getting richer.
• Almost half the world’s wealth is owned by just 1 percent of the

population;
• The wealth of the 1 percent richest people in the world amounts to
$110 trillion, 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the
world’s population;
• In the United States, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent
of the post–financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90
percent became poorer. (Oxfam, 2014)
This increasingly staggering level of inequality and concentration of economic

resources in the hands of fewer and fewer people undermines inclusive political
and economic systems.
Instead of moving forward together, people are increasingly separated by
economic and political power, inevitably heightening social tensions and increasing
the risk of societal breakdown. (Oxfam, 2014, p. 3)
Neoliberalism also works as a political system, one in which there is formal
democracy, but the citizens remain spectators, diverted from any meaningful par-
ticipation in decision making. McChesney (1998) describes neoliberal democracy
in a nutshell, as characterized by “trivial debate over minor issues by parties that
basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and
campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is
off-limits to popular deliberation or change, i.e., so long as it isn’t democracy” (p.
9). A depoliticized and apathetic citizenry, such as we have in the United States
today, is a key outcome of neoliberalism; one that is arguably abetted by social
studies education.
It is important to remember, especially as social studies educators, that neo-
liberalism is not new. It is merely the current version of the wealthy few’s attempt
to restrict the rights and powers of the many. While democracy and capitalism
are popularly understood (and often taught) as birds of a feather, the conflict
between protecting private wealth and creating a democratic society is conspicuous

throughout U.S. history.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution were keenly aware of the “threat” of
democracy. According to James Madison, the primary responsibility of govern-
ment was “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Madison
believed the threat to democracy was likely to increase over time as there was an
increase in “the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life
and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessing” (Madison quoted
in Chomsky, 1999, p. 47).
In crafting a system giving primacy to property over people, Madison and the
framers were guarding against the increased influence of the unpropertied masses:
[The unpropertied] might gain influence, Madison feared. He was

concerned by the “symptoms of a leveling spirit” that had already
appeared, and warned “of the future danger” if the right to vote would
place “power over property in the hands without a share in it.” Those
“without property, or the hope of acquiring it, cannot be expected to
sympathize sufficiently with its rights,” Madison explained. His solu-
tion was to keep political power in the hands of those who “come
from and represent the wealth of the nation,” the “more capable set of
men,” with the general public fragmented and disorganized. (Chomsky,
1999, p. 48)
The Federalists expected that the public would remain compliant and deferential
to the politically active elite—and for the most part that has been true throughout
U.S. history. Despite the Federalists’ electoral defeat, their conception of democracy
prevailed, though in a different form as industrial capitalism emerged. This view
was most succinctly expressed by John Jay, president of the Continental Congress
and first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who said “The people who
own the country ought to govern it.” Jay’s maxim is the principle upon which the
United States was founded and is one of the roots of neoliberalism.
So-called democratic politicians and theoreticians have railed against a truly
participatory democracy, which engages the public in controlling its own affairs,
for more than two hundred years. For example, Alexander Hamilton warned of
the “great beast” that must be tamed. In the twentieth century, Walter Lippman
warned of the “bewildered herd” that would trample itself without external control,
and in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences the eminent political scientist Harold
Lasswell warned elites of the “ignorance and stupidity of the masses” and called
for them not to succumb to the “democratic dogmatisms about men [sic] being
the best judges of their own interests.” These perspectives have nurtured neoliberal
spectator democracy, which deters or prohibits the public from managing its own
affairs and resolutely controls the means of information. At first this may seem
384 E. Wayne Ross
an odd conception of democracy, but it is the prevailing conception of liberal

democratic thought—and one that has been fostered by traditional approaches
to social studies education and the current curriculum standards movement (e.g.,
Ross, Mathison & Vinson in this book; Ross & Gibson, 2007). In spectator
democracy a specialized class of experts identify what our common interests are
and think and plan accordingly. The function of the rest of us is to be “specta-
tors” rather than participants in action (for example; casting votes in elections or
implementing educational reforms that are conceived by people who know little
or nothing about our community, our desires, or our interests).
While the Madisonian principle that the government should provide special
protections for the rights of property owners is central to U.S. democracy, there
is also a critique of inequality—in a tradition of thought that includes Thomas
Jefferson, Dewey, and many others—that argues that the root of human nature is
the need for free creative work under one’s control (Chomsky, 1997a).
For example, Thomas Jefferson distinguished between the aristocrats “who
fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands
of the higher classes” (e.g., Hamilton, Lippman, and Lasswell) and democrats, who
“identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them
as the most honest and safe . . . depository of the public interest” (Lipscom &
Ellery, 1903, p. 96).
Dewey also warned of the antidemocratic effects of the concentration of
private power in absolutist institutions such as corporations. He was clear that as
long as there was no democratic control of the workplace and economic systems
that democracy would be limited, stunted. Dewey emphasized that democracy has
little content when big business rules the life of the country through its control of
“the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication,
reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity
and propaganda.” “Politics,” Dewey said, “is the shadow cast on society by big
business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.” A free
and democratic society, according to Dewey, is one where workers are “masters of
their own industrial fate.” Chomsky once said, “when you read John Dewey today,
or Thomas Jefferson, their work sounds like that of some crazed Marxist lunatic.
But that just shows how much intellectual life has deteriorated” (1997, p. 124).
The above analysis leads to the point where, as social studies educators, we
must confront the fact that it is impossible to simultaneously champion participa-
tory democracy and any system that supports a class-divided society, where public
decision making is limited to the most narrow and controlled possibilities. The
challenge for social studies educators (and others) who express a commitment to
democracy is to be self-critical of the values and interests represented in their work.
As McChesney (1998) points out, it remains unclear how to establish a viable,
free, and humane postcapitalist order and the very notion has a utopian air about
it. But, organized political activism can make the world more humane and it is
what’s responsible for the degree of democracy we do have today (as demonstrated
in struggles for women’s rights, trade unions, civil rights, etc.). People make both
history and the future. Whether or not the savage inequalities of neoliberalism,
which define current social and national relations, will be overcome depends on
how people organize, respond, and teach social studies in schools.
Conclusion
The principal obstacle to achieving education for democracy, according to Dewey,

was the powerful alliance of class privilege with philosophies of education that
sharply divided mind and body, theory and practice, culture and utility (Westbrook,
1991). In Dewey’s day, and still today, prevailing educational practice is the actu-
alization of the philosophies of profoundly antidemocratic thinkers. The fact that
educational policymakers are now calling for a “unified” curriculum, with a single
set of standards for all students is merely a superficial adaptation of the economic
and educational systems Dewey critiqued more than eighty years ago. Dewey’s
concern was with the ideas implied by a democratic society and the application of
those ideas to education. “The price that democratic societies will have to pay for
their continuing health,” Dewey argued, “is the elimination of oligarchy—the most
exclusive and dangerous of all—that attempts to monopolize the benefits of intel-
ligence and the best methods for the profit of a few privileged ones” (1913, p. 127).
The best way to achieve democracy is to initiate children in a form of
social life characteristic of democracy: a community of full participation. The
aim of education in general and social studies in particular should not be merely
preparation for living in a democracy. Rather, our aim should be to create a social
studies curriculum that fosters broad participation in a democratic community of
inquirers, a community reflective of the Whole Schooling framework that in the
course of exploring the of human enterprise across space and time:
• empowers citizens in a democracy;

• includes all;
• engages its members in active learning in meaningful, real-world
activities and that accommodates learners with diverse needs, inter-
ests, and abilities;
• intentionally builds learning support strategies; and
• fosters partnering and builds real collaboration within the school
and with families and the community. (Gibson & Peterson, 2001)
There is no single means to this end and the contributors to this volume
have provided a variety of pathways for those who want to take up the challenge
of building a more democratic and socially just society.
386 E. Wayne Ross
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Science Education Consortium.
Contributors
E. Wayne Ross (Editor) is Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Peda-

gogy and co-director of the Institute for Critical Education Studies at The Uni-
versity of British Columbia. Prior to joining the UBC faculty in 2004, he was a
distinguished university scholar at the University of Louisville. He has also taught
social studies education and curriculum studies at the State University of New
York campuses at Albany and Binghamton and was a secondary social studies and
day care teacher in North Carolina and Georgia. His most recent books include
Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education (with Abraham DeLeon),
Education Under the Security State (with David Gabbard), Battleground Schools,
and The Nature and Limits of Standards-Based Education Reform (both with Sandra
Mathison). Ross is co-founder for The Rogue Forum (rougeforum.org), a group
of educators, parents, and students seeking a democratic society. He also serves
as editor of three journals: Critical Education (criticaleducation.org), Workplace: A
Journal for Academic Labor (workplace-gsc.com), and Cultural Logic (clogic.eserver.
org). Find him on the Web at ewayneross.net and follow him @ewayneross.
Abraham P. DeLeon is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at San

Antonio in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. His cri-
tiques are grounded in radical social theories and have been influenced by cultural
studies, anarchist theory, critical discourse studies, the postmodern tradition, critical
pedagogy, and postcolonial studies. His writings appear in journals such as Criti-
cal Education, Educational Studies, various book chapters along with co-editing two
books, Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the
Academy (Routledge, 2009) and Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Edu-
cation: Towards New Perspectives for the Social Studies (Sense Publishers, 2010). He is
currently working on a monograph for Information Age Publishing entitled Machines.
Four Arrows (Wahinkpe Topa), aka Don Trent Jacobs, earned a doctorate in cur-
riculum and instruction with a cognate in Indigenous worldviews from Boise State
University. Formerly dean of education at Oglala Lakota College and a tenured
389
390 Contributors
associate professor at Northern Arizona University, he is currently on the faculty

at the College of Educational Leadership and Change at Fielding Graduate Uni-
versity. Of Cherokee/Irish ancestry, he is also a “made relative” of the Oglala and
has fulfilled his Sun Dance vows with them. He currently lives with his artist wife
in a small fishing village in Mexico where he is working on his twentieth book,
Reoccupying Education. His previous publications can be reviewed at http://www.
teachingvirtues.net.
Neil O. Houser is Professor of social studies and integrated arts education in the
Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum in the College
of Education at the University of Oklahoma. His scholarship focuses on the
arts, ecology, and citizenship education, broadly defined. His research exam-
ines complex relationships between self-development and creative expression,
ecological consciousness, and emancipatory education within democratic and
pluralistic societies. Particular attention is paid to the creation of educational
spaces conducive to critical inquiry, community building, and social action.
His background in the visual arts and work in the juvenile justice system
informs these efforts.
C. Gregg Jorgensen, PhD, JD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of

Curriculum and Instruction at Western Illinois University. He teaches social stud-
ies education, middle school education, and special education law. Dr. Jorgensen
recently published John Dewey and the Dawn of Social Studies: Unraveling Conflict-
ing Interpretations of the 1916 Report. His chapter, “Social Justice Teaching: What Is
It and Why Does It Matter?” is the final chapter in Educating about Social Issues in
the 20th and 21st Centuries: A Critical Annotated Bibliography Volume Two, edited
by Samuel Totten and Jon Pedersen. He has published in The Curriculum History
Journal, Theory and Research in Social Education, and The International Journal of
Progressive Education. Current research interests include issues-centered education,
John Dewey’s role in social studies education, and social justice. He is a member
of the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) and serves on the steering
committee for its Issues Centered Community SIG. In addition, Dr. Jorgensen
is a member of the American Education Research Association (AERA), the John
Dewey Society, and serves as the communication director for the Dewey Studies
SIG of AERA. He also serves on the steering committee for the Rouge Forum as
well as executive council for the Illinois Association of Teacher Educators.
Joseph Kahne is the Kathryn P. Hannam Professor of American Studies and profes-
sor of education at Mills College. He is also director of the doctoral program in
educational leadership at Mills College and director of research for the Institute for
Civic Leadership. His work focuses on urban school change and on the democratic
purposes of education. He is currently studying the civic and academic outcomes of
Contributors 391
high school reform in Chicago (with special emphasis on the new small schools).
He is also working with the Constitutional Rights Foundation to create a civic
index that assesses California high school students’ civic and political commitments
and the factors that shaped them. He can be reached at jkahne@mills.edu.
Christopher Leahey’s research interests focus on democratic education, critical

theory, and civic literacy. He is the author of Whitewashing War: Historical Myth,
Corporate Textbooks, and Possibilities for Democratic Education (2010, Teachers Col-
lege Press). His articles have appeared in Social Education and The Social Studies,
and he is a contributor to Critical Civic Literacy: A Reader (2011, Peter Lang) and
Educating for Peace in a Time of Permanent War: Are Schools Part of the Solution or
the Problem? (Routledge, 2012). These writings explore the various ways in which
ideology influences and shapes history education in the United States as well as the
possibilities that exist to create authentic, democratic, and meaningful alternatives.
He is currently a visiting assistant professor at SUNY Oswego.
Lisa W. Loutzenheiser is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curricu-

lum and Pedagogy, and she is an Associate in the Department of Educational
Studies and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. She has
PhDs in both Curriculum and Instruction and educational policy studies from
the University of Wisconsin. Her research focuses on the educational experiences
of marginalized youth. She is also interested in exploring how sometimes difficult
and controversial issues such as heteronormativity and racism can be brought into
both K-12 and teacher education courses.
Curry Stephenson Malott is a critical-scholar, educator, activist, and musi-

cian—who works as assistant professor of educational foundations at West Ches-
ter University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Professional and Secondary
Education. Dr. Malott’s most recent books include Radical Voices for Democratic
Schooling: Exposing Neoliberal Inequalities (Palgrave), with Pierre Orelus; and Teach-
ing Marx: The Socialist Challenge (Information Age Publishing), co-edited with
Mike Cole and John Elmore. He is founder and co-organizer of Critical Theories
in the Twenty-First Century: A Conference of Transformative Pedagogies (West
Chester University of Pennsylvania) www.ct21.org.
Sandra Mathison is Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of British

Columbia, Vancouver. Her research is in educational evaluation and her work has
focused especially on the potential and limits of evaluation to support democratic
ideals and promote justice. She is the co-author of Researching Children’s Experiences
(Guilford) and editor of the Encyclopedia of Evaluation (Sage) and co-editor of
The Nature and Limits of Standards-Based Reform and Assessment (Teachers College
Press). She blogs about evaluation at: http://blogs.ubc.ca/evaluation/ and about
392 Contributors
qualitative research at: http://blogs.ubc.ca/qualresearch/. In her spare time she gar-

dens, travels, and drinks wine.
Jack L. Nelson is Distinguished Professor of education emeritus at Rutgers Uni-

versity, after thirty years on that faculty. Prior to Rutgers, he held faculty positions
at California State University, Los Angeles, and State University of New York,
Buffalo, and served as dean of education at San Jose State University. He held
visiting scholar positions at the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford, and
the Universities of Colorado and Washington in the United States; at Cambridge
University and Jordanhill in the UK; and at Curtin University, Edith Cowan Uni-
versity, University of Sydney, and the University of Queensland in Australia. His
publications include seventeen books and about two hundred articles, chapters,
and reviews. His most recent book is Critical Issues in Education, 8th edition, with
Stuart Palonsky and Mary Rose McCarthy (McGraw-Hill, 2013). He served as
founding editor of Social Science Record, and as editor of Theory and Research in
Social Education (TRSE), recently co-edited The Human Impact of Natural Disasters
(NCSS, 2010) with Valerie Pang and William Fernekes, and is co-editor with
William Stanley of a special issue of TRSE (2013) to commemorate its fortieth
year of publication. Much of his writing deals with social issues and the necessity
for academic freedom, and he continues as one of the founding national judges
for Project Censored, which identifies the most underreported important news
stories each year.
Paul Orlowski taught in Canadian high schools for nineteen years. In 2004, he
completed his PhD at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada,
in both the sociology of education and in curriculum studies. Currently, he is
on faculty at the University of Saskatchewan. His research interests are in critical
pedagogy, teaching for democracy, teaching for class consciousness, critical media
literacy, and Aboriginal education.
Valerie Ooka Pang is Professor in the School of Teacher Education at San Diego
State University. She has published books such as Multicultural Education: A Car-
ing-centered, Reflective Approach (2nd ed., 2010) and was series editor with E.
Wayne Ross of Race, Ethnicity, and Education, Volumes 1–4 (2006). She also was
editor of Struggling To Be Heard: The Unmet Needs of Asian American Children,
with L. Cheng (1998). She was senior editor of the text The Human Impact of
Natural Disasters: Issues for the Inquiry-Based Classroom (2010). She has published in
a variety of journals including Educational Researcher, Harvard Educational Review,
The Kappan, The Journal of Teacher Education, Asian American and Pacific Islander
Nexus, Action in Teacher Education, Social Education, Theory and Research in Social
Education, Educational Forum, and Multicultural Education. Pang has also been a
Contributors 393
consultant for organizations such as Sesame Street, Fox Children’s Network, Family
Communications (producers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood), and ScottForesman. Pang
was a senior fellow for the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown Uni-
versity and has been honored by organizations such as the American Educational
Research Association’s Standing Committee on the Role and Status of Minorities
in Education, National Association for Multicultural Education, and the University
of Washington’s College of Education.
Marc Pruyn is a Yankee transplant from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Melbourne,
Australia. As a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, his
research focuses on exploring the connections among education for social justice,
multiculturalism, and social education through critical pedagogical, anarchist, and
Marxist lenses. His areas of expertise include curriculum, pedagogy, educational
foundations, and research methodologies. A native of Los Angeles, Marc worked as
a bilingual elementary school teacher from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s
in a Latina/o refugee community in the Pico-Union neighborhood. After earning
his PhD from UCLA in 1996 he worked for fourteen years as a professor at New
Mexico State University, along the U.S./Mexico border in Chicanolandia. He has
published eight books, forty chapters and articles, delivered one hundred presenta-
tions (in both English and Spanish), and worked extensively in North and Latin
America. When not living out his dream of being a MAML (Middle-aged Man
in Lycra) and riding his twenty-year-old Malvern Star, he enjoys reading the work
of Stephen King, Emma Goldman, Michio Kaku, Ursula K. LeGuin, Alexander
Berkman, Rob Haworth, and Bill Bryson. Marc barracks for the Western Bulldogs.
Gregory Queen has been teaching United States and world history for more than
twenty years. When hired in the early 1990s, he was encouraged to develop a
non–textbook driven curriculum. However, the intensification of standards-based
education and high-stakes testing pressured superintendents, principals, department
chairs and teachers to adhere to common curriculums and assessments, threaten-
ing his academic freedom. From 2004 to 2012, he was the chair of the high
school social studies department and used his position to resist the imposition of
common curriculums and assessments. As a direct result of his resistance, he was
forced to resign as department chair in 2012. In addition, his actions have led to
challenges to his academic freedom. In 2007, the National Council for the Social
Studies acknowledged one of his many struggles—the questioning of his teaching
of the war in Iraq—and granted him their Defense of Academic Freedom Award.
To better understand and resist the movement toward standards-based education,
he joined the Rouge Forum, a group of educators, students, and parents seek-
ing a democratic society and who are concerned about teaching against racism,
national chauvinism, sexism, and inequality in an increasingly authoritarian and
394 Contributors
undemocratic society. Currently, he is the Rouge Forum community organizer, has

been the editor of the Rouge Forum News and organized both local and national
Rouge Forum conferences.
Doug Selwyn is Professor of education at the State University of New York at

Plattsburgh. He taught in the Seattle public schools from 1984–2000 and was
Washington State social studies teacher of the year in 1990–91. His most recent
book is Following the Threads: Bringing Inquiry Research into the Classroom, pub-
lished by Peter Lang. He can be reached at doug.selwyn@plattsburgh.edu.
Özlem Sensoy is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, an associate

member of the Department of Gender Sexuality and Women’s Studies, and an
affiliated faculty member with the Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim
Societies and Cultures at Simon Fraser University in Canada. She teaches courses
on social justice education, critical media literacy and popular culture, and mul-
ticultural and antiracism theories. Her research has been published in journals
including Radical Pedagogy, Rethinking Schools, Gender and Education, and Race
Ethnicity and Education. She is the co-author (with Robin DiAngelo) of the book
Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education
(Teachers College Press, 2012). You can learn more about her work at www.sfu.
ca/~ozlem and follow her @ProfessorOzlem.
Kevin D. Vinson received his PhD in curriculum and instruction, with a specializa-
tion in social studies education, from the University of Maryland. He has taught at
the Loyola University Maryland, University of Arizona, and most recently at The
University of the West Indies (Barbados). Prior to his experiences as a university
professor, he taught secondary social studies in the Baltimore County (Md.) Public
School System. His scholarship focuses on philosophical and theoretical contexts
of social studies, especially regarding questions of power, image, culture, standard-
ization, diversity, and social justice. He has published in a number of academic
journals, including Theory and Research in Social Education, The Social Studies,
Social Education, Cultural Logic, and Works & Days. He is the co-author of Image
and Education (Peter Lang) and co-editor of Defending Public Schools: Curriculum
and the Challenge of Change in the 21st Century (Praeger).
Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in Sociology of Education at the

University of Ottawa where he founded and co-directs Democratic Dialogue, a
research collaboration for inquiry into democracy, education, and society (www.
democraticdialogue.com). He is also currently John Glenn Service Learning Scholar
for Social Justice at the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy.
A former New York City public schools teacher and musician, Westheimer teaches
and writes on democracy, social justice, youth activism, service learning, and com-
Contributors 395
munity. He is books include Among Schoolteachers (Teachers College Press), Pledging

Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools (Teachers College Press).
He also publishes widely in newspapers, magazines, and education journals. Dr.
Westheimer lectures nationally and internationally on democracy and education,
service learning, and academic freedom. He addresses radio and television audi-
ences on shows such as Good Morning America, More to Life, NBC News, and on
CBC radio. He lives with his wife, eight-year-old daughter, and three-year-old son
in Ottawa, Ontario, where, in winter, he ice skates to and from work. He can be
reached at <joelw@uottawa.ca>.
Name Index
Abbey, E., 143 Anti-Defamation League, 219

Anijar, K., 344 Anyon, J., 44, 58, 101, 148
Arab League, 296 Apple, M. W., 5, 11–12, 19, 34, 56, 135,
Arab Spring, 196, 215 195, 219, 305, 335
Achbar, M., 107 Armstrong, K., 156
Acuña, R., 104 Aronowitz, S., 12, 181
Adbusters, 114 Arnove, A., 13
Adams, A., 106 Association for American Geographers, 263
Adams, J., 106, 210 Audacity of Hype, 115
Adamson, F., 251 Au, W., 33–36, 44, 52, 60, 62
Addams, J. 135 Avenue Community Centre, 212
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The, 216 Avrich, P., 110
Afflerbach, P., 28 Ayers, W., 12
Ahmad, I., 298 Axtel, J., 165
Aikin, K., 211
Ai Weiwei, 116 Bacon’s Rebellion, 326
Akin, T., 341 Bailey, R., 85
Akon, 304 Baker, E. L., 253
Alexander, L., 130–131 Baldassarro, R. W., 98
Alleman, J., 258 Baldwin, J., 148
Allen, R., 219 Baltodano, M., 191
Allen, T., 326 Banks, J., 150, 156, 227
Allman, P., 181–182, 189–193 Banton, M., 204
al-Qazzaz, A., 297 Barber, B. R., 151
Aluli-Meyer, M., 161 Barlow, A. L., 204
Ambrosio, J., 74 Barker, C., 71–72, 76
American Historical Association, 25, 30, Barth, J. L., 26, 376
106, 166 Barton, K., 256
American Psychological Association, 32, 44 Barr, R. D., 26, 376
Amos, Y., 166 Bates, K. L., 132
Amster, R., 74, 75–76, 85 Battiste, M., 171
Anderson, E., 101 Battle of Seattle, 286
Ansary, T. 59 Bellamy, F., 132, 135
397
398 Name Index
Bell Curve, The, 216 British Columbia Teachers Federation

Belle, D., 324 (BCTF), 95, 99, 100, 109
Bennett, C., 205 Britzman, 236
Bennett, J. 324 Broad Foundation, 95, 251
Bennett, W., 56 Brooks, J. G., 35
Bentley, A. F., 142, 155 Brooks, M., 322
Berea College, 370 Brophy, J., 256
Berbier, M., 204 Brown, A., 94
Beren, 166 Brown, A. L., 59
Berger, P., 149 Brown, K. D., 59
Berliner, D., 72 Brown v. Board of Education, 204–205,
Berman, S., 366 215
Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Buckingham, D., 340
has Declined, The, 167 Buendia, E., 209
Bey, H., 85 Bunker, A., 328
Biafra, J., 114–115 Burch, P., 34
Bickmore, K., 150 Burning Man, 196
Biddle, B. 72 Burroughs, S., 71
Biegel, S., 211 Bureau of Education, U.S., 20
Bigelow, W., 59, 129, 136, 169, 299 Bush, G. H. W., 94
Billig, S. H., 360 Bush, G. W., 94, 114, 130, 273, 324,
Bixby, J., 251 337, 357
Black Panther Party, 326 Business Roundtable, 41
Blackstone, W., 106 Butler, J., 229, 236
Bloc Quebecois, 347 Bruner, J., 3, 9, 27
Blum, L., 207–208
Blum, R., 237 Cajete, G., 162
Blumenfeld, W. J., 292, 293–294 Californians For Justices, 204
Bobbitt, Franklin, 6 California Teachers Association v. Governing
Bode, S., 150 Board of San Diego Unified School
Bohmer, P., 325 District, 100
Boisvert, R., 13, 15, 380–381 Calderón, H., 133
Bookchin, M., 144, 156 Calvin, J. 106
Bowker, G., 77, 79 Campbell, Jr., G., 204–205
Bowers, C. A., 156, 175 Campbell, P., 131–132
Bowles, S., 44 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
Boyte, H. C., 357 97–98
Boxun, 116 Capital, 190
Brameld, T. 28, 103, 376 Caplan, G., 343
Brave New World, 337 Capra, F., 142, 147, 155
BRE, 75 Carello, C. 142, 155
Breadwinner, The, 302 Carr, E. H., 54, 64
British Columbia Ministry of Education, Carr, P. R., 30, 94
31 Carr, W., 43
British Columbia Public School Employers’ Carter Doctrine, 324
Association (BCPSEA), 98 Carter, J. E., 324
Name Index 399
Cary, L., 150 Cornett, J. W., 37

Center for Civic Education, 44, 262, 263, Corrigan, J., 298
369 Corngold, J., 102
Center for Tactical Magic, 110 Cottle, S., 335
Centre for Canadian Policy Studies, 211 Council on Interracial Books for Children,
Character Counts! Coalition, 356 219
Chávez, Chávez, R., 194 Counts, G. S., 28, 103, 150, 192, 376
Cheng, L-R. L., 219 Cowlishaw, G., 204
Cherryholmes, C. H., 29, 150, 219 Craig, B., 27, 107, 130
Chi, B., 361, 369 Critical Art Ensemble, 110
Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Crocco, M. S., 166
Rights Movement, 169 Cuban, L., 377–378
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (U. S.),
298 Daddy Why Did We Have To Invade Iraq,
Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 328
(Canada), 208 Dances With Wolves, 166
Chomsky, N., 107, 150, 194, 378, Darder, A., 194, 204
383–384 Darling-Hammond, L., 9
Chudowsky, N., 252–253 Declaration of the Seneca Falls
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 324 Convention, 106
Civil War (U.S.), 132, 262 de Certeau, M., 111
CIVITAS, 104 Debord, G., 113–115, 119
Clandinin, D. J., 42 Defense of Marriage Act, 212
Clark, B., 144, 146, 150 DeLeon, A. P., 73, 74–75, 78, 83, 101,
Clark, C., 294 107, 109–110
Cleaver, H., 190 Delfattore, J., 59
Clinton, W. J., 94 Deleuze, G., 76, 78–80, 83
Close-up Foundation, 358 Deloria, V., 152, 155, 163, 178
Cohen, 204 Demick, B., 116
Cold War, 27, 51, 143, 150, 286, 299, Democracy and Education, 11, 43, 103,
301, 324 375
Cole, M., 183 Democracy Now!, 196
College and University Faculty Assembly Democratic Party, 94, 346–347
of NCSS, 210 DeNavas-Walt, 51
College of St. Catherine, 370 Denes, R., 204–205
Committee on Social Studies (NEA, Derrida, J., 229
1916), 4–7, 11, 14–15, 19, 25, 192 Dewey, John: 4–12, 15, 18–20, 28,
Common Core States Standards, 13, 42–43, 53–55, 101, 103, 107, 139,
17–18, 19, 33–36, 44, 71, 95, 104, 142, 150–152, 155, 192–193, 340,
119, 195–196, 254, 258, 267 363, 375–376, 378–381, 384–385; John
Connelly, F. M., 42 Dewey and the Dawn of Social Studies, 7
Conservative Party of Canada, 347 Desert Storm, 260
Constitutional Rights Foundation, 369 Devall, B., 144
Cook-Lynn, E., 161, 171 DiAngelo, R., 291, 308, 310
Corbett, H. D., 227 Dieta, M. E., 35
Cornbleth, C., 210 Discussion, F. 114
400 Name Index
Dobson, A., 156 Fernandez, L., 74, 109

Dodson, L., 214 Fernekes, W., 209, 219
Doherty, C., 127 Fine, M., 298, 363
Doty, R. L., 204 Finn, Jr., C. E., 17
Dreier, P. 135 Firdos Square, 304
Driskill, Q. L., 235 Flacks, D., 135
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), 97–98 Fleury, S. C., 210
D’Souza, D., 214 Fone, B., 212
Dube, G., 323 Foner, E., 27, 105–106
Dudley, R. L., 355 Ford Foundation, 251
Dueweke, C., 328 Ford, Henry, 9
Dunbar, S. B., 253 Foster, J. B., 144, 146, 150
Duncan, A., 17–18, 95, 117 Foucault, M., 80, 82, 84, 109, 156,
228–229
Earl, L. M., 256–257 Four Arrows, 162, 167, 174, 176, 178 (see
Edgerton, R., 167 also Jacobs, D. T.)
Edmund Pettis Bridge, 359 Fox News, 339, 348, 350–351
EGALE, 240 Fox, W. 142
Ehrenreich, B., 210 Fragnoli, K., 39, 263
Ellery, A., 384 Frank, T., 339, 344–345, 349–350
Ellington, L., 103, 378 Fraser Institute, 96
Ellsworth, E., 227, 150 Fraser, N., 152
Elmore, J., 183 Frederick County Youth League, 358–360,
Engels, F., 156 363, 365
Engle, S., 12, 26, 28 Freeman, M., 40, 249–250
English, D., 210 Freire, P., 11–12, 15, 19, 29, 44, 103–
Espelage, D. L., 238 104, 107–108, 113, 148, 150, 152,
Esposito, J. L., 295, 300, 309 169, 189–191, 193–194, 196, 316–317,
Evans, R. W., 4, 6, 12, 13, 26, 28, 56, 319–320, 328, 332
60, 139, 155 French, S., 237
Exceutive Order 9066 (Japanese American
internment), 208 Gabbard, D., 30, 94, 103, 344, 376–377,
381
Faber, D. J., 157 Gandhi, M., 368
Fahrendeit 9/11, 324 Gao, H., 173
Fairclough, N., 348 Garcia, J., 209
Fallace, T. D., 204 Gardner, H., 251
Famous Five, The, 210 Garza, M., 169
Farahmandpur, R., 182 Gates Foundation, 34, 44, 95, 251
Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 111–112, Gay, G., 209, 219
119 Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), 240
Fekete, L., 305 Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against
Fels, D., 271, 284 Defamation (GLAAD), 240
Fenstermacher, G. D., 8 Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educator’s Network
Fenton, E., 8, 14, 27 (GLSEN), 238, 240
Ferfolja, T., 238 Getting Beyond the Facts, 198
Name Index 401
Ghaffer-Kucher, A., 213 Gude, S., 42

Gibb, H., 307 Guérin, D. 78
Gibney, E., 96 Gulf War, 321
Gibran, K., 299 Guthrie, J., 40
Gibson, C., 358, 360, 362, 370 Gutmann, A., 152
Gibson, R., 93, 94, 97, 101, 105, 119, Gutstein, D., 251
192, 194, 199, 210, 325, 381, 384–385 Gutstein, E., 94
Giecek, T., 321 Gutting, G., 77
Gilles, C., 36
Gillette, M., 210 Hahn, C. L., 139, 150
Gintis, H., 44 Hall, W., 211
Giroux, H. A., 12–13, 150, 154, 219, Halpin, D., 82
314, 341, 377 Hamilton, A., 383–384
Gitelson, A. R., 355 Hammond, S. C., 173
Givens, N., 238 Hampton, E., 174
Glaser, R., 252–253 Hampton, H., 326
Glenn, J., 251 Han, P. P., 204
Gobalization: Who Is in Charge of our Hanson, S., 165
Future?, 323 Hardy, J., 15
Goldenberg, Steve, 278–279 Hargrove, T. Y., 250
Goldenberg, S., 338 Harper, S., 339
Goldman, L., 212 Harvey, D., 344–345
Goodland, S. J., 146 Hauser, R. M., 33, 38–39
Gore, A., 140 Hawke, S., 26
Gorlewski, J., 30, 94 Heard, G., 279
Gould, S. J., 59, 216 Heathcote, J., 214
Gradwell, J., 63 Hedges, C., 338
Grande, S., 177 Heilman, 337
Grant, C., 58, 60, 63, 150 Heller, J., 36
Great Depression, 342–343, 381–382 Hemmings, C., 72–73
Green Party of Canada, 347 Herman, E. S., 150
Green Party of the U. S., 347 Hernnstein, R. J., 216
Greene, M., 12, 152 Herring, G., 56
Gribble, D., 110 Hertzberg, H., 341
Griffen, W., 58 Herzberg, Hazel, 6–7, 341, 376
Griffin, A. F., 11–12 Hess, D., 59, 362, 364
Grimes, R., 172 Hess, F., 17
Groce, E., 71 Hess, K., 151
Grossberg, L., 81–81 Heubert, J. P., 33, 38–39
Grosz, E. 80 Highlander Center, 358
Gruenewald, 150, 156 Highlander Democracy Schools Initiative,
Grundrisse, The, 186–187 358–360, 365–366
Guantanamo School of Medicine, 114–115 Hill, D., 185, 344
Guarjardo, F. J., 204 Hiller, A., 112
Guarjardo, M. A., 204 History and Class Consciousness, 317
Guattari, F., 76, 78–80, 83 Holland, E., 80
402 Name Index
Holloway, J., 72, 75 Joyner, K., 237

Holmes, A. A., 110 Justice, D. H., 235
Hong, J. S., 238
hooks, b., 152 Kahne, J., 154–155, 157, 353–354,
Horn, C., 60 360–361, 364, 369
Horne, T., 104–105 Kamloops/Thompson (BC) School District,
Horton, M., 359 98
Houser, N. O., 139, 148, 150, 154, 156 Kaplan, D., 94
Hudis, P., 183, 186–190, 197 Karp, S., 94
Huey, A., 177 Kean, R., 324
Hu Jintao, 357 Kellog, P., 320
Hullfish, H. G., 11–12 Kemmis, S., 43
Hunt, M. P., 26, 28 Kennan, G., 378
Hunter, B., 211 Kenny, L., 297
Hursh, D., 26, 29, 103, 192–193, 210, Kernighan, 324
376 Kesson, K. R., 376–377, 381
Hussein, S., 304, 324 Kidwell, C. S., 171
Huxley, A., 336–338, 350 Kilbourne, J., 335
Killing Us Softly, 335
Idle No More, 196 Kimmel, M. S., 236
Industrial Revolution, 142–143, 343 Kincaid, J., 150
Intersex Society of North America, 233 Kincheloe, J. L., 102, 163, 192–194, 198,
Isenberg, D., 51 300
King, C. S., 203
Jaffe, S., 94 King John, 63
Jamal, A., 212 King, Jr., M. L., 368, 135
Jasmine Revolution, 115–116 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 326
Jay, J., 383 Klausen, I., 212
Jefferson, T., 106, 195, 384 Kliebard, H., 6, 56
Jameson, F., 73 Kloby, J., 182
Jenks, C., 250 Kohl, H., 370
Jennings, J., 131 Kohn, A., 30, 39, 256, 357, 370
Jensen, A., 216 Kosciw, J. G., 238
Jacobs, D. T., 176 (see also Four Arrows) Kovacs, P. E., 250–251
Jim Crow, 326 Knauer, N. J., 212
Johansen, B., 166, 177 Kubrick, S. 86
Johnson, D., 36 Kuzmic, J. J., 139
Jones, B. D., 250
Jones, D. H., 260 Lacey, M., 104
Jones, M. G., 250 Ladson-Billings, G., 207, 210, 227
Jones, O., 210 Lafer, G., 357, 370
Jones, T. J., 375–376 LaFortune, R., 235
Jones, Rev., T., 367–368 LaGuardia, J. G., 39
Jorgensen, C. G., 6–7, 10, 12, 25, 192 Laird, C., 44
Joseph, J., 297 Lakoff, G., 337, 339, 349
Journal of American Indian Education, 167 Landler, M., 205
Name Index 403
Lapham, L., 337 MacIntosh, L., 227, 240

Larin, K., 357 Mackie, S., 144, 146, 157
Lasch-Quinn, E., 209 Madaus, G., 249–250, 254
Lasn, K., 114 Madison, J, 383–384
Lasswell, H., 383–384 Magna Carta, 63
Lawlor, L., 76–77 Malott, C. S., 183–184, 199
Lazarus, E., 132 Mann, H., 184, 249–250
League of Nations, 209 Manning, E., 79
League of Women Voters, 136 Mao Zedong, 116
Leahey, C., 36–37, 52, 56, 58, 63 Maple Spring, 196
Leavitt, G. C., 168 Marciano, J., 58
LeDuff, C., 325 Marcus, G., 115
Lee, C., 204 Marin, L., 83
Lee, J., 162 Marker, G., 26, 38
Leming, J., 103, 369, 377–378 Marker, P. M., 101, 104, 378
Leno, J., 355 Marshall, E., 298, 301
Leopold, A., 143–144, 155 Marshall, T., 203
Let Them Eat Jellybeans!, 114–115 Martin, L., 340
Letts, W. J., 227 Martin, T., 204
Levin, P., 358, 360, 362, 370 Martin, R. C., 306
Levstik, L., 256 Martorella, P., 26
Lewis, J. L., 253 Marx, K., 144, 181–191, 199, 318, 342
Lewis, T., 81 Massialas, B., 27
Levine, P., 358, 360, 362, 370 Massumi, B., 74–75, 78–79
Liberal Party of Canada, 346–347 Mathison, S., 31, 33, 39–40, 52, 101,
Liberal Part of British Columbia, 95 103, 119, 249–250, 253–254, 261,
Lies My Teacher Told Me, 198 376–378, 381, 384
Linn, R. E., 33, 249–250, 253 Maturana, H., 142, 145
Lipman, P., 94 Mayday, T., 163
Lipmann, W., 384, 378 Mayo, C., 240
Lipscom, A. A., 384 Mbembe, 73
Liptak, A., 212 McCarthy, M. R., 214
Little Black Sambo, 216 McCarthism, 351
Little House on the Prairie, 166 McCarty, N. M., 214
Loewen, J. 52, 193–195, 198, 208–209, McChesney, R., 150, 340, 381–382, 384
219 McConaghy, L., 273–274
López, F., 289 McCullough, D., 131
Lord, M., 39 McCutcheon, G., 37, 42
Loutzenheiser, L., 227 McIntosh, P., 148, 150
Lovaas, K., 212 McKenna, F. R., 167
Luckmann, T., 149 McKinley, J. C., 106
Lukács, G., 108, 316, 318–320 McLaren, P. 11–12, 181–182, 190–194,
Lummis, C. D., 129 196, 199, 315
McLaughlin, M. L., 250
Macdonald, D., 95 McNeil, L. M., 261, 378
Macedo, D., 196 McVeigh, T., 135, 308
404 Name Index
Mead, G. H., 141, 155 National Center for Fair and Open Testing
Medina-Adams, 238 (FairTest), 94, 131, 251
Mehlinger, H., 26, 38 National Center for History in Schools
Mehrens, W. A., 33, 253 (UCLA), 263
Merchant, C., 144, 156 National Coalition for History, 131
Merryfield, A., 191 National Commission for Responsible
Messick, S., 253 Philanthropy, 165
Metcalf, L. E., 26, 28 National Commission on Excellence in
Michaels, C. F., 142, 155 Education, 30
Middaugh, E., 361, 368 National Council for Geographic
Middle East Outreach Council, 299 Education, 263
Middle East Studies Association (MESA), National Council for Teachers of
295, 297–298, 300–301 Mathematics (NCTM), 30
Mihesuah, D. A., 178 National Council for the Social Studies
Minh, Ho Chi, 327 (NCSS), 16–18, 18, 31–32, 36, 44,
Misconceptions in the Treatment of Arab 139, 162, 166, 197–198, 209–210,
World in Selected American Textbooks for 220, 258, 260, 262–263, 390
Children, 297 National Council for the Social Studies
Mitchell, E., 163 Advisory Committee on Testing and
Mogahed, D. 295, 300 Evaluation, 258
Moon, T. R., 261 National Council on Economic Education,
Moore, M., 135, 324 263
Monsebraaten, L., 345 National Education Association (NEA),
Morrison, C., 204–205 25, 94, 136, 139
Morrison, R., 157 National Film Board of Canada, 44
Moroz, W., 219 National Football League, 100
Mos Def, 304, 308 National Geographic Society, 263
Mossadegh, M., 145 National Governors Association, 30,
Mossalli, N., 290 35–36, 96, 104
Mudrey, R., 238 National Science Foundation, 43
Mullaly, R., 293 National Standards for Civics and
Mummy, The, 302 Government, 4, 104
Murdoch, R., 339 Native Son, 216
Murray, C., 216 Nebraska State Board of Education, 130
Muslim Voices in School, 290 Neito, S., 150, 152
Nelson, J., 25, 28–29, 209, 214, 217,
Naber, N., 212 219, 376, 377, 381
Naess, A., 142–144, 155 Nelson, M. R., 6
Nagel, K. M., 250 New Deal, 327
National Assessment of Educational New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP),
Progress (NAEP), 60, 250–251, 354, 346–347
364 Newmann, F. M., 18, 252, 378
National Association for Arab Americans Newmann, K., 252
(NAAA), 295, 298 News Corp., 339
National Association of Secretaries of State, News of the World, 339
357 New York State Education Department, 61
Name Index 405
New York State Regents Examination, 58, Palonski, S. 214

61, 250 Pang, J. M., 204
New York Times, The, 19, 34, 105–106, Pang, V. O., 28, 194, 199, 204–205, 210,
325 216, 219, 377, 381
Nichols, J., 104 Papadopoulos, D. 79
Niebuhr, R., 378 Parenti, M., 182
Nineteen Eighty-Four, 336–337 Paris Commune of 1871, 188
Nixon, D., 238 Parker, W. C., 14, 55, 150–152, 154–155,
Nocella, II, A. J., 74, 109 358, 370
No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Parks, R., 135, 370
17–19, 34, 36, 71, 94, 131, 133, Paskoff, M., 355
195–196, 249, 263, 267, 269, 337, 353 Patterson, J., 204
Noddings, N., 29, 150 Pearson Education, 35, 95, 251
No-No Boy, 216 Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 104, 169
Normative Discourse, 376 Pellegrino, J. W., 252–253
North American Free Trade Agreement Penna, A., 219
(NAFTA), 323 Perkins, J., 145–146, 150, 163
Nussbaum, M., 130, 156 Perry, G., 297
Perlmutter, P., 219
Obama, B., 30, 94, 115, 204, 327, 341 Perrone, V., 251
Occupy Wall Street, 84, 110, 196, 286, “Persons Case, The” (Canada), 210
344, 348, 351 Peter, T., 238–239
Ochoa-Becker, A., 12, 26, 28 Peterson, B. 133, 135
O’Donnell, J., 194 Peterson, J. M., 385
Ohanian, S., 40–41, 44, 94, 119, 368 Phillips, A., 151
Oliner, P., 28 Phillips, M., 250
Oliver, D., 12, 26 Phipps, S. G., 206
Olson, S., 206 Pierson, D., 116
Omi, M., 206–207 Pinar, W. F., 181
Orfield, G., 204 Pirsig, R., 149
Organization for Economic Development Points of Light Foundation, 369
and Cooperation (OECD), 345, 382 Popham, J., 32–33
Organization of American Historians, 166 Popkewitz, T. S., 378
Origin of War: The Evolution of a Male- Porfilio, B. R., 30, 94, 97
Coalitional Reproductive Strategy, The, Porter, K. H., 357
168 Porter-Magee, K., 103, 378
Orlowski, P., 339, 341 Posselt, J., 362
Ortiz-Torres, R., 110 Primal Awareness, 176
Orwell, G., 335–338, 340, 350 Primus, W., 357
Osanka, F., 74 Prince of Persia, 302
Otero, V. K., 328 Prince Rupert (BC) School District, 97–98
Overground Railroad, 358–360, 362, 367, Pruyn, M., 197, 199
370 Putnam, R. D., 355
Oxfam, 382 Pyscho, 291
Palin, S., 341 Queen, G., 94, 97, 107, 109, 381
406 Name Index
Quinn, D., 148, 155 Round, S., 40

Qur’an, 296–297 Rudoe, N., 238
Rugg, H., 12, 52–53, 55, 66, 103, 150,
Race, Ethnicity, and Education: Principles of 362–363, 376
Multicultural Education, 199 Russell, S. T., 237
Race To The Top, 36, 71, 94, 117, 131, Rutter, P. A., 237
195–196, 267, 330, 353 Ryan, C., 270
Ramafedi, G., 243 Ryan, R. M., 39
Raunig, G., 82
Ravitch, D., 7, 19–20, 59, 337 Sacks, P., 33, 59
Reagan, R., 33, 94, 114, 131, 286, 313 Sahtouris, E., 173
Red Cloud, 175 Said, E. W., 295, 299–300
Red Scare, 150 Saleem, M. M., 65
Rees, W., 145–146 Salinas, C., 60
Reese, D., 177 Saltman, K., 30, 35, 94–95, 97, 251
Regenspan, B. 62–63 Sanders, D., 42
Reinhardt, M., 163 Sartre, J-P., 156
Reinhart, M. K., 104 Sarup, M., 314–315
Renter, D. S., 131 Saudi Aramco World, 299
Reoccupying Education, 176 Saxe, D. W., 6–8, 26, 28, 193
Republican Guard (Iraq), 324 Scarves of Many Colors, 299
Republican Party, 94, 326, 341, 347 Scharfman, L., 136
Resnick, M. D., 237 Schlosser, L. Z., 292–293
Rethinking Columbus, 169 Scholette, G., 110
Rethinking Schools, 34, 94, 119, 136, 194 Schor, I., 29
Revolutionary Social Transformation, 189 Schuetze, H. G., 95–96
Revolutionary War (U. S.), 210 Schultz, B. D., 133, 135
Reynolds, W., 181 Schwab, J. J., 27
Rikowski, G., 181, 190–192 Scriven, M., 101
Rise of the Meritocracy, The, 214 Scully, J. L., 214
Rivera, J., 210 Secada, W., 252
Robinson, T., 356 Seeger, P., 135
Romano, R., 283–284 Segall, A., 60
Romanowski, M. H., 59 Seigworth, G., 73
Roosevelt, F. D., 327 Seixas, P., 28
Roosevelt, T., 135 Selcuk, R. S., 298
Rorty, R., 341–342 Sensoy, Ö., 213, 291–292, 295, 298,
Rosales, A., 169 300–301, 304, 306, 308, 310
Rosen, B., 96 Sessions, G. 144
Ross, E., W., 12–13, 26, 28–31, 33, 37, Shaheen, J. G., 295, 300, 302
40, 52, 57, 62, 93–94, 96–97, 101, Shaker, P., 337
103–105, 107, 109, 139, 150, 192– Shaver, J. P., 12, 26, 376
195, 197–199, 204, 210, 219, 227, Shannon, D., 74, 109
250, 254, 376–378, 381, 384 Shannon, P., 315
Rouge Forum, 41, 94, 119, 194 Shear, M. D., 205
Romney, M., 72 Shepard, P., 144, 149, 155–156
Name Index 407
Shermis, S., 26, 376 Strauss, V., 93–94

Shevin, M., 214 St. Thomas Aquinas, 106
Shimomura, R., 274–275, 285 Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Shinew, D., 150 Committee (SNCC), 359
Shudong, J. N., 115 subRosa, 110
Shuttlesworth, Rev., F., 359 Substance, 94, 119
Siebers, T., 224 Sue, 166
Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Suleiman, M. W., 295, 2997
Primitive Harmony, 167 Superka, D. P., 26
Singer, A., 36, 54, 251 Supreme Court of Canada, 98, 210
Sinha, V., 40 Surveillance Camera Players, 110
Situationist International, 111, 113–114, Swim, J., 211
119 Szpara, M. Y., 298
Slattery, P., 163, 181, 193
Sleeter, C., 57, 58, 62, 64, 150, 164 Tabachnick, B. R., 375
Smedley, B., 204 Taft-Kaufman, J., 80
Smithfield Packing Co., 325 Taksim Square, 110
Smith, P. G., 11 Tanabe, C., 146
Smith, J., 36 Tanner, L. N., 252
Smith, J. M., 250 Taubman, P., 181
Smothers Marcello, J., 260–261 Taylor, C., 238–239
Snedden, D., 192 Taylor, F. W., 6, 315
Spicoli, J. 112–112 Taylor, P., 376
Spretnak, C., 144 Teachers, 112
Social Studies in the Hampton Curriculum, Teaching Peter McLaren: Paths of Dissent,
375 199
Soucar, E., 237 Teaching Economics as if People Mattered,
Southeast Kootnay (BC) School District, 321
98 Teaching Truly, A Curriculum to Indigenize
Southern Workman, 375 Mainstream Education, 174
Staiger, A., 204–2005 Teaching Virtues: Building Character Across
Stanford, J., 344 the Curriculum, 176
Stanley, W. B., 25, 28, 29, 78, 103, 139, Tea Party, 340, 342, 348, 350–351
219, 376–377 Teienken, C. H., 35
Star Trek, 302 Teitelbaum, K., 5, 101
Star, S., 77, 79 Telles, E. E., 204
Stecher, B., 252 Texas State Board of Education, 56, 106
Stedman, L. C., 35, 97 Theobald, P., 146
Steet, L., 302 Thobani, S., 305
Stephenson, N., 79 Thomas, D., 299
Stern, R., 324 Thomas, M. K., 65
Stevens, R., 136 Thomas, O., 355
Steinberg, S., 163, 193, 300, 302 Thomashow, M., 146
Stoddard, J., 59 Thompson, D., 152
Stonebanks, C. D., 298, 300 Thompson, M., 98–100
Story, M., 237 Thompson, N., 110
408 Name Index
Thompson, W., 156 Webeck, M. L., 71

Thorndike, E. L., 254 Wehlage, G., 252
Thornton, S. J., 26, 37, 54, 62, 133, 166 Welner, K. G., 205
Through These Eyes, 44 West, C., 152
Tiessen, M., 73 Westbrook, R., 11, 385
Title 1, 330 Westheimer, J., 127, 129, 135, 154–155,
Torney-Purta, J., 360 157, 354, 360, 364, 369
Torres, R., 204 What’s the Matter With Kansas?, 339
Tsianos, V., 79 Whelan, M., 26
Tsutsui, K., 204 Whelan, R., 167
Tubman, H., 106 White House Council on Women and
Tucson (AZ) Girls, 211
Tuhiwai Smith, L., 75 Whitson, J. A., 377
Wild in the Woods: The Myth of the Peaceful
United for a Fair Economy, 321 Eco-Savage, 167
Unlearning the Language of Conquest, 177 Wikileaks, 116
Urban, W., 184 Whole Schooling Consortium, 41, 385
U.S. Constitution, 105–106, 131, 177, Wiggans, G., 251–252, 255, 260
355, 383 Williams, A., 337
U.S. Department of Education, 31, 114, Williams, C., 78
131, 337, 353, 369 Willis, P. E., 44, 191
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Wilson, B. L., 227
Development, 356 Wilson, W., 209
U.S. Government Accounting Office, 51 Wilson, W. A. C., 177
U.S. Supreme Court, 51, 212, 383 Winant, H., 206–207
Wineberg, S., 65
Valenzuela, A., 250 Winter, J., 340
Valle, R., 205, 207, 216 Wintonick, P., 107
Vandenberghe, F., 77 Winzer, M. A., 214
van der Dennen, J. M. G., 168 Wolf, D., 251
van Hover, S., 57–58 World Trade Organization, 286, 323
Vansledright, B., 28 World Series, 286
Varela, F., 142, 145 World War I, 295
Vietnam War, 51, 56, 260, 280, 326–327 World War II, 28, 106, 150, 208, 215,
Vinson, K. D., 26, 30–31, 52, 94, 97, 259, 260, 274, 326–327, 342, 351
103–104, 113, 119, 150, 192, 376– Wright, F., 320–321, 323, 333
379, 381, 384
Voinovich, G., 341 Yalnizyan, A., 345
Yaochihuatzin, 167
Wackernagel, M., 145–146 Yes Men, The, 110
Waddington, D. I., 101 Young, I. M., 113
Wagoner, J., 184 Young, M., 327
Walton Family Foundation, 95, 251 Young, M. F D., 214
Wang, Y., 36 Yousafzai, M., 196
Warren, K. J., 144, 156
Way Forward, The, 175 Zevnik, L., 78
Name Index 409
Ziadeh, F., 297 Zinn, H., 93, 194, 272, 280–281, 327
Zimmerman, G., 204 Zoned for Slavery: The Child Behind the
Zine, J., 298 Label, 324
Subject Index
Aboriginal peoples, 161–178 passim, 239, Assessment, 99; historical context of,
347 249–251; and learning, 65, 256–258;
See also First Nations, Indian, performance assessment, 251–254;
Indigenous peoples, Native 258–263; principles of, 257–258;
Americans, Native studies and instruction, 27, 241–263;
academic freedom, 97, 313, and standards standardized, 314–315, 329–332;
based education, 329–333 and standards-based education
accountability, 30–31, 33–34, 36, 57, reform, 31, 33–34, 36–37, 57, 104,
59, 79, 94, 97, 247–250, 337; and 117, 258–263; in relation to tests,
compliance 56–58 254–255
See also assessment, testing See also accountability, testing, National
African Americans, 104, 106, 131–132, Assessment of Educational Progress
204–206, 208–209, 217, 219, 236, (NAEP)
326, 367, 375 atheists, 204, 213, 217, 295–296, 298
American Indians See also Christians, Christianity, Hindus,
See Aboriginal peoples, First Nations, Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, Muslims,
Indian, Indigenous peoples, Native religion, Sikhs
studies autoethnography, 74–78
anarchism, 71–86 passim; 109–119
passim, 145, 197; infiltration, 85; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 34,
sabotage, 85 44, 95, 251
See also insurgency British Columbia, 95–99, 161, 208,
antistasiology, 114–115 336; Ministry of Education, 31;
See also anarchism, dérive, Public School Employers’ Association
détournement, la perruque (BCPSEA), 98; Teachers Federation
Arabs, 294, 297–300; diversity of religious (BCTF), 95, 99, 100, 109
beliefs, 296; stereotypes of 302–303, See also Canada, political parties
304 Broad Foundation, 95, 251
See also Christians, Christianity, Hindus,
Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, Muslims, Canada, 95–98, 117, 161, 169–170,
Middle East, prejudice, religion, Sikhs 208, 210–213, 217, 235, 239,
Asian Americans, 204, 208, 236–237 292, 306–307, 336–339, 345, 347,
assessment, 11, 14, 17–18, 57, 58, 66, 382; Canadian Charter of Rights
247–263 passim; authentic, 18, and Freedoms, 97–98; Canadian
252–254, 260, 262; and civics War Museum, 134–135; Chinese
353–354; cut scores, 60; dilemmas Immigration Act of 1923, 208
in, 247–249; Foundation Skills See also British Columbia, Winnipeg
411
412 Subject Index
capitalism, 28, 33, 61, 71–86 passim; 132; citizenship, 102–120; democratic,
181–199 passim; 313–333 passim; 355–357; ecological approach,
and the body, 71–73, 75, 80, 82, 139–157; features of successful
84; capitalist relations in education programs, 360–368; model program,
process, 314–316; characteristics 358–359; Report on Community
of, 182–183, 192; and collective Civics (1915), 4; and social control,
subconcious, 72; consequences of, 36, 102–104; social justice oriented,
182, 191–192; critique of, 181–191; 107–109, 154; socioenvironmental
in the curriculum, 104–107; and concerns, 140–149
democracy, 382–385; and pedagogical See also citizenship, democracy,
imagination, 109; rhrizomatic, 77; patriotism, social studies, social
resisting, 71–86; and technology, 115; studies curriculum
prohibition on teaching about, 105; civic education
and social democracy, 342; social See citizenship, citizenship education,
relations of, 183, 187, 314–316, 332; democracy, patriotism
social studies and struggle against, civil rights, 175, 208–209, 215, 260–261,
197–199; teaching about, 319–333 325–327, 354, 360, 385; movement,
See also anarchism, Critical Multicultural 131, 150, 169, 359; NCSS record
Social Studies, class struggle, on, 209–210
inequality, neoliberalism, Marxism, classrooms, as authentic spaces, 62–66;
socialism as democratic communities, 11; and
Chicanas/os, 104–105, 169 teacher’s authority, 18–19
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (U. S.), class struggle, 181, 192, 313–333, 344;
298 centrality of schools in, 316–319;
Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 teaching of, 319–329
(Canada), 208 class consciousness, 108, 184, 317–318
Christians, 101, 293, 292, 296, 306, 308; Cold War, 27, 51, 143, 150, 286, 299,
and non-Christians, 217 301, 324
See also atheists, Christianity, Hindus, Committee on Social Studies (NEA,
Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, Muslims, 1916), 4–7, 11, 14–15, 19, 25, 192;
religion, Sikhs influence of John Dewey on, 5–6
Christianity, 202, 213, 217, 292, Common Core States Standards, 13,
295, 296, 298–301, 306, 308; 17–19, 33–38, 44, 71, 95, 104, 119,
Christian fundamentalists, 101, 195–196, 254, 258, 267
166; Christianized curriculum, See also assessment curriculum reform,
164; Christian privilege, 292–294; curriculum standards, education
Christian Scientists, 101; non- reform, standards-based education
Christians, 217 reform, testing
See also atheists, Christians, Hindus, critical media literacy, 335–351 passim
Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, Muslims, Critical Multicultural Social Studies,
religion, Sikhs 181–199 passim
citizenship, civil disobedience, 93, 132; See also capitalism, Marxism,
dangerous, 102–118; democratic, multiculturalism, socialism
355–357; critical pedagogy, 13, 15, 28, 72, 189,
See also citizenship education, 194–196, 199, 302, 313–333 passim;
democracy, patriotism, service learning 336, 349–350; dangerous citizenship
citizenship education, 5–7; 17, 26–27, as, 93–119, passim
29, 93–119 passim; 375–376; 379; See also anarchism, class struggle, critical
anti-oppressive, 108–109; as cultural media literacy, Critical Multicultural
transmission, 26–27; dangerous Social Studies, Marxism
Subject Index 413
critical thinking, 10, 12–13, 20, 29, 107, dérive, 113–117

130, 133, 171, 175, 205, 219–220, See also anarchism, pedagogy,
268, 282, 307, 309, 378 Situationist International
communism, 130, 145, 181–182, 320 détournement, 114–119
See also Marxism, socialism See also anarchism, pedagogy,
conflict resolution, 175 Situationist International
controversial issues, 362–363, 369 dialectics
cultural studies, 81, 108, 150, 302 See class struggle, Marxism
See also critical media literacy, media, dialogue, 12, 29, 57, 64, 136, 172, 199,
popular culture 247, 317, 320, 328, 357–358, 369,
curriculum, change, 3–21; and compliance, social studies as, 54–55
56–58; enacted, 37–38, 43; formal, disabilities, 203, 241, 250, 291, prejudice
37, 62, 227, 292, 298, 305; hidden, against persons with, 213–214,
28, 133, 205, 291, 293; official, 63, 218–219
238 Dewey, John, 4–12, 15, 18–20, 28,
See also curriculum reform, curriculum 42–43, 53–55,101,103, 107, 139,
standards, social studies curriculum 142, 150–152, 155, 192–193, 340,
curriculum reform, 30, 42–44; standards 363, 375–376, 378–381, 384–
based (SBER), 18; in Arizona, 385
104–105; in Florida, 106–107; in
Texas, 105; ecology, 143; deep ecology, 142, 144, 146,
See also assessment, curriculum, 156; ecological crises, 164–165; social
curriculum standards, education ecology, 156, sustainability, 146, 148,
reform, No Child Left Behind Act, 150, 174, 177
Race To The Top, testing See also ecological democracy
curriculum standards, 30–44; and ecological democracy, 139–157 passim
assessment, 258–263; and testing, education reform, 25–44; school reform,
32–33 resistance to, 38–42; sponsors 30–34; test-driven, 34; market-based,
of, 44 36; and neoliberalism, 93–103; and
See also education reform, curriculum, philanthropy, 34, 42, 44, 95, 97,
curriculum reform 251, 354, 358, 369; resistance to,
38–42, 71–86
democracy, and citizenship education, 5–6; See also assessment, curriculum,
challenges of teaching for, 368–369; curriculum standards, curriculum
creative, 8; Deweyan conception of, reform, No Child Left Behind
380–385; ecological democracy, 139– Act, Race To The Top, MACOS,
157 passim; how to teach, 360–368; standards-based education reform,
natural, 174; obstacles to, 385; and testing
principles of Whole Schooling, 385; ethnicity, 42, 84, 104–104, 112–113, 147,
programs that teach, 358–368; roots 167, 169, 195, 199, 216, 271, 289,
of, 318; and social studies, 51–66; 292, 294, 296–297, 303, 308
spectator, 57, 102, 134, 136, 198, See also Arabs, Middle East, Mexican
376–379, 381, 383–384; teaching of, American studies, Native studies, race,
353–370; as way of life, 318–385 racism
See also citizenship, citizenship environment, 16, 29, 32, 114, 139–157
education, Democracy and Education, passim, ; environmental degradation,
John Dewey, neoliberalism, social 144, 147; environmental education,
studies, social studies curriculum 3; environmental dilemmas, 140;
Democracy and Education, 11, 43, 103, environmentalists, 106; hazards, 133;
375 socioenvironmental concerns,
414 Subject Index
environment (continued) Highlander Democracy Schools Initiative,

140–146; social or cultural, 8, 13–14, 358–360, 365–366
20, 43, 58, 62, 64, 109, 134 See also democracy
See also ecology, ecological democracy high-stakes testing
equity, 12, 15, 41, 64, 181, 194, 196, See assessment, testing
199, 227, 337 history, 52, 81–82, 162, 164, 166,
See also inequality, social justice 181–182, 189–191, 193–194, 215,
Eurocentricism, 162, 164, 166, 169–170 217, 232, 259, 302, 307, 354;
alternative perspectives, 104–105,
First Nations, 161–178 passim, 235 117, 129, 134–135, 169–177 passim,
See also Aboriginal peoples, Indigenous 259, 272–273; assessments of student
peoples, Indian, Native Americans, knowledge, 60–62, 247–263 passim;
Native studies and class consciousness, 317–319;
femininity connecting past, present, future,
See gender, sexuality 52–54; curriculum standards, 30,
free speech, 85, 97, 99, 129, 133, 210, 32, 36, 44; of ecological philosophy,
217, 379 142–143; historical presence, 65–66;
See also academic freedom and inquiry, 267–287 passim; and
future, 7, 20, 71–86, 286–287, 323, 332, interpretation, 129–132, 272–274;
368, 376, 385; alternative visions of, nature of, 71, 77, 129–132; of
71–73, 76–78, 80–84, 86; connecting race, 205–207; and social control,
past and, 52–54, 57, 58 105–107; in social studies curriculum,
3–5, 9–11, 13–14, 17–20, 25–27,
gender, cisgender, 234; gender bias, 210– 55–56, 63–64, 213, 218–219;
211; genderqueer, 234, 241; gender of social studies in schools, 3–21
studies, 3; language of, 229–235; passim, 25–44 passim, 192–193,
transgender, 212, 227, 230–231, 220, 376–379; teaching of, 319–333,
234–235, 238, 241; tropes, 235–237 336, 360–370; textbooks, 58–59, 65,
See also language, sexuality 198–199, 295, 297–299, 302–303;
geography, 3–4, 7, 14, 17, 25–26, 27, 30, traditional history education, 7–8,
44, 60–61, 106, 110, 114, 156, 162, 56–58, 129–133, 197–198, 217
205, 217, 219, 280, 298 See also social studies curriculum
global education, 20, 93 homophobia
See also globalization See prejudice, sexuality
globalization, 17, 41, 73, 140, 192, 320, identity, 203–220, and gender and
323–324 sexuality, 227–242; Middle Eastern
heritage, 299–300
hacking, 116–117, 339 ideology, 72, 78, 80–81, 143, 206, 211,
hegemony, reframing discourse, 349–350; 303, 315, 317, 319, 336, 337,
and political agenda of corporate critique, 348–350; of neutrality,
media, 338–341 100–102, 378–379; teaching political
hetereosexism, 237, 240, 305 ideology, 345–348; understanding
See also prejudice, sexism, sexuality political ideology, 341–343
Hindus, 293 See also anarchism, capitalism, class
See also Christians, Christianity, Islam, struggle, critical media literacy,
Islamophobia, Jews, Muslims, religion, Islamophobia, Marxism, patriotism
Sikhs inclusion, 95, 187, 214, 240–241;
HIV/AIDS, 145, 229, 367 curricular, 163, 227, 310
See also sexuality inequality, concept of, 63, 310; economic,
Holocaust, 20, 101, 214, 305 76, 182–183, 187, 190, 195, 324,
See also Jews, religion, Islamophobia 326–327, 332–333, 343, 381–382,
Subject Index 415
384; gender, 211; of opportunity, labor, 112, 144, 146, 181, 185–193, 197,
205; root cause of, 314; social, 15, 313–314, 318–320, 322–324, 326–
313, 315, 319; teaching of, 320–323; 327, 332, 345, 383; alienated, 73;
See also capitalism, class struggle, anti-labor movement, 95, 106, 313;
neoliberalism, poverty, labor, Marxism relation with capital, 183, 187, 197–
Indian, 106, 177–178, 204, 208, 217, 199, 313–316, 318–319, 322, 324,
273, 281, 370; anti-Indianism, 165– 326, 332–333; capitalist relations in
168; anti-Indian education legislation, education process, 314–316; division
169–170; de-Indianization, 169–170; of, 37; forced,186; labor power,
non-Indian, 162–165, 171–173 182–183, 185, 314–315, 322–323;
See also Aboriginal peoples, First master/slave questions, 325–326, 328;
Nations, Indian, Indigenous peoples, surplus labor, 185; unions, 34, 41,
Native Americans, Native studies 51, 94, 140, 175, 184, 190, 253,
Indigenous Peoples, 43–44, 82, 144, 161– 340, 342–343, 347, 349, 385
178 passim, 203, 208, 215, 235, 308 language, of gender, sex, sexuality, 227–
See also Aboriginal peoples, First 242; and religion in the Middle East
Nations, Indian, Native studies 295–299; and politics in the Middle
instruction, alignment with tests, 61–62; East, 299–301; in media and popular
and assessment, 247–263; fostering culture, 301–304
historical presence, 65–66; patterns See also Islamophobia
of, 377–379; test-driven, 60–61; la perruque, 111–113, 119
traditional social studies, 193, 197 See also pedagogy
See also teaching learning, 5, 8–10, 18, 52, 63, 208, 297,
inquiry, as authentic research, 276–277; 305, 309, 319, 326, 357, 359, 377,
process of, 268–276; reflective, 385; academic freedom, 97, 110, 113;
28–29; sharing results, 284–286; Arabic, 297, 300; and assessment, 65,
teaching and learning, 267–287 256–258; as cultural transmission,
insurgency, through autoethnography, 26–27; concepts, 27–28; and education
74–78; insurgent pedagogies, reform, 17–18, 30, 33–37, 40, 57,
109–119 59–60, 62, 118–119; environment,
See also anarchism, dérive, 197, 301, 377–378; history, 52–55,
détournement, parrhesia, pedagogies 64; indigenous perspectives, 161–178;
Islam, 293–301, 303–309; fear of, through inquiry, 11–12, 267–287;
307–309; Qur’an, 296–297 personally meaningful, 42–43; practical
See also Christians, Christianity, Hindus, skills, 365; research skills, 196 service
Islamophobia, Jews, Middle East, learning, 3, 356; and social justice, 13,
Muslims, religion, Sikhs 131–181, 189, 194; and social control,
Islamophobia, 213; and Christian privilege, 131–132, 198; and teachers, 18–20,
292–294; common fears, 304–309; 64, 197; transformational, 175–177,
definition of, 289–290; in schools, 195
290–294 See also critical thinking, inquiry,
See also Christians, Christianity, Hindus, reflective thinking, reflective practice
Islam, Jews, language, Muslims, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
prejudice, religion, Sikhs (LGBT)
See gender, language, prejudice, sexuality
Jasmine Revolution, 116 listening, 280–284
Jews, 204, 206, 219, 282, 293, 295–296, literature, 10, 13, 27, 61, 72, 131, 166,
298, 300–301, 306 205, 216–217
See also Christians, Christianity, Hindus,
Holocaust, Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, masculinity
Muslims, religion, Sikhs See gender
416 Subject Index
media, 3, 20, 39, 97–98, 114, 116, neoliberalism, 86, 93, 96–97, 196, 343,
127, 150, 166, 196, 240, 290–291, 350, ; definition, 381; effects of,
294–295, 298, 300–304, 308–309, 381–385; and education reform
321, 329, 378, 381 93–103; and laissez-faire economics,
See also critical media literacy 343–345; as a political system,
memorization, 11–12, 30, 193, 195, 378 382–385
Mexico, 161, 169, 347, 382 See also capitalism, class struggle,
See also Mexican American studies education reform, inequality, labor,
Mexican American studies, 104–106, 169 Marxism, standards-based education
See also Chicanas/os reform
multiculturalism, 3; critical, 181–199 neutrality, ideology of, 100–102
passim, Marxist critical, 197–199 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB),
See also Critical Multicultural Social 17–19, 34, 36, 71, 94, 131, 133,
Studies 195–196, 249, 263, 267, 269, 337,
Mulims, 65, 204, 290–291, 293–300, 353
302–310
See also Christians, Christianity, Hindus, oppression, 15, 76, 78, 108, 112, 156,
Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, Muslims, 169, 195–199, 216, 228, 241, 293–
religion, Sikhs 294, 300–302, 305, 307, 316–317,
MACOS (Man: A Course of Study), 326, 332, 337; and anti-oppression,
43–44 104, 107, 113
Marxism, 181–199, passim, dialectical See also critical pedagogy, class struggle,
theory of class, 181–182 Islamophobia, prejudice, Marxism,
See also class struggle, Critical sexuality, race, racism
Multicultural Social Studies parents, 38–39, 40–41, 43, 97, 99, 118,
Middle East, and Arabic language, 128, 135, 196, 212, 229, 233, 239,
296–297; geography of, 295–296, 247, 249, 251, 257, 263, 290, 307,
297; and Islam, 295–299; versus 326, 328, 362, 379
Middle Eastern heritage, 299–300; in parrhesia, 109
media and popular culture, 301–303; patriotism, 127–136 passim, 198, 209,
in curriculum and teaching, 297–299; 306–307, 357, 395; teaching about,
300–301, 303–304 133–134; thinking about, 128–129
See also Christianity, Arabs, Islam, See also citizenship, citizenship education
Islamophobia, Muslims, Jews pedagogy, insurgent, 71–86, 109–119,
National Council for the Social Studies revolutionary, 191–199
(NCSS), 16–18, 18, 31–32, 36, 44, See also critical pedagogy
139, 162, 166, 197–198, 209–210, place, 16, 32, 111, 174–177;
220, 258, 260, 262–263, 390; record pyschogeography, 114; public/private
on civil rights, 209–210 spaces, 84–85
Native Americans, 161–178 passim; 235, See also dérive, ecology, geography, la
260, 262, 326, 354, 375 perruque, Native studies, Situationist
See also Aboriginal peoples, First International
Nations, Indian, Indigenous peoples, political parties, Black Panther Party,
Native studies 326; Conservative Party of Canada,
Native studies, 161–178 passim; anti- 347; Democratic Party (U.S.), 94,
Indianism, 165–168; anti-Indian 346–347; Green Party of Canada,
legislation, 169–170; non-Indian 347; Green Party of the U. S., 347;
teachers, 171–173 Liberal Part of British Columbia, 95;
See also Aboriginal peoples, First Liberal Party of Canada, 346–347;
Nations, Indian, Indigenous peoples, New Democratic Party of Canada
Native Americans (NDP), 346–347; Republican Party
Subject Index 417
(U.S.), 94, 326, 341, 347; Tea Party, 295, 297–299, 304–305, 307–308;
340, 342, 348, 350–351 and nonreligion, 213
popular culture, 114, 194, 290–291, 291, See also Christianity, Islam, Islamophobia
294–296, 301–304, 309 revolutionary pedagogies, 191–199
See also cultural studies, media, critical See also anarchism, critical pedgogy,
media literacy insurgency
poverty, 40, 51, 93, 147, 182–183, 187,
190, 211, 214, 327, 340, 357, 362 service learning, 3, 356
power, 12, 52, 63, 66, 150; challenging, See also learning
73, 341–350, 376; colonial, 80, sexism, 29, 198, 210, 305
294; and community, 15, 177, 382; See also gender, sexuality
of elites, 338–341, 344, 382–385; sexuality, Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educator’s
empowerment, 52, 55, 62, 64–65, Network (GLSEN), 238, 240;
112, 196, 199, 254, 256, 314, 316, heternormativity, 228, 237, 239–240;
343, 354, 358, 385; of language, homophobia, 193, 197–198, 203,
229–231; powerlessness, 107, 112, 218, 228, 237, 240, 305; language
217, 375, 382; public/private space, of, 229–235; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
84–85; relationships of, 71, 75, 108, Asexual, Queer, Pansexual and/or
165, 194, 307–308, 313, 325–326, Trans* Two Spirit Intersex youth
330, 336, 375, 380; sharing, 63; of (LGBAQP/TTI), 212–213, 237–241;
teachers, 18–38; teaching, 16, 32, and prejudice, 212–13, 238, 240;
364; of testing, 250 same-sex marriage, 64, 212, 294
See also capitalism, critical media Sikh, 293, 305
literacy, inequality, labor, Marxism, See also Christians, Christianity, Hindus,
neoliberalism Islam, Islamophobia, Jews, Muslims,
praxis, 73–74, 80, 83, 119, 194 religion, Sikhs
See also critical pedagogy, Marxism Situationist International, 111, 113–114, 119
prejudice, gender bias, 210–211; against slavery, 106, 186, 207, 215, 217, 261,
persons with disabilities, 213–214; 322, 324, 326, abolitionism, 359;
and race, 202–210; and religion, master/slave questions, 325–326, 328;
213; responding to, 214–220; and slave labor, 326
sexuality, 212–213; See also class struggle, Civil War, labor
progressive education, 12, 25, 29, 34, social class, 29, 42, 58, 84, 182, 342; class
52–53, 55–56, 102, 107, 150, 181, privilege, 385
193, 196, 215–216, 218, 338–339, See also capitalism, class consciousness,
349–350, 362, 377–378 class struggle, ideology, inequality,
labor, Marxism, neoliberalism,
race, 203–220 passim; defining, 205–207; working class
and prejudice, 202–210 social control, 41, 97, 185, 193, 325,
racism, 203–220 passim; and social justice, 375, and citizenship education,
204–205 102–104; and curriculum, 104–107;
Race To The Top, 36, 71, 94, 117, 131, and dangerous citizenship, 107–119;
195–196, 267, 330, 353 education reform, 25–44 passim; and
See also accountability, assessment, history curriculum, 105–107
education reform, curriculum reform, See also citizenship education,
No Child Left Behind Act curriculum, standards-based education
reflective thinking, 5, 8, 10–13; 26, 28–29 reform, social justice, testing
reflective practice, 40, 43 social education, 28, 31, 52–55, 65, 150,
See also critical pedagogy, teaching 156, 197, 203, 209, 216, 220
religion, 71, 98, 105–106, 108, 112–113, See also social studies, social studies
162, 172, 203, 206; 289, 290, 294, curriculum
418 Subject Index
social justice, and social studies, 10, social justice in 10, 12–13, 26, 55,
12–13, 26, 55, 64, 104, 181, 183; 64, 104, 181, 183; 191, 194–197,
191, 194–197, 199; 242, 291–292, 199; 242, 291–292, 305, 310,
305, 310, 320, 345, 379–380; and 320, 345, 379–380; teachers role
racism, 29, 204–205; teaching for, and authority in, 18–19; thematic
12–13, 191 approach, 16–17, 32
See also anarchism, class struggle, See also Common Core State Standards,
Critical Multicultural Social Studies, curriculum, curriculum change,
critical pedagogy, insurgency, curriculum reform, curriculum
Marxism, revolutionary pedagogies standards, standards-based education
social reconstructionism, 5–6, 25, 103, reform (SBER)
376 Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.), 181–182, 286,
socialism, 188–189, 341–342 324, 342
See also capitalism, class consciousness, See also socialism, Marxism
class struggle, ideology, labor, standardized curriculum
Marxism, neoliberalism See Common Core State Standards,
social studies, competing viewpoints, curriculum reform, No Child Left
26–29; and critical media literacy, Behind, Race To The Top, social
335–351; critical multicultural control, standardized tests, standards-
approach 181–199 passim; as cultural based education reform (SBER),
transmission, 25–26, 376–377; testing
curriculum decision-makers, 13–19; standardized tests, 30, 32–33, 35, 38,
definition of, 4–6; democratic 40–41, 52, 55–56, 59–61, 80, 94–96,
conception of, 52–55, 353–370, 370– 103, 112, 118–119, 131, 134, 193,
385; as dialogue, 54–55; indigenizing 196–197, 216, 247, 249–255, 314,
social studies, 170–178; insurgent, 316, 331, 377, 379
71–86, 109–119; issues-centered See also assessment, Common Core State
approach, 11–12; and law-related Standards, education reform, testing,
education, 3; and modernist thought, standards-based education reform
77–78; and performance assessment, (SBER), testing
258–263; as personal development, standards-based education reform (SBER),
29; purposes, 10–13; as reflective 18, 31, 32, 34–38, 42, 52, 57–58,
inquiry, 28; as social criticism, 28–29; 62, 64–65, 95, 113, 132, 254, 314–
and social efficiency, 9–10; and 316, 319, 329, 332, 337–338; affect
socioenvironmental concerns, 140– on teaching, 35–38; challenges to
149; influence of social sciences on, academic freedom, 329–333; capitalist
8–9, 27–28; and spectator democracy, relations in education process,
376–379; traditions, 6–13, 376–379; 314–316; and compliance 56–58; and
transformative, 82–86; in United high-stakes testing, 32–33, 59–62;
States, 192–193; as utopian hope, resistance to, 38–42, 71–86
71–86 passism See also accountability, Common Core
social studies curriculum, design of 3–21; State Standards, education reform, No
and democracy, 353–369; and Child Left Behind, Race To The Top
expanding environments, 14; history students, LGBAQP/TTI youth experiences
of 3–21, 25–26, 192–194; gender in schools, 237–240
bias in, 210–211; local control of, 15; sustainability
and publishers, 14–15; and Native See ecology
studies, 161–178; prejudice in, 203–
220; racialization of, 207–210; and teacher education, 13, 101–103, 109, 166,
racism, 203–220; reconceptualizing, 192, 198, 209, 219, 228, 336, 349,
375–385; and sexuality, 212–213; 376
Subject Index 419
teachers, authority, 18–19, 100; as unions

decision-makers, 37–38, 42–43; See labor
becoming-other, 78–82; deskilling of, utopia, 83, 86, 118
37–38, 40; knowledge, 42–43; pay United States, 3–4; 14, 51, 104–105, 140,
and student performance, 117 161, 166–167, 177, 195, 208, 210–
teaching, ambitious, 63–64; and 213, 217, 235, 238, 286, 292–294,
assessment, 247–263; class struggle, 300–301, 320, 324, 326–327, 336,
319–329; democracy, 353–370; 339–344, 346, 351, 355, 381–383;
dialectic versus dialogic approaches, anti-Indian legislation, 169–170;
173–174; inquiry approach to, curriculum reform movement, 30–42,
267–287; pedagogical imaginaries, 44, 93–95; 105–107; patriotism,
109–119; political ideology, 345–348; 127–136; racism and inequality,
practical theories of, 42–43; social 204–205; Secretary of Education, 17;
justice, 12–13; test-driven, 60–61 social studies instruction in, 192–197;
See also critical pedagogy, instruction wealth inequality in, 381–382
technology, 9, 16–17, 20, 32–33, 41, 61, See also Cold War, political parties, wars
143, 173, 175, 189, 254
textbooks, 14–15, 52, 55–56, 57–59, Walton Family Foundation, 95, 251
64–65, 105, 166, 171, 174, 195– war, Canadian War Museum, 134–135;
196, 198, 209, 217, 219, 254, 258, Civil War (U.S.), 132, 262; Desert
295, 297–298, 300–301, 305, 329, Storm, 269; in Afghanistan, 116,
270; as basis of critique, 196–197; 140, 286, 301, 324; U.S. war in
problems of corporate textbooks, Iraq, 116, 130, 140, 286, 324,
55–62; reading beyond, 64–65 327–328, 348; Iraq–Iran war, 324;
See also social studies, social studies Revolutionary War (U. S.), 210;
curriculum, history Vietnam War, 51, 56, 260, 280,
testing, in relation to assessment, 254–255; 326–327; World War I, 295; World
and simplification of curriculum, War II, 28, 106, 150, 208, 215, 259,
61–62; high-stakes testing, 18, 19, 260, 274, 326–327, 342, 351
32–33, 39, 41, 59–61, 115, 195, Whole Schooling Consortium, 41, 385
315; and motivation for learning, See also inclusion
39–42; resistance to, 38–42, 71–86; Wikileaks, 116–117
stupid test items, 44 Winnipeg, 235
See also assessment, education reform, See also British Columbia, Canada
standardized tests working class, 182, 185, 190–193, 198,
Traditional Social Studies Instruction 313–314, 318, 320, 322, 325–326,
(TSSI), 193, 197–199 330, 332
See also Critical Multicultural Social See also class consciousness, class
Studies, instruction, social studies struggle, capitalism, ideology,
Turkey, 296, 307, 382; Taksim Square, 110 inequality, Marxism, social class

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The Social Studies Curriculum

© 2014 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

Production by Ryan Morris

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The social studies curriculum : purposes, problems, and possibilities / edited by

1 Social Studies Curriculum Migration: Confronting Challenges

2 Social Studies Curriculum and Teaching in the Era of

3 Creating Authentic Spaces for Democratic Social Studies Education 51

4 “Capitalism Is for the Body, Religion Is for the Soul”:

6 Teaching Students to Think about Patriotism 127

7 Ecological Democracy: An Environmental Approach to

8 Native Studies, Praxis, and the Public Good 161

9 Marxism and Critical Multicultural Social Studies: Redux 181

10 Prejudice, Racism, and the Social Studies Curriculum 203

11 The Language of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality and

12 Making Assessment Work for Teaching and Learning 247

13 Why Inquiry? 267

14 Beyond Fearing the Savage: Responding to Islamophobia 289

15 Class Struggle in the Classroom 313

16 Critical Media Literacy and Social Studies: Paying Heed to

17 Teaching Democracy: What Schools Need to Do 353

18 Remaking the Social Studies Curriculum 375

Name Index 397

Subject Index 411

Figure 6.1 Teaching Students to Think about Patriotism 135

Table 8.1 Dialectic versus Dialogic Approaches to Social Studies

Neil O. Houser, David W. Hursh, Kevin Jennings, C. Gregg Jorgensen, Lisa W.

Purposes of the Social Studies Curriculum

Social Studies Curriculum Migration

What Is Social Studies and Why Does It Matter?

Social Studies Defined

Citizenship Education in Support of Democracy

The Influence of John Dewey

What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?

Customs, Traditions, and Competing Thoughts

However, if the course is teacher-directed and challenges students through discov-

Influence of the Social Sciences

Social Efficiency versus Interpretive Analysis

spoke to teachers of the importance of tough-mindedness in understanding the true

The Role of Social Studies in the Curriculum

As created, social studies offers a vision of the value of knowledge. As a subject,

Reflective Thinking in Social Studies

Dewey’s (1916) concept of reflective thinking reached a pinnacle in Democ-

Issues-Centered Education versus Traditional Memorization

It should be noted that in today’s curriculum, any educational system or teacher

Teaching for Social Justice

he advocated that comprehending and appreciating all disciplines—history, science,

Social Studies Curriculum Decision Makers

Publishers and Their Promotion of Expanding Environments

Do Local Communities Matter?

The fewer the democratic experiences which lead through concrete

Specifically, citizens needed an education that would lead to a new, introspective

Do National Organizations Matter?

NCSS THEMATIC APPROACH

Number 1, “Culture,” states: “Social studies programs should include

Number 2, “Time, Continuity, and Change,” states: “Social studies

Number 3, “People, Places, and Environments,” states: “Social stud-

Number 4, “Individual Development and Identity,” states: “Social stud-

Number 5, “Individuals, Groups, and Institutions,” states: “Social Stud-