cummins Warning Concerning Copyright Restrictions The Copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyright material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction not be “used for any purposes other than private study, scholarship, or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement. - BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS Challenging Cultural Illiteracy through Global Learning Networks Jim Cummins and Dennis Sayers _--. Table of Contents Acknowledgments . . . . . . , . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “’ VIII @Jim Cummins and Dennis Sayers, 1995 AII rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlP 9HE. any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1995 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN O- 333- 66109- 5 A CataIogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95 Printed in the United States of America by Haddon Craftsmen Scranton, PA I. Global Networks, GlobaJ Communities Chapter 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Chapter 2: From the Inner City to the Global Village: The Emergence of Electronic Communities of Learning . . . . 17 Chapter 3: Beyond Functionll Literacy: The Dilemmas of Educational Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Chapter 4: Blueprints from the Past: The Intercultural Learning Networks of alestin Freinet and Mario Lodi . . . . . . . . 119 Chapter 5: Instructional Landscapes: Putting Collaborative CriticaIInquiryontheMap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Chapter 6: Superhighway to Where? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 II. A Guide to the Internet for Parents and Teachers Internet Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Access to the Internet: Getting Connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Choosing a Local Telecommunications Service Provider: Three Levels ofConnectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Internet Communication Tools and Learning How to Use Them . . . . 186 The “People Connection” Tools The “Infbrmation Connection” Tools ERIC: A Case Study on Exploring with Internet Tools . . . . . . . . . 189 Explorations: An “Internet Scenario” for K- 12 Education Saving Precious Time on the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Downloading and Uploading: Planning Sequenced Internet Sessions E- mail and LISTSERV Management Techniques Searching the Internet What If I Don’t Have FuII Internet Access? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Internet Reference Books . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Internet Resources for K- 12 Education: Selected Annotated Listings . . . . . 213 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 LISTSERVs and Electronic Mail- Based Journals USENET Newsgroups Gophers and World Wide Web Infbrmation Displayers 80 Global Networks, Global Communitia networks to forge a new approach to teaching and learning that is responsive to the challenges we and future generations face. Many other such portraits could have been adduced from hundreds of documented cases, whether drawn from modern global learning networks or from decades of examples that have preceded the advent of computers and networking. Yet- as with any innovation in education- without an overarching conception of how to shape learning in the direction of the sort of critical inquiry that prepares our youth for the future, global learning networks will merely lead to trivializing, superficial classroom practices that do little to reverse patterns of student, teacher, and community disempowerment. From a series of different perspectives, each of the following chapters attempts to outline a framework for conceptualizing global learning net- works as contexts for student, teacher, and community empowerment. Chapter 3 considers the implications of the alleged “literacy crisis” and the narrowly conceived drive for educational reform of the past decade. In chapter 4, we examine the origins and development of global learning networks in the pioneering work of European educators Celestin Freinet and Mario Lodi. Chapter 5 makes explicit the conception of learning and teaching that we have termed “collaborative critical inquiry.” We argue that the teaching of literacy must place issues of cultural and linguistic diversity at the core rather than on the periphery of its concerns. Our times demand a rigorous approach to the teaching of reading and writing, but at the same time one that embraces rather than ignores issues of cultural identity. Finally, chapter 6 returns to the issue of where we are headed on the information superhighway. Technology advocates from the business com- munity view educational consumers who can be reached electronically as enormous untapped markets. On the other hand, many exponents of a more critical and progressive perspective on curriculum and pedagogy have rejected the information superhighway as merely another corporate plot to maximize profits at the expense of the public good. While sharing many of the concerns of these critics, we contend that global learning networks have the potential for creating, nourishing, and sustaining the genuine learning communities so desperately needed ifwe are to confront the social, cultural, economic, and ecological challenges of the coming years. Chapter 3 Beyond Functional Literacy: The Dilemmas of Educational Reform This is a world that is losing its &rh in the one true mission of progress and development, or at best is sheepishly defensive about it. It is a world where me West and its cultural canon is well on the way to losing its messianic race pretensions even though they still harbour an anachronistic sense of their own self- importance. It is a world of fragmentation, of cultural diversity, of multiple gender identities, of haIf a dozen different types of families, no one of which commands a majority adherence, of subcultures and styles and fads. It is a world where there are thousands upon thousands ofspecialist magazines speaking in speciaist tongues and where there are some cities that have sixty television channels fbr aficio- nados of all sorts of peculiar discourses from pentecostalism to pornogra- phy. It is a world where a dozen or more languages might be spoken on one city block, where the television brings live coverage to that same block of what is happening at the ends of the earth. -Mary KaIanais and Bill Cope, The Powers of Litmaq: A Genre Approach to Tcacbing Writing Confronted b y t e ewt h b ‘Id ering diversity and moral complexity just sketched by Australian scholars Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope, educators throughout the industrialized world are attempting to redefine their roles and priorities. A cacophony of discordant voices clamors for ascendancy outside the schoolhouse door. The terms “reform” and “restructuring” are 82 Global Networks, Global Communities on everyone’s lips, but few can agree on the nature of the required reforms or the image of the student who will emerge after more than a decade of compulsory education. What should this student know? What values should she or he espouse? What job- related skills should be developed at school in order to maintain a nation’s competitive edge in the global economy? How should the ability to think critically about social issues be fostered? Or should it be fostered at all? How should schools respond to the often conflicting demands of diverse cultural, linguistic, religious, and sexual orientation groups that their particular perspectives be incorporated into the curriculum? The differences that have always characterized our societies are suddenly out in the open and can no longer be denied. Public schools serve the societies that fund them, and they aim to graduate students with the skills, knowledge, and values necessary to contribute to their societies. In other words, an image of the future society that students will help form is implicit in all the interactions between students and educators in school. The dilemma for educators at the turn of the millennium is that no consensus exists in the broader community about the nature of the society schools should be attempting to promote. We are in the midst of cultural, economic, and existential changes that cloud our collective future as a human race. Small wonder then that schools should have become the battleground for competing visions of that collective future. The cultural changes have confronted schools with the dilemma of whose history should be taught and legitimated in the curriculum. In universities and schools across the Western world, the descendants of the colonized, the vanquished, and the enslaved are attempting to reclaim their histories and identities, previously consigned to footnotes on the pages of dominant group history. These insurgent voices demanding multicultural education, Afrocentric schools, and bilingual education are repudiated vehemently by policymakers and media commentators who interpret them as a serious threat to social cohesion and national unity. The economic restructuring of Western societies associated with the advances in microelectronics and telecommunications that have ushered in the “Information Age” has similarly occasioned vigorous debates during the past decade about the purposes and methods of education. Schools have been castigated for their presumed failure to develop the literacy and numeracy skills required in the workplace of the future. The major impetus Bqrd Fnrctional Literary 83 for most of the business elite who plunged into school reform efforts in the 1980s in many Western countries was the conviction that economic prosperity and even national security were being jeopardized by the absence of quality control over the products of schooling. With respect to existential realities, the fleeting celebration of the “new world order” proclaimed by former President George Bush subsequent to the collapse of Eastern Bloc communism and the restoration of the friendly dictatorship in Kuwait after the Gulf War has proven illusory. The “new world order” was intended to signal the dawn of an era of peaceful global relations enforced, where necessary, by the United States in its newfound role as the sole superpower. However, a few years later, the new world order lies in tatters. Incomprehension at the horrors abroad and fear of violence at home grip the United States. The technological wizardry that allowed us to experience the “virtual reality” of being in “the eye of the bomb” screaming toward Iraqi targets is impotent to terminate the savagery erupting around the globe or to alleviate the starvation that continues to afflict the populations of many developing countries. Persistent economic malaise, unemployment, and inner- ciry misery in Western industrialized countries similarly mock the declaration of a new world order. ’ As parents contemplate these daunting realities and wonder what the future holds for their children, education assumes a new urgency. While education by no means guarantees economic security, the prospects of a decent job and good wages without high levels of education are remote. High school graduation is no longer sufficient to ascend the ladder of social mobility; university degrees and other forms of advanced qualifications are increasingly being demanded by employers eager to maximize their “human resources” in an age of unprecedented technological change. Hence the concern and anger of many parents when they are bombarded by media reports of an education system in decline characterized by ineffective instruction, fahing academic standards, and rampant school violence. At a time when rigorous instruction is most needed, educators are presented as tickle and subject to every passing pedagogical whim. Not surprisingly, educators tend to see the issues differently. They point to the fact that schools are increasingly expected to solve the social problems of a society in disarray: More than a quarter of American children entering school are living in poverty; the 350,000 children annually born to mothers addicted to cocaine during pregnancy enter school with major behavioral and -- a4 Global Networks, Global Communities academic difftculties; classrooms are increasingly populated with abused and/ or neglected children, reports of which tripled between 1976 and 1987 to 2.2 million. 2 Literacy and numeracy are not the only topics crucial to students’ future; more immediately relevant for many students may be finding out how to protect themselves from the specter ofAIDS. In addition to these challenges, educators are expected to mold a common allegiance and sense of national identity out of the diversity of cultures, languages, religions, and sexual orientations represented in their classrooms. As they contemplate the sobering and conflictual reality of both their classrooms and the world outside, educators are faced with the necessity of defining more precisely their roles as shapers of the next generation. How can they establish forms of interaction with their students so that both students and educators can better understand their personal histories and explore mote fully options for shaping a sane collective future? How can this focus on understanding and social action be reconciled with the need to develop the literacy and numeracy skills students need to compete in an increasingly competitive job market? This tension between the purpose of education in drawing out the intellectual and personal potential of children and its role in preparing a workforce for the industrial needs of society has characterized debates on schooling since the beginnings of mass formal education. In general, it is fair to say that the goal ofpersonal and intellectual enrichment has not been problematic for children of elite groups in society while, for the general population, public education has been oriented primarily to economic and, in some contexts, religious goals. Schools were instituted to produce workers with the skills required by industry, and literacy also was promoted by many organized religions in order to facilitate access to the truths of holy books, such as the Bible or Koran, considered essential for salvation. In this chapter, we try to chart the general directions our schools should be pursuing if they are to respond to the realities of the twenty- first century. Our central point is straightforward: We currently have a window of opportunity to expand and radically transform the educational possibil- ities available to &students in our schools. We described in chapter 2 the types of high- level critical inquiry that students are capable of undertaking when they collaboratively investigate issues of real significance for their lives with peers in geographically distant settings. The electronic networks not only provide unprecedented access to informational resources, they aho, Beyond Functional Literacy as and more significantly, encourage the formation of communities of learn- ing that transcend previous limitations of time and space. As we illustrated, participation in these learning communities can be intensely motivating for students to read mote, write mote, and ultimately think more. As the infrastructure of the information superhighway is being erected, we have the opportunity to ensure that all North American students have freedom of access and freedom of movement to explore forms of learning and thinking that have the potential to transform their lives. We are not suggesting that access to the Internet by itself is sufficient to increase students’ learning opportunities. However, we believe that when access to communities of learning is combined with forms of teacher- student intet- action that are very different from those that exist in most schools today, there are immense possibilities for expanding students’ intellectual, cul- tural, and political horizons. If the cost of linking schools to the Internet is built in to the overall process of establishing the information superhighway, it will be absorbed with minimal financial pain or even awareness. Under these conditions, ensuring relatively equal access between rich and poor schools will not be problematic. However, if the information superhighway is privatized indis- criminately to the highest bidders, whose interests lie in short- term profit, the tax burden of providing free access to all schools will be prohibitive. Rich schools will have the funds to pay for access, poor inner- city and rural schools will not. ’ The window of opportunity to provide all schools across the country, whether wealthy or impoverished, free access to the Internet will close probably before the turn of the century. Thus, understanding why the provision of such access is crucial for the long- term development of our societies and articulating the forms of instruction that will help translate students’ access into intellectual and academic growth is urgent. We believe we ate at a crossroads: We can continue to travel the path of perpetuating historical patterns of exclusion, whereby increasing numbers of students ate consigned permanently to the margins where they are likely to drain the economic and cultural potential of the society (through welfare, crime, and incarceration); alternatively, we can recognize that the best interests of all members of society lie in having a highly educated population that is capable of participating in the economic and democratic development of the nation. 86 Global Networks, Global Communities Although the choice berween these alternative scenarios may appear obvious, the United States historically has opted for the former, with dropouts from urban school systems reaching as high as 70 percent in New York City. 4 To choose the latter option would entail a radical rethinking of the social priorities of the 1980s. As documented by journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele, economically elite groups (the top 2 percent in income levels) have benefitted enormously from these priorities, while many middle- class families have been pushed into the expanding tanks of the poor. S The enormous social and economi: costs of these trends for the next generation have been largely ignored by politicians and media alike. The power relations that determine the distribution of status and resources in society have strongly influenced the ongoing debates on educational reform that have raged in the United States and Canada for more than a decade. Implicit in these debates are opposing conceptions of the kind of society we envision and the kind of literacy we expect our students to develop in the course of their schooling. Specifically, the capacity for collaborative critical inquiry that we wish to encourage through participation in computer- mediated communities of learning is anathema to many of those who have been most vocal about the need for educational reform. Their conception of literacy is restricted to what is frequently termed “functional literacy”- the forms of literacy required to function effectively as a worker and consumer. The impetus for educational reform during the Reagan/ Bush years was fueled by the perception that there was a decline in functional literacy among the youth and that this constituted a “literacy crisis” for the society. In this chapter, we highlight two major aspects of the educational reform debates that have been founded on the presumption of a literacy crisis. First, we examine the credibility of the “competitiveness” argument linking the nation’s economic health to the allegedly inferior products of schooling. Although this claim has had a powerful impact on school reform efforts, its credibility is increasingly suspect in view of emerging data that challenge virtually all its premises; for example, there is no evidence that educational standards have dropped over the past three decades; there is no evidence that North American workers are “uncompetitive” in comparison to their European or Asian counterparts; there is no evidence of a shortage of workers with the high levels of literacy and numeracy allegedly required by the workplace of the future. University graduates are still driving taxis . Beyond Fnnctiond Literacy 87 across North American cities. These credibility gaps suggest that there is a more covert agenda at work than the simple desire to improve the nation’s educational system. The second dimension of the reform debates that we discuss is the ambivalence toward issues of diversity within the reform movement. Poli- cymakers have been unwilling to accept the logical implications of the fact that educational underachievement and consequent low literacy levels are phenomena that predominantly affect marginalized and excluded commu- nities in our society. In other words, the “literacy ctisis” is a direct consequence of a power structure that has systematically denied educational or social advancement to marginalized groups. This is clearly not a tecent development, and it assumes the proportions of a “crisis” only because at this historical juncture, advantaged groups perceive their vested interests threatened by the “fact” that the literacy levels of workers, an increasing proportion of whom are of minority background, are inadequate to cope with the expanding literacy demands of the workplace. As noted, the credibility of this rationale for school reform has become increasingly suspect; however, there is little doubt that it has been internalized as “fact” by the general public and many policymakers and businesspeople. The proposed solutions are contradictory because, in order to reverse patterns of minority underachievement, a realignment of the current paradigms of power in our society is requited. While these modifications to the power structure may be in the best interests of socially advantaged groups in the long term, in the short term they requite some degree of equalization of power relations that, not surprisingly, is resisted by the currently advantaged sectors of the society. Hence, there arises the contra- diction whereby issues of diversity frequently are viewed as marginal to educational reform efforts whereas the logical premises ofthe entire impetus for reform would suggest that they should be central. What kinds of instruction will reverse the underachievement of mi- nority students? While instruction alone is unlikely to reverse the legacy of economic and social discrimination in our inner cities and migrant camps, certain kinds of instruction can contribute significantly to this process. Specifically, strong academic growth can result from instruction that encourages students to use language powerfully to analyze social issues that affect their lives. This orientation to language is usually termed “critical litetacy,” and we examine its relevance in the next section. 88 Global Networks, Global Communities FUNCTIONAL, CULTURAL AND CRITICAL LITERACIES While different theorists have distinguished a variety of forms of literacy, for present purposes it is sufficient to distinguish firnctional, culturd, and titjcalliteracies. 6 The term “functional literacy” has entered the lexicon of business and educational policymakers concerned about the gap between the “products” of educational systems and the needs ofbusiness. Functional literacy implies a level of reading and writing that enables people to function adequately in social and employment situations typical of late twentieth century industrialized countries. As such, it is defined relative to changing social demands. For example, the level of literacy required to be a car mechanic 30 years ago was minimal compared to what is required today. As the technology changes ever more rapidly, mechanics require a high level of literacy skills to read the complex technical manuals that guide the automotive repair process. The term “cultural literacy” usually is associated with the work of E. D. Hirsch. His book Cultural Literacy What Every American Need w Know became a best- seller and spawned the Cultural Literq Dictionary and a series of curriculum materials for grades 1 through 6 outlining the essential knowledge that students at each grade need to know in order to be “culturally literate. ‘I7 Cultural literacy emphasizes the need for shared experiences, knowledge, and expectations in order to comprehend adequately texts, media, or patterns of social interaction within particular communities. In contrast to functional literacy, where the emphasis is on &lli, cultural literacy I& uses on the particular content or knowledge that is required to understand texts or social situations. For example, many recent immigrants may lack the cultural literacy to fully interpret typical situation- comedy programs on American television, just as many middle- class European Americans may lack the cultural literacy to interpret rap music. Not surprisingly, the process of defining what constitutes cultural literacy is not politically neutral any more than the content of IQ tests or curricula in general can be considered politically neutral. Cultural literacy prescriptions almost inevitably legitimate the knowledge and values of those social groups that do the prescribing and delegitimate the knowledge and values of marginalized groups. As expressed by researcher Michael Apple: Beyond Functional Litermy 89 . . . it is naive to think of the school curriculum as neutral knowledge. Rather, what counts as legitimate knowledge is the result ofcomplex power relations and struggles among identifiable class, race, gender, and religious groups. Thus, education and power are terms ofan indissoluble couplet. It is at times of social upheaval that this relationship between education and power becomes most visible. Such a relationship was and continues to be made manifest in the struggks by women, people of color, and others to have their history and knowledge included in the curriculum.* Apple’s point is illustrated in a statistical analysis conducted by elementary school teacher Bob Peterson of Hirsch’s curriculum series What Your First (through Sixth) Grader Neea! s to Know. This analysis “shows that 82% of the pages devoted to literature and poetry have Euro- American selections. Of those that deal with non- European cultures 37% have animals as main characters, compared to 11% of the Euro- American selections. The not- so- subtle message is that stories about non- European cultures are not as serious.“ ’ While notions of functional literacy and cultural literacy typically have been presented as politically neutral and divorced from issues of power and resource distribution in the society, critical literacy is explicitly focused on issues of power. As expounded originally in the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, critical literacy highlights the potentiaI ofwritten language as a tool that encourages people to analyze the division of power and resources in their society and work to transform discriminatory structures. Freire’s organization of literacy classes for Brazilian peasants was so threatening to the military junta that seized power in Brazil in 1964 that he was imprisoned and eventually exiled. The power ofliteracy to promote reflection and social action also was recognized in the early years of the United States, when it was illegal to teach slaves to read. Critical literacy is defined by researcher Ira Shor as follows: Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronounce- ments, traditional cliches, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to under- stand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experi- ence, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse. 10 90 Global Networks, Global Communities In short, critical literacy reflects the analytic abilities involved in cutting through the surface veneer of persuasive arguments to the realities underneath and analyzing the methods and purposes of particular forms of persuasion. Clearly, the ability to think critically in these ways is crucial for meaningful participation in a democratic society. If consent can be manu- factured effortlessly through media persuasion, then democracy merges into totalitarianism. By the same token, it is hardly surprising that those who have the power and resources to influence the media are, at best, ambivalent toward critical literacy. To put it crudely, the less critically literate a population is, the easier it is to manufacture consent for policies and programs that are in the interests of the rich and powerful; policies and programs, for example, that have increased the gap between rich and poor in the United States such that the top 20 percent of households earn 48.2 percent of the nation’s income while the bottom 20 percent earn only 3.6 percent.” As middle- class families also have been big losers in the redistribu- tion of wealth that took place in the United States during the 198Os, critical literacy skills should be of particular importance to middle- class students. Barlett and Steele report that the middle class (defined as families in the $20,000 to $50,000 income group) shrank from 39 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 1989. Those who earned less than $50,000 a year (85 percent of all Americans) averaged yearly increases of 2 percent during this period; those earning $1 million or more pocketed yearly increases of 243 percent. 12 It seems clear that the vast majority of the population has a strong vested interest in becoming critically literate themselves and in ensuring that their children have the opportunity to become sufficiently literate to minimize the potential for exploitation. Critical literacy enables individuals to challenge disinformation and become more socially involved in the democratic process. It also encourages marginalized communities to become more aware of the value of their own cultural heritage. This fact is illustrated in the comments of one Latin0 parent who participated in a Spanish- language family literacy project organized by Alma Flor Ada together with the Pajaro Valley School District in Watsonville, California: One of the fathers said: “I have discovered that my children can write. And I bring another story [written by his child]. But also, I have Beyond Ennctional L& rag 91 - discovered something personal. I have discovered that by reading books one can find out many things. Since my children want me to read them the stories over and over again, I took them to the public library to look for more books. There I discovered books about our own culture. I borrowed them and I am reading, and now I am finding out things I never knew about our roots and about what has happened to them and I have discovered that I can read in Spanish about the history of this country and of other countries.“ 13 Many theorists have emphasized the close relationship between literacy and cultural identity. 14 Specifically, p articular literacy behaviors that affirm the individual’s sense of cultural identity will be acquired more easily and with more personal involvement than those that serve to deny or devalue cultural identity. This relationship is illustrated in Signithia Fordham’s study that reported that academically successful Black students felt obliged to adobt “racelessness” or “acting White” as a strategy for academic achievement: . . . within the school structure, Black adolescents consciously and uncon- sciously sense that they have to give up aspects of their identities and of their indigenous cultural system in order to achieve success as defmed in domi- nant- group terms; their resulting social &es are embodied in the notion of racdessnes. Hence, for many of them the cost of school success is too high, it implies that cultural integrity must be sacrificed in order to “make it.” For many Black adolescents, that option is unacceptable. For the high achievers identified in this paper, achieving school success is not marked only by conflict and ambivalence . . . but with the need to camouflage e& rts directed at behaviors that the group identifies as “acting White.“ 15 A focus on critical literacy is essential for students, such as those described by Fordham, who opt out of the pursuit of academic success because they see conformity to the expectations of educators as undermining their sense of self. They resist this devaluation of identity. However, students have no need to resist literacy instruction that is affirming of identity and encourages them to discover how their individual and collective identities have developed and been shaped over many generations. This pursuit of one’s own personal and collective history inevitably entails becoming aware of how power and resources have been distributed in society and how schools and other societal 92 Global Networks, Global Communities institutions historically have reflected the values of the wider society. For example, racial segregation in schools was not just an educational policy, it reflected patterns of power relations in the wider society and the value assigned to different cultural and racial groups. Students from marginahzed groups are likely to engage in academic efforts only when they are convinced that educators are committed to helping them reverse historica patterns of social and educational inequality. Otherwise, if the odds remain stacked against them, why should they bother to play the game? 16 In short, instruction that ignores or denies students’ cultural identity is unlikely to be successful in improving academic achievement. Unfortu- nately, most reform efforts have paid only lip service to issues of diversity and cultural identity. ” The emphasis on functional and cultural literacies, to the exclusion of critical literacy, has perpetuated the sanitized curriculum that will continue to be resisted by those groups whose identities it distorts. Our analysis suggests that functional and cultural literacy among marginalized groups will be promoted effectively only through a focus on critical literacy. The dilemma for many of those who are attempting to orchestrate educational reform is that for more socially powerful groups, critical literacy among workers or students is no more welcome today than it was in the era of slavery. This dilemma can help us understand some of the contradictions in the rhetoric of educational reform that we address in the next section. THE COMPETING DISCOURSES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM The debates on educational reform can be viewed in terms of competing discourses that are aimed at mobilizing public opinion to support particular policies and programs. We are using the term “discourse” to refer to the ways in which language is used to create what is generally accepted as “common sense,” thereby orchestrating consent for initiatives that are in the interests of particular groups. Thus, discourses are intimately linked to patterns of power relations in a society. In fact, they constitute the predom- inant means of both establishing and resisting power and status relations among social groups. Internalized discourses can be viewed as computer programs in our heads that allow for certain propositions to be processed The relationship between discourse and power can be illustrated with countless examples from the world of politics. For example, the discourse of anticommunism was so firmly entrenched in the American psyche from the McCarthy era in the early 1950s to the fall of communism in the late 1980s that it was almost impossible to comprehend the notion of a democratically elected Marxist government, such as that of Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s. Marxism had been established in people’s minds as synonymous with evil and totalitarianism and in absolute opposition to democracy. The internalized anti- Communist discourse was effective in legitimating and minimizing public dissent to the CIA- inspired overthrow of Allende’s gov- ernment in 1973. No evidence was required to establish the “truth” that if th e government was Marxist, it was of necessity totalitarian and oppressive and therefore should be overthrown in the name of freedom. In Chile (as well as many other countries around the globe), the tragic irony was that the excesses of the military dictatorship of General Pinochet, which replaced the Allende government, matched the worst of Stalinism. t* Current educational discourses are more subtle in their effects than those that have legitimated military adventures abroad; they nevertheless exert a huge impact on the lives of communities who live in poverty and who are ill- served by the educational opportunities available to them. We argue in the following sections that educational discourses that attempt to legitimate the continued exclusion of marginalized groups from the main- stream of American life have reached a point of diminishing returns even for the socially powerful groups whose interests they are intended to serve. Middle- class communities have a particular stake in critically analyzing these discourses because it is they who will bear the brunt of the social and economic costs generated by the creation of an ever- increasing underclass. Three major interrelated discourses on literacy have emerged during the recent debates on educational reform in North America. These concern worker literacy and business competitiveness, literacy instruction in schools, and literacy achievement of marginalized groups. Beyond FnnctionaI Literacy in highly automatized ways and accepted as valid while propositions that are inconsistent with the internalized discourse are rejected automatically. They constitute what can be thought and what counts as truth or knowl- edge. A major focus of schooling in virtually all sociities is the transmission of internalized discourses that are consistent with, and reinforcing of, national, cultural, or religious identities. 94 Global Networks, Global Communities WORKER LITERACY AND BUSINESS COMPETITIVENESS Many of the educational reform reports of the 1980s in the United States explicitly related the difficulties ofAmerican industry in competing against Asian countries to the inadequacies of the human resources that American industry had to draw on, specifically the low levels of worker “functional literacy.” The low literacy ofworkers was, in turn, attributed to the failures of American schools to transmit basic literacy and numeracy skills in an organized and sequential way. In fact, the imperative for reform was sparked by the widespread perception that educational standards in the United States were in decline for a number of years and, as a result, American business interests were placed in jeopardy in an increasingly competitive world economy. As expressed in A Nation at Risk: “Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovations is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.“” The recommendations of A Nation at Risk and most subsequent reports have focused primarily on raising standards and graduation require- ments, eliminating the “curriculum smorgasbord”, of“ soft” subjects in favor of a common core curriculum for all students, and increasing the amount of time that students are expected to spend learning the “basics.” The thrust has been toward “getting tough” with students and teachers in order to increase the rigor in curriculum materials and instruction. 20 More than a decade afier A Nation at Risk was published, it is clear that this ongoing discourse of “competitiveness” and “functional illiteracy” con- stitutes what researcher Larry Cuban has called “the Great School S~ arn.“~ l Workers and educators became scapegoats for the economic difficulties of North American industry in the 1980s and the prodigious waste of human and economic resources by government and business during that period. Two obvious examples are the savings and loan scandal and escalating military expenditures during the Reagan/ Bush administrations. As a number of commentators have noted, the discourse of educational reform, and particu- larly the myth that “bad schools cause a bad economy,” diverts attention from the failure of government to allocate resources to the so& I infrastructure essential for healthy human development. 22 The cyclical economic woes of the United States and Canada have complex causes, most of which are unrelated to the quality of schools. In Cuban’s terms: I Beyond Fmutional Lireraey 95 Better to tell the truth: schools are important but not critical to economic competitiveness in a global economy. Better to say clearly that public education is the only social institution in a democracy that has as its central purpose the production of thoughtful citizens who have a sense of their individual rights and of their community responsibilities. . , , Finally, it is better to point out now that the myth of a corporate formula to save schools, which currently dominates public policy, will do precious little for big- city schools that continue to hemorrhage one- third to one- half of their students to the streets. 23 Cuban also has pointed out that if schools were to blame for the faltering economy of the late 1980s and early 199Os, then logically they shotdd get the credit for the thriving economy of the mid- 1990s. He poses the rhetorical question: “Now that America outstrips Japan and Germany in labor productivity, economic growth, and share of world merchandizing exports, why haven’t public schools received the educational equivalent of the Oscars?“ 24 Several investigators also have cast doubt on the claim that North American industry is facing an impending skills shortage. Iris Rotberg of the National Science Foundation in Washington, D. C., points out that there is little evidence of any shortage in the supply ofscientists and engineers. 25 Brian O’Reilly, writing in Fortune, talks about a “worldwide glut of skilled workers” and discusses the fact that companies are seeking to tap this “vast new supply of skilled labor around the world.“ 26 Jonathan Weisman’s analysis of a variety of economic data similarly refutes the corporate premise of a crisis in the supply of skilled labor. He concludes that . . . studies of the most sophisticated corporations in the U. S. have consistently failed to find a skills shortage. Instead, what is emerging is a picture of corporate America hiding decades of mismanagement behind the presumed faults of the education system. The education reform movement has largely accepted this rhetoric about an inadequate work force and has argued for educational improvement on economic grounds. In so doing, however, . . . [t] hey have been trying to overhaul the entire education system for business’ sake, rather than focusing their attention on the truly disadvantaged, whose abysmal education really does hinder productivity. 27 96 Global Networks, Global Communities The rush to blame the schools for the nation’s allegedly low levels of literacy ignores the fact that literacy levels in most Western countries have been rising rather than falling. In Canada, for example, national statistica data suggest that “Canadians ate better educated than ever before. Steady improvements in levels of educational attainment occurred over the past few decades. More younger Canadians today have university degrees and fewer have less than a Grade 9 education than did earlier cohorts.“” Lawrence Stedman and Carl Kaestle similarly point out that the apparent test- score decline in the 1970s that so concerned U. S. educational reformers was due to a variety of factors other than educational quality (including the fact that more minority students were staying in school rather than dropping out) and by the late 1970s the decline in standardized test scores had ended, well before “the reformers issued their reports, and before the legislatures passed their post- 1980 reform bills.“ 29 Thus, they argue that the alleged decline in educational standards that precipitated the reform movement was actually a fibricated crisis. The same conclusion emerges from a comprehensive study of U. S. education conducted by scientists at the Sandia Nationa Laboratories3’ Sandia, one of the largest scientific and engineering laboratories in the United States, has no particular hidden agenda in the educational arena. The findings of their report (publication of which was delayed for three years by government agencies) refuted almost all the premises underlying the 1980s educational reform movement. Consistent with Stedman and Kaestle’s conclusion, the Sandia report found that the apparent decline in Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) scores arises from the fact that more low- achieving students are taking the test. Every ethnic group taking the test is performing as well or better than it did 15 years ago. In fact, if SAT scores are controlled for gender and students’ ranking in class so that the test population is equivalent to those who took the test in 1975, the results show a 30 point improvement in scores. Similarly, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores show no evidence of decline over time. With respect to other indicators, the United States fares well in comparison to other countries. For example, when reentry to high school is included in calculation ofhigh school completion rates, the United States shows a high school completion rate of 85 percent, which, according to the authors, is among the best in the world. Only Belgium and Finland exceed Beyond Fwutional Literacy 97 the United States in percentage of 17- year- olds enrolled in school. In addition, the United States continues to lead the world in the percentage of young people obtaining bachelor’s degrees. Fifty- seven percent of U. S. youths attempt postsecondary studies, which is about double the Japanese rate and equivalent to the high school graduation rate in the United States in the early 1950s. The authors discredit international comparisons of educational achievement on the grounds that differences in educational goals, philosophy, and culture make meaningful comparison very difftcult; in particular, many other countries “weed out” low achievers prior to the upper levels of secondary school. 31 The Sandia report warns against complacency, despite the surprisingly positive “report card.” Among the major challenges facing education are the difftculty of finding national consensus about educational directions, improving the performance of minority and urban students, and adjusting to demographic changes and immigration. In short, there is an enormous credibility gap in the discourse linking schools and the economy. ft is clear that this discourse has been mobilized primarily for political purposes that have little to do with actually improving education. Cuban suggests that for business leaders and national public officials, the major function of this “educational swindle” was to avoid “harsher public judgements about inept governmental and corporate poli- cies and helplessness in the face of intransigent economic cycles.“ 32 In the Canadian context, William Hynes has similarly attributed the corporate agenda in education to the effort to displace blame for economic problems and divert attention from the real shortcomings of schools, namely “the fact that its benefits and pains are shared very unequally, and that this inequality is based on class, race, locality and sex.“ 33 In both the U. S. and Canadian contexts, the issue of social control also is implicated. Improving the “output” of public schools will result in an even greater skills surplus than exists at present, resulting in a buyer’s market whereby highly skilled people can be hired cheaply and controlled more effectively. 34 In addition, discrediting the public schools likely will increase support for privatized schooling with its double attraction for business of profit possibilities and reductions in tax burden. 35 Finally, a back- to- basics orientation in the classroom will minimize the possibility of critical literacy skills being developed, particularly among marginalized communities. This, in turn, will facilitate a smoother “democratic” process, i 98 Global Networka, Globd Communitier better business climate, and greater national unity. In spite of rhetoric about the need for higher- order thinking skills, business elites have minimal interest in fostering critical thinking and articulate communication among marginalized communities. In view of this reality, it is hardly surprising that the competitiveness discourse is closely associated with vehement attacks on the process of literacy instruction in schools, a topic to which we now turn. LITERACY INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS Several interrelated issues related to the teaching of reading and writing have emerged in the educational reform debates. First, it is assumed that educational standards and test scores have declined during the past 30 years. For neo- conservative commentators, a major culprit to emerge in this perceived decline of student literacy and numeracy is the prolifera- tion of “progressive ” “child- centered” teaching methods and the alleged unwillingness of educators to teach “basic skills” and content in a direct, no- nonsense fashion. j6 When applied to reading instruction, this issue manifests itself in the perception that schools have virtually abandoned systematic instruction in phonics in favor of “whole- language” methods that eschew direct instruction in the subskills of reading; since students are denied access to the building blocks of reading, it is hardly surprising (according to this view) that they don’t learn to read very well. A parallel argument is beginning to be heard against “process” approaches to writing instruction; since process writing instruction has abandoned direct systematic instruction of vocabulary, spelling, and grammar in favor of allowing students to “discover” these aspects of literacy in the process of writing, it appears hardly surprising to critics of this approach that students have meager vocabularies and that their grammar and spelling are substandard. Finally, with respect to content instruction, there is a common per- ception (and some evidence) that American students are profoundly igno- rant of their own culture and history (as well as anybody else’s culture and history). j’ This usually is attributed to the failure of American educators to transmit to students the essential shared knowledge base necessary to participate effectively in American society (Hirsch’s “cultural literacy”). , Beyond Fnnctional Litcruq 99 The inference drawn by both academic and media commentators is that educators should desist from their permissive and “progressive” ways and start to teach Clearly, issues related to the content of instruction, genera orienta- tions to pedagogy, phonics versus whole- language reading instruction, and traditional versus process approaches to writing are complex from both educational and sociopolitical perspectives. These issues are by no means new; the pendulum of educational discourse has swung frequently between the extremes of traditiona versus progressive pedagogy? ’ The premise of the neo- conservative attack on literacy instruction in schools is that literacy levels have been declining. As is clear from the data reviewed earlier, however, this premise is totaIly inaccurate. Unfortunately, accuracy is minimaIly important to the construction of mythologies, and the mythology of declining literacy standards and ineffective literacy in- struction usually has been reinforced by attributing the “literacy crisis” to the child- centered permissiveness and social unrest of the late 1960s. However, as Stedman and Kaestle point out, the greatest student protest took place between 1968 and 1971, whereas the greatest decline in stan- dardized test scores occurred between 1971 and 1978: I’ Blaming the decline on the effects of social unrest in the schools may be fashionable, but the middle to late 1970s were years of educational retrenchment, characterized by a renewed emphasis on the basics, the spread of statewide competency testing and moves to end social promo- tion. We can hardly blame the test declines ofthc 1970s directlyon activist educators who, frustrated by their inability co change schools, had e& c- tively abandoned their efforts by the mid- l 9i’O~.~ ’ A further point is that virtually all the empirical data show that instruction in schools has changed very little over the course of this century. 4o According to John Goodlad’s analysis of more than 1,000 elementary and secondary classrooms, the typical American classroom configuration involves: the teacher explaining or lecturing to the total class or a single student, occasionally asking questions requiring factual answers; the teacher, when not lecturing, observing or monitoring students working individually at 100 Global Networks, Global Communities their desks; students listening or appearing to listen to the teacher and occasionally responding to the teacher’s questions; students working individually at their desks on reading or writing assignments; and all with little emotion, from interpersonal warmth to expressions of hostility. 41 Sirotnik has similarly commented that the teaching and learning process “appears to be one of the most consistent and persistent phenomena known in the social and behavioral sciences . . . the ‘modus operandi’ of the typical classroom is still didactics, practice, and little else.“ 42 He notes that teacher lecturing or total class work on written assignments continue to emerge as the primary instructional patterns and suggests that “navigat- ing back to the basics should be easy. We never left.“ 43 In other words, while arguments for child- centered or experience- based pedagogy have been prominent in the academic literature for a considerable period of time, in fact long before the term “whole- language” was coined, actual practice in U. S. schools has remained relatively unaf- fected by such arguments. However, despite their relatively minimal im- pact, child- centered instruction frequently has been made a scapegoat for the perceived failings ofAmerican education. 44 In the present context, they provide a convenient scapegoat for the neo- conservative attempt to reassert control over the curricular “input” and human “output” of education. The need to reassert control has been precipitated by the increasingly deter- mined efforts of marginalized groups to inject their experiences and per- spectives into the school curriculum through bilingual programs and multicultural education. LITERACY ACHIEVEMENT OF MARGINALIZED GROUPS The relationship between equity issues and literacy has been prominent in U. S. educational debates since the 1960s. In recent years, there has been grudging acknowledgment that minority group educational underachieve- ment is related to the “literacy crisis” because it is diffkult to avoid the fact that minority groups are massively overrepresented in the “functionally illiterate” category. For example, a survey by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the United States reported that at each of Beyond Functional LiteraT 101 the three literacy levels (basic- score of 200, intermediate- score of 275, and advanced- score of 350), European Americans performed better than Latinos who in turn performed bette; than African Americanss4’ Newman and Beverstock suggest that “this division implies an alarming trend, considering the fact that minorities who have been economically and educationally disadvantaged comprise an increasingly large percentage of the population.” They also note that literate skills involving thinking and problem- solving at the 275 level and above on the NAEP scale will be increasingly required in the workplace of the Mrenty- first century: “the scales of difficulty also demonstrated that complex and demanding tasks- those that are expected to characterize work in coming years- may be beyond the current skills of many young adults. For example, workers often will be expected to use information on computer screens, make calculations, consult documentation, and then type new instructions.“ 46 These activities reflect skills at or above the 275 level on the NAEP scale, a level that only 78 percent of European Americans, 57 percent of Latinos, and 39 percent of African Americans attained. A more recent NAEP study reported that Black, Hispanic and Arner- ican Indian students in grades 4, 8, and 12 performed considerably worse than White or Asian/ Pacific Islander students on measures of reading proficiency. 47 The scores for these groups were (not surprisingly) in the same range as for “dis+ antaged urban” students. The differences in reading proficiency between “disadvantaged hrban” and “advantaged urban” students were immense; for example, at the fourth- grade level, the former group obtained a score of 188 on the reading measures compared to a score of 240 for the latter. The shift in rhetoric during the 1980s from an emphasis on equity to a focus on “excellence” signaled a shift in the way minority underachieve- ment data was interpreted by coniervative academics, policymakers, and media commentators. The public discourse shifted to absolve schools and society from responsibility for minority group underachievement and once again to attribute school failure to minority students’ own deficiencies, deficiencies of their families, or to cynical manipulation by minority group politicians. Thus, while schools are castigated for their failure to promote adequate literacy and academic excellence and for their cavalier attitude to accountability, it is minority students and their communities that are largely blamed for their poor school performance. Conservative groups believe that 102 Global Networks, Global Communities if broader societal institutions are at all responsible for minority group underachievement, it is only to the extent that politicians and educators have caved in to “ethnic demands.“* ’ Thus, within the mainstream educational reform effort, there has been minimal analysis of the causes of academic failure among marginalized groups. Most media commentators do not move much beyond an analysis that blames the victim and exhorts teachers to be more effective. In fact, under the guise of promoting “excellence,” the neo- conservative educa- tional agenda during the 1980s abdicated even any pretense of promoting equity in educational opportunity, let alone in educational outcomes. Simply put, in the short term, it is cheaper to import the human resources needed by industry than to make the enormous investment to rebuild the social and educational infrastructure devastated by more than a decade of policies that have transferred wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich, as documented conclusively by Barlett and Steele. 4g Diversity has remained an uncomfortable issue even for many schools that are attempting to engage in a participatory and democratic restructur- ing process rather than a “top- down” process. This is illustrated by the findings of a major research project conducted by the advocacy group California Tomorrow involving 73 Californian schools that were in the process of restructuring. The sample included a variety of restructuring models based on the work of James Comer, Henry Levin, and Theodore Sizer, as well as other initiatives funded through California’s 1991 school restructuring legislation (SB 1274). 50 The study revealed a lack ofdiscussion about issues of culture and identity and “heavy barriers to bringing diversity and equity issues into the school’s plans to better serve their students.“ 51 In spite ofgenuine commitment, the agenda for the reform process was largely determined by the concerns of educators from the dominant group; the voices of marginal& d groups were rarely heard. In many schools, parents and instructional aides who were capable of adding to the knowledge base about issues of language, culture, and race in the lives of the students were excluded from significant participation in the restructuring process. The report suggests some ofthe reasons why dialogue about diversity and equity was missing: Four- fifths ofcalifornia’s teachers are white. Most do not come to work with firsthand knowledge of the communities and cultures oftheir students. Most Bqmd Fnnctiod Liter& q 103 speak only English. . . . Teacher education pmgrams are Edr behind the times in providing teachers with the knowledge about second language acquisition, about rhe impact of racism in students’ lives, and about the diverse cul& backgrounds of the students in the public schools. We found more dim, lively dialogue and consideration of issues of race, culture and language in schools where prior to restructuring, there had been a tradition of strong bilingual programs or IIdtiCIdNd education and community embedded- ness. . . . Generally, however, it appeared to us that in many schools, pmple were unaware that there is a perspective, a knowledge basi that is missing around their table. They do not know that they do not know. 52 We believe that an analysis ofthe causes of minority group underachievement is central to any genuine efIbrt to restructure education for the twenty- first century. In this regard, an obvious contributor to the pattern of underachieve- ment is poverty, a phenomenon that has increased dramatically during the past decade in both the United States and Canada. 53 However, in addition to hctors associated with poverty and economic discrimination, the system- atic undermining of students’ cultural identity within schools plays a signif- icant role. As a result of this persistent devaluation of identity, marginalized communities frequently have internalized a sense of ambivalence in regard to the vaIue of their culture and a sense of fiuility with respect to the possibility of improving their lives through democratic participation. 54 As Andrew Hacker concludes in his book Two Nations: Black and white, Separate, Hostik, Unequal, “legal slavery may be in the past, but segregation and subordination have been allowed to persist.“ 55 The treatment of marginalized groups A “internal colonies” is exempli- fied by the fact that the three groups in the U. S. context that experience the most pronounced educational difftculty (African American, Latino, and Native American students) each have been subordinated for centuries by the dominant group. 56 In the Canadian context, the academic difficulties of First Nations (Native) students and minority fiancophone students outside of Quebec illustrate a similar pattern. In Scandinavia, the underachievement of Finnish minority students in Sweden is similarly linked to the fict that Finland was colonized by Sweden for several hundred years. 57 As in most colonial situations, upward mobility for marginalized communities has en- tailed a process of denid of identity, exemplified by the students in Fordham’s study who identified academic achievement with “acting White.” 104 Global Networks, Global Communitica The devaluation of identity in the broader society has been reflected in the interactions between educators and students in school. A variety of structural and attitudinal factors operating in schools have contributed to students’ difficulties and resistance. Among them are: l Segregation and tracking practices that provide students with “a watered- down curriculum due to low expectations, along with the least experienced teachers , . . [in] schools that are most often overcrowded, underfinanced and ill- equipped.“ 58 l Exclusion of all aspects of students’ culture and language from the school together with discouragement of parental participation. l Curriculum that fails to reflect the experience and realities of culturally diverse students, together with instruction that actively discourages any critical refection on the content to be internalized. The clear implication of these patterns is that educational reform efforts that pay only lipservice to causes of underachievement among marginalized groups are unlikely to be successful. A focus only on technical skills of reading and writing fails to address the continuing legacy of a coercive power structure. In short, for marginalized communities, functional literacy can be attained only through critical literacy. THE PARADOX OF EDUCATIONAL. REFORM At this point, the paradox of educational reform and the dilemma for socially powerful groups can be discerned. Raising the overall literacy levels of the population, and by implication within the neo- conservative discourse the competitiveness ofAmerican industry, necessitates reversing the pattern of school failure among minority students- particularly because the overall proportion of these students in the population is rising dramatically. Reversing school failure, however, is unlikely to come cheaply; it will entail not just educational expenditures but also massive investment in a social infrastructure in inner cities and poor rural areas that has been decaying for the past 25 years. In other words, the long- term goal of making American industry competitive through upgrading educational achievement would require that there be some reversal of the income distribution pattern of the i 1 Beyond Functional Literacy 10s past 15 years where funds have been transferred from poor to rich. In a similar vein, historian Paul Kennedy has pointed out that uany attempt to alleviate homelessness and poverty in the innet cities- and the rural South- might cost a great deal of money, and a transfer of resources from the better off (who vote) to the poor (who don’t).“ 59 Not surprisingly economically advantaged groups resist this scenario. Yet it is increasingly clear that their agenda of preserving a power structure that disadvantages the majorityofAmericans is self- defeating and is rapidly reaching a point of diminishing returns. The costs of maintaining the status quo (e. g., the need to incarcerate more and more people) have outstripped the costs of shifting to a more collaborative sharing of power through more equitable investment in education and social programs. Educator Harold Hodgkinson points out that more than 80 percent of prisoners in the United States ate high school dropouts, and each prisoner costs taxpayers a minimum of $20,000 a year. A decent education would have given people a stake in preserving the social system rather than dismantling it and would require only a fraction of the escalating costs of incarceration. 6’ The fiscal absurdity (not to mention the human injustice) of pushing minority students out of school can be seen in some of the data marshaled by Gary Natriello, Edward L. McDill, and Aaron M. Pallas in their aptly titled book Schooling Disadvantaged CM& en: Racing Against Gztastropbe. In a conservative calculation of the cost to the nation of high school dropouts, they conclude: “Each year, then, the estimated cost to the nation of the dropout problem is approximately $50 billion in foregone lifetime earnings alone. Also associated with this cost are foregone government tax revenues, greater welfare expenditures, poorer physical and mental health of OUT nation’s citizens, and greater costs of crime, as well as a variety of social costs to which it is difficult to attach dollar figures.“ 61 They also note that “each dollar invested in early prenatal care can reduce the cost of infant care by more than three dollars.“ 62 Estimates of the financial returns on Head Start programs also suggest that every dollar spent on a Head Start child will result in savings of $7 through reduced need for special education, welfare, incarceration, and so on. 63 The short- term thinking that characterizes social policy in the United States is evidenced by the fact that there is little reluctance to spend public fimds on prisons, even though the country incarcerates its population at a t -! 106 Global Networks, Global Communitica rate six times greater than that of Australia and ten times greater than that of the Netherlands. 64 Similarly, the costs of more adequate social and economic programs designed to combat poverty and educational failure usually are viewed as prohibitive by the same politicians who, with minimi dissent or even debate, committed $157 billion of taxpayers’ money (for starters) to “resolve” the savings and loan scandal and whose trillions of dollars ofwasted military expenditures never required justification. 65 These policy decisions served the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the vast majority of American citizens. The effort to preserve what is essentially a coercive power structure has given rise to patterns of discourse whose logical contradictions are im- mediately apparent. As one example, consider the orientation of neo- con- servative groups (such as the cultural literacy movement or organizations such as U. S. English) to the development of bilingual and multilingual abilities among students. Within the discourse of competitiveness, there have been many calls to improve foreign language instruction. Since global economic, scientific, and environmental interdependence is clearly a reality, many business and educational leaders view cross- cultural sensitivity and the ability to communicate in international languages as an essential component of the human resources that business requires to thrive (and survive) in the global marketplace. These abilities could be viewed as dimensions of a “g1oba. l cultural literacy,” the lack of which is seriously hampering North American competitiveness in a shrinking global econ- omy. However, there is vehement rejection of any suggestion to expand and reorient bilingual education programs to promote bilingual students’ liter- acy skills in their primary language. Rather than developing the “home- grown” linguistic and cultural resources of the nation, groups such as U. S. English insist on using foreign- language instructional methods that, for generations, have proven ineffective for the vast majority of students. The financial investment required to make bilingual education available on a wider scale to both majority and minority students would be minimal compared to the investment required to train monolingual and monocul- tural adults to operate effectively in cross- cultural business, diplomacy, or security- related endeavors. 66 A reasonable hypothesis is that this apparent absence of good business sense is due to the majority group’s reluctance to reinforce bilingual students’ cultural identity. To acknowledge that their bilin- 4 Bcpnd Fnnrtiod Litcrag 107 guahsm is a valuable cultural and economic asset would effectively reverse the historical pattern of devaluation of identity. An expansion of bilingual education would transfer status and power (as well as jobs) to minority groups that have the linguistic and cultural abilities to work in such programs. There is also a fear that if the economic advantages of bi~ i~ gu~ iSfI3 are acknowledged, monolingual children will be disadvan- taged in the future job market in comparison to the bilingual children of minority groups. Hence the contradictory call for more effective foreign- language teaching while simultaneously insisting that schools eradicate all “un- American” languages that students may happen to speak fluently on entry to schoo1.67 Similar contradictions are evident in other aspects of the rhetoric of educational reform: l The call for better development of problem- solving and critical thinking abilities contradicts the simultaneous insistence that teachers get back to basics and transmit information in a didactic way that allows for minimal student language use, let alone critical thinking. l The call for better reading and writing skills development contra- dicts the reduction in amount of classroom time that students can spend reading literature or amplifying their experience through writing (as advocated, for example, by many whole- language ap- proaches to literacy)? ’ l The insistence that education is fundamental to business competi- tiveness contradicts the simultaneous reduction in government funding and corporate contributions for public education. 6g As a result of these contradictions, much of the educational reform discourse obscures rather than clarifies the directions required to reorient our schools for the challenges of the twenty- first century. The sociopolitical agenda underlying this discourse is designed to preserve the societal power structure while accommodating minimally to the perceived need to upgrade national literacy levels. More specifically, the unstated goals are to (a) promote sufficient functional literacy to meet the needs of industry in an increasingly technological work environment; (b) promote cultural literacy and cultural identities that are in harmony with the societal power structure 108 Global Networks, Global Communities so that what is in the best interests of elite groups is accepted as also being in the best interests of marginalized groups; and (c) limit the development of critical literacy so that students do not develop the ability to analyze disinformation and challenge structures of control and social injustice. Clearly, a fundamental change in social mindset and orientation to educational reform is required if our society is to address the changing cultural, economic, and existential realities that are fast approaching. RESTRUCTURING FOR WHAT? THE RAPIDLY CHANGING CONTEXT OF EDUCATION Cultural Realities The dramatic increase in cultural diversity in Western industrialized coun- tries shows no signs of abating as refugees from political conflicts and devastated economies continue to seek asylum. In addition, falling birth rates in most Western countries have resulted in greater immigration to maintain population levels and stimulate economic growth. For example, Canada increased its annual immigration from 84,302 in 1985 to 250,000 annually (about 1 percent of the population) in the early 1990s. As a consequence, students from linguistically and culturally diverse back- grounds now constitute about half the school population in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver. In the United States, immigrants’ share of total population growth represented 39 percent between 1980 and 1990, compared to 33 percent in the previous decade and just 11 percent between 1960 and 1970.70 These trends are expected to continue. For example, the Asian American popula- tion is expected to increase dramatically, from 8 million in 1992 to 16 million by 2009,24 million by 2024, and 32 million by 2038. Latinos will account for more than 40 percent of population growth over the next 60 years and become the nation’s largest minority in the year 2013. African Americans are expected to double in number by the year 2050.71 Consistent with these projected growth trends, the proportion of culturally diverse students is rapidly increasing in U. S. urban centers. To illustrate, the National Coalition of Advocates for Students estimated that by the year 2001, minority enrollment levels will range from 70 to 96 Btpnd Fnnctimtal Litcray 109 percent in the nation’s 15 largest school systems. 72 In California, so- called minority groups (e. g. Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans) already represent a greater proportion of the school population than students from the so- called majority group. By the year 2030, half of all the children in the state are projected to be of Latin0 background while European Ameri- cans will compose 60 percent of the elderly population, a reality that Paul Kennedy terms “a troublesome mismatch” that raises the prospect of “a massive contest over welfare and entitlement priorities between predomi- nantly Caucasian retirees and predominantly nonwhite children, mothers, and unemployed, each with its vocal advocacy organizations.“” These changing cultural realities have immense relevance to educa- tional restructuring in Western countries. In the first place, increased diversity at home and globalization internationally highlight the import- ance of promoting additional language competence in schools. Bilingual and multilingua individuab are likely to be more attractive to employers faced with providing service to a linguistically diverse clientele in societal institutions (hospitals, seniors’ homes, airports, schools, etc.) as well as to those engaged in international trade. While English is spreading rapidly as a second language throughout the world, Senator Paul Simon’s dictum “You can buy in any language, but you can’t sell in any language” still holds. The internal logic of the “international competitiveness” discourse might suggest that in an increasingly interdependent world, it is the monolin- gual/ monoculturaJ individual who is “culturally illiterate” and ill- equipped to prosper in the global economy. Second, increased diversity has highlighted the need to develop more effective ways of promoting intercultural cooperation and understanding in our education systems. Educators concerned with preparing students for life in the twenty- first century must educate them for “global citizenship.” The potential to achieve this goal is obviously greater in a classroom context where cultural diversity thrives than in a classroom context where cultural diversity is either ignored or suppressed. Third, as we argued already, educational success for culturally diverse students will occur only in school systems that promote pride in students’ cultural identities and respect for other cultural realities. This is illustrated in Lawrence Stedman’s reanalysis of the “Effective Schools” research liter- ature. Stedman analyzed case studies of schools that achieved grade- level success with low- income students and maintained this success over several 110 Global Networka, Global Communities years. A major characteristic of these schools was their focus on cultural pluralism. Effective schools acknowledged and reinforced the racial and ethnic identity of their students and provided opportunities for culturally diverse parents to become involved in their children’s learning and partic- ipate in school governance. 74 In summary, there are compelling reasons why schools should aban- don their long- term orientation to diversity as a problem to be overcome in favor of a focus on diversity as a societal resource to be nurtured. 75 Communication across cultural and linguistic boundaries is essential not only for economic development in the twenty- first century but also to resolve potential intergroup conflicts in both the domestic and internationa arenas. Even minimal investment in bilingual programs for both majority and minority students and a focus on infusing multicultural awareness across the curriculum can contribute significantly both to the nation’s economic competitiveness and to its ability to collaborate internationally in resolving global problems. Economic and Scientific Realities Although there is little credibility in the neo- conservative “literacy crisis” rhetoric, it is true that the major economic and scientific changes that our global society is undergoing entail significant implications for our educa- tional systems. The nature of our society, and particularly the nature of the workplace, has changed dramatically in recent decades. Just as, over the long term, the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s created the need for a much broader range of literacy and numeracy skills than had hitherto been the case, the technological changes associated with the current Information Age require that many workers employ literacy skills that are far beyond those their parents needed. Even in jobs where high levels of literacy are not required for adequate job performance, employers have raised educational standards for appli- cants. For example, many employers now require higher levels of education for low- level and low- paid jobs in the service sector, which represented the fastest growing segment of the job market in Western industrialized coun- tries during the 1980s. This trend appears to be related to the perception that the “trainability” of workers is essential for businesses to adapt in a flexible manner to a rapidly changing economic environment. 76 Beyond Functional Literacy 111 In a similar vein, economist Robert Reich has highlighted the import- ance of z; vmbolic analysis skills in an economy that is shifting from high- volume to high- value production.” These skills are: l Abstraction -the capacity to order and make meaning of the mas- sive flow of information, to shape raw data into workable patterns. 9 System thinking- the capacity to see the parts in relation to the whole, to see why problems arise. l Experimental inquiry- the capacity to set up procedures to test and evaluate alternative ideas. l Collaboration -the capacity to engage in active communication and dialogue to get a variety of perspectives and to create consensus when that is necessary. Canadian social commentators Maud Barlow and Heather- Jane Robertson provide a more skeptical perspective on the workplace of the future. They point to the worldwide glut of skilled labor and the dim prospects for any significant immediate increase in North American jobs that would require “symbolic analysis.” Recent job creation has involved primarily service sector jobs, often part time and for minimum wage. They point out that business has a short- term vested interest in keeping levels of unemploy- ment high: The reality is that high unemployment keeps up competition for jobs, thus keeping wage demands and inflation down, which is good for business. . . . It is against this backdrop that business demands for structural change in how and what we teach young people must be considered. Simply put, if we knowingly train young workers for jobs that don’t exist, i. e. if we train a glut of young people for the jobs available, knowing that the resulting competition will drive down wages and create conditions that may be good for business, but not for anyone else, WC are sowing the seeds of great social unrest.‘* Barlow and Robertson suggest that the long- term interests of business and of the entire society are better served by promoting full employment and decent living standards so that the bulk of the population will have money to pump back into the economy. This scenario would promote long- term economic stability (which is good for business) and social cohesion rather 112 Global Networks, Global Communities than the “spiritual and cultural impoverishment” and social upheaval that is the inevitable outcome of current economic trends. Educator Arthur Wirth also highlights the inevitability of social unrest if present trends in business and education continue. Industry and schools face clear choices as we approach the twenty- first century. He points out that during the 1980s leaders in industry and labor began to see the long- standing tradition of top- down, expert- controlled, scientific management as the source of problems, rather than as the solution to problems. They were probing various forms of workplace democracy.. . as alternatives. At the same time, policy makers in American education, under the leadership of Secretary of Education William Bennett, were rushing in the opposite direction. The linchpin of educa- tional reform, Bennett argued, was measurable accountability- expert- designed, centrally monitored instruction and testing. 7g Wirth suggests that this model of top- down control (which he terms “automating”) is counterproductive for both business and schools in the postindustrial economy. Competitiveness can be ensured only by bringing workers into active participation and by shifting “considerable learning and power to people at work.” This second option, which would require workers with skills of symbolic analysis, he terms “informating.” Witth argues that the real literacy crisis resides in the fact that an increasing proportion of American children (largely from low- income minority communities) are denied access to schooling that will promote skills of symbolic analysis. The growing polarization between wealthy and impoverished confronts U. S. society with a choice of alternative futures: The first, our present path, is to maintain a society wounded by class divisions and unequal access to learning. For the near future this approach might be made to work. The upper echelons may see the society handi- capped by an impoverished non- white sector that is largely “out of it” and by many workers with only mediocre education and training. But for the moment they can keep America in the competitive race by choosing the high- tech, centrally administered “automating” option. . . . This option is based on the bet that the middle and lower- middle classes can be kept in line by the diversions of consumption and by playing on raciai fears. Beyond Functional Literacy 113 But social divisiveness could become increasingly troublesome. By &e year 2020, the top fifth may well earn more than 60% of American income, while the bottom fifth may drop to 2%. Well- educated elites will withdraw further into their secure enclaves, living a life with excellent heahb care, challenging work, effective schools, global tmvel, and elec- tronic linkages. The urban and rural poor will live largely out of sight in their decaying communities. The despair and hopelessness of their chil- dren will be facts of life- as will be the human waste of warehousing thousands of youths of color in prisons. A stepped- up security apparatus may be required to contain them. sO These trends are already well under way, as evidenced, for example, by the dramatic increase in security- related employment during the 1980s (work- place supervisors, police, judicial and corrections employees, private secu- rity personnel, the armed forces, and producers of military and domestic security equipment).” According to Wirth, there is an alternative to this nightmarish scenario; sI& fically, “the best bet for American social well- being is a population equipped with symbolic analysis skills, tempered by ecological awareness and a deep appreciation for the values and traditions of democracy.” Creation of the world- class schools necessary to provide the population with access to symbolic analysis skills “would require an investment in education comparable to what has been spent on building a high- tech military machine.“** In short, genuine educational reform that responds to the economic and scientific realities of the twenty- first century would require the reversal of two fundamental ways in which the educational system has served the societal power structure. First, it would requite significant long- term investment in the education of marginalized communities; a major step in this direction would be to equalize the amount of per- pupil expenditure between school districts within states; many states have almost a three to one ratio between high- expenditure and low- expenditure districts.@ The long- term economics of this investment are attractive when compared to the economics of escalating crime and incarceration. However, in the short term they are unpalatable to elite groups that benefit from the transfer of resources from poor and middle class to rich. Second, the effort to maintain control of the “products” of schooling by controllingwhat can be taught would have to give way to models of schooling 114 Globd Networka, Global Communitler based on collaboration and critical thinking. Passive internalization of inert content- which, as noted earlier, research suggests is the predominant mode of learning in U. S. classroom& oes not promote the kind of active intelh- gence that is required to create high skill jobs in the changing economy.* 4 By contrast, active intelligence is central to the kinds of projects that we described in chapter 2, in which students worked together to define an issue, carried out research, critically interpreted the resulting data, and then collaborated in searching for solutions to the problems identified. These students are developing the skills of symbolic analysis that will help secure them decent jobs and promote job creation through the economic expansion made possible by a highly skilled workforce. In summary, the neoconservative educational reform movement, with its emphasis on testing, accountability, and back to basics, has oriented many schools away from the learning realities of the twenty- first century. This apparent paradox derives from the accurate assessment by the neo- conserva- tive establishment that individuals who have developed critical literacy skills are less subject to manipulation and control. Their dilemma is where to draw the line between indoctrination that stultifies and the (at least partial) intellectual emancipation of students implied by some versions of the twenty- first- century workplace. Promotion of critical literacy and economic partici- pation for all students might, in fact, result in dramatically increased democratic participation, a prospect far from congenial to those who cur- rently control the resources and power within the society, particularly in view of the growing demographic strength of marginalized communities. Existential Realities By “existential realities,” we are referring to the increasing sense of fragility that characterizes our relationship to both our physical and social environ- ment. For example, a perusal of virtually any newspaper anywhere in the world will quickly show the extent of environmental deterioration and the enormity of the global ecological problems that our generation has created for our children’s generation to resolve. Similarly, the “new world order” of peaceful coexistence that ‘seemed at hand with the end of the Cold War has been overtaken by eruptions of brutal conflicts around the world. The summer 1992 riots directed against refugees in Germany or the Los Angeles uprising a few months earlier protesting racism in the United States are Beyond Functional Literacy 115 ,,, anifestations of the enormous pressures that lie just beneath the surface of the social fabric of Western industrialized countries. Despite these changed existential realities, many schools appear dedi- cated to insulating students from awareness of global issues rather than communicating a sense of urgency in regard to understanding and acting on them. In most schools across the continent, the curriculum has been sanitized such that students rarely have the opportunity to discuss critically, write about, or act upon issues that directly affect the society they will form. Issues such as racism, environmental pollution, genetic engineering, and the causes ofpoverty are regarded as too sensitive for fragile and impression- able young minds. Still less do students have the opportunity to cooperate with others from different cultural and/ or linguistic groups in exploring resolutions to these issues. A major reason why schools try to maintain a facade of innocence in relation to social and environmental issues is that such issues invariably implicate power relations in the domestic and international arenas. Pro- moting a critical awareness of how power is wielded at home and abroad is not a task that society expects educators to undertake. In fact, as we have argued, renewed demands for a core curriculum and for imposition of “cultural literacy” can be interpreted as a way ofcontrolling the information that students can access so as to minimize the possibility of deviant thoughts. In the shadows of the list of facts that every American should know is the list of facts that every American must be discouraged from knowing. Prominent among these is the history of imperialism and colo- nialism of Western powers from 1492 to the present. Also, students receive little incentive or encouragement to explore cultural and artistic work that focuses on social issues in ways that might challenge mainstream percep- tions or sensibilities. In this regard, Christian fundamentalist alliances have exerted a major influence in exorcising what they view as Satanic influences from the curriculum. Despite the fact that the Christian Right represents a nurneri- tally marginal group, few school districts are eager to be targeted for what frequently ends up being an expensive and divisive battle. While members ofthe business elite have promoted sanitization ofthe curriculum to remove “frills” (such as the arts) that they view as detracting from the learning of “basic skills,” the religious Right has promoted supersanitization, cam- paigning to remove not just obvious targets such as sex education, the 116 Glob4 N~ tworkr, Global Communiticr teaching of evolution, and muhiculturahsm but aho whole- language ap- proaches to literacy, creative wriring, cooperative learning, and any form of instruction that might reduce the effectiveness of indoctrination. s5 Clearly, these perspectives are at the opposite end of the spectrum from what we are advocating. The extremes to which cultural chauvinism can be taken are illustrated in the case of the fundamentalist school board of Lake County, Florida, which decreed that teachers can discuss other countries only if they make clear that America is the “best of the best”; the rationale there was that if students felt that the United States was inferior or equal to other countries then they would have no motive to go to war to defend it.% Needless to say, this is hardly a good starting point for developing intercultural literacy. While this example is extreme, it illustrates the pressures that educators are facing in their efforts to develop critically literate citizens who can cooperate across cultural, linguistic, and racial boundaries in the workplace, the broader society, and in the international arena. In summary, we have argued that students must be encouraged to focus their developing literacy skills on the analysis and resolution of both local and global problems. Such a focus is not in any sense in opposition to the acquisition of more basic literacy and numeracy skills. In fact, for many students, promotion of critical literacy may be a necessary condition for development of functional literacy. Students will be more motivated to learn when they can appreciate the relevance of the content to their own lives. Our analysis also suggests that issues related to the organization of society, specifically the division of resources and power, be taken off the taboo list of what is appropriate to explore in school. Students whose communities have been marginalized will increasingly perceive the omis- sion of these fundamental issues as dishonest and hypocritical, and this will reinforce their resistance to achievement under the current rules of the game. By contrast, a focus on critical inquiry, in a collaborative and supportive context, will encourage students to engage in learning in ways that will promote future productive engagement in their societies. The research, critical thinking, and creative problem- solving skills that this form of education entails will position students well for full participation in the economic and social realities of their global community. Excluding students from the learning process at school is pushing us toward a society where everyone loses because every dropout carries an expensive price tag for the entire society. Bqad Jhctional Litmary 117 In the next chapter, we explore the history of intercuhurai learning networks that have promoted skills of collaborative critica inquiry among 1 their students. These projects, carried out in many countries for most of this century, illustrate the feasibility and the potential of the alternative directions that we believe educationa reform should pursue.