Zombie Functionalism and the Return of Neo-Instrumentality in Education
by Danny Weil
First printed: August 7th, 2012 at:
also, Truthout: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11757-zombie-functionalism-and-the-return-of-neo-instrumentality-in-education
Tuesday, 25 September 2012 10:46
This article is part of Truthout’s ongoing Public Intellectual Project.
For decades now, the debate in America over education has swerved back and forth between student testing, teacher accountability, standards, competitiveness and what curriculum should contain. With No Child Left Behind ushered in at the beginning of the George W. Bush presidency, America entered into the cartographic reality and morbid morass of high stakes testing, the location on the chess board where the Wall Street financiers and seedy politicians wanted to put public school education after years of neglect and underfunding. Why? For not only is the attack on public education one aimed at destroying teacher unions and the public commons in general, but it is also an attack on what is to be taught in classes, the actual methods of instruction, what students are to be thinking about and the educational theories behind a ‘neo-functionality’ that reduces students to mere