School Reform As Theater: So What? (Part 2)
In the previous post, I offered two perspectives on the past decade of school reform that explained No Child Left Behind and splits among reformers. One view featured individual and group motives. Market-driven reformers were out to destroy public schools and teacher union leaders only wanted to protect interests of teachers over children. These motives explained current battles between “reformers” and “anti-reformers.”
Then I offered an alternative to that dominant view: look at school reform as theater. Reformer actions expresses on the stage of public schooling struggles over societal values, beliefs, and ideas. Schools become places where national cultural and social battles are fought out even when they have not caused the problems to be solved. Then I asked the So What question: of what practical use is it to offer the dominant explanation and then an alternative that sees reformers acting out cultural struggles on the proscenium stage of public schools? Sure, such explanations may use ideas and language that academics might appreciate but how practical are such
