Fighting “corporate control of education”: A millennial education wonk goes to war against neoliberal reform
Refuting reformers is not enough. The left must also offer an alternative, activist/author Nikhil Goya tells Salon
When it comes to the world of elite education reform — the land dominated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation; your Arne Duncans and Michelle Rhees — there is no shortage of young and optimistic millennials, eager to explain why the brave new future of standardized testing, pay-for-performance, “grit” and Common Core will help public (and pseudo-public) education fix many of our society and economy’s ills. They’re often called thinkfluencers, or something equivalently silly; and the scene is lousy with ’em.
Nikhil Goyal, a young education activist and author, comes from an entirely different angle — which is why his upcoming book, “Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice,” which will be released on Feb. 16, makes for bracing reading. In the book, Goyal rejects some of the most foundational aspects of not only the reform movement, but the public education system that preceded it. And he argues that “progressive education” is not only a better alternative in the abstract, but a better match for the 21st century economy.
Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Goyal about his book, as well as his views on how education policy factors into the 2016 presidential campaign. Our conversation can be found below and has been edited for clarity and length.
There’s been a lot of discussion in the past 10 years or so of the way the education reform movement has fallen short or been misguided. (There have been plenty of defenses of the movement, too, of course.) What did you want your book to add to the conversation that you felt wasn’t being said already?
In the past decade the United States has seen two major pieces of legislation for programs, No Child Left Behind under President Bush, and Race to the Top under President Obama. I would argue this decade of education policy [has been] characterized by neoliberal corporate education reform. And that is essentially high-stakes standardized testing, school closings, paper performance in regards to teachers — really ruthless accountability measures. [There’s also] a general sense that school should be operating like a business, and education should do more to serve the interests of corporations and the affluent, as opposed to children and educators. And I’m very critical about [all] that in the book.
I also wanted to not only talk about some of the major problems with corporate education reform, but also explain and reveal to the public that there are really successful and effective models of education already existent in this country and the world. Many of those models fall under the umbrella of “progressive education”; democratic education, child-centered forms of learning. In the book, I talk about how I went from Chicago to Brooklyn to Boston to San Francisco and visited many schools, very unique in their own form, that are based on some of these principals: autonomy in learning, trust, equal relationships between students and teachers, treating the community as a classroom, letting children engage in a hands-on project, based on experience or learning opportunities.
What about scale, though? Isn’t that often the challenge with these alternative models — how to implement them on a much, much larger scale?
I think it’s one of the issues. I don’t think it’s the absolute most important, but it’s a thing we need to look at. I would argue the progressive democratic school Fighting “corporate control of education”: A millennial education wonk goes to war against neoliberal reform - Salon.com: