> Nate makes some good points about the balance between discourses of
public
> accountability and those of individual choice.
>
> Nevertheless, I don't think we can allow ourselves the luxury of taking
an
> either-or position on individual vs. social views of education.
>
I don't either. Discursively individualism conveys many things that have
nothing to do with the individual him/herself. My point was more along the
lines that seeing choice solely as a conservative or a right wing endeavor
misses the role progressives have played in that discourse. Like it or not
choice is very much an extension of an earlier progressive educational
discourse. While I definitely am very suspicious of many 'choice' reforms I
think its dangerous to solely write it off as right wing and not see or
address how it is very much a product of a progressive educational
discourse. One of the recent articles I submitted earlier quoted one in
favor of choice as looking at it as an issue of equity although in a
distorted way.
The other side of the spectrum with its emphasis on equity in public
education such as testing, phonics, Tayloristic models, direct instruction
etc. which many of us strongly resist and critique were based on a more
"social" idea of education. Many of those methods were able to hold the
concept of public education together. Many of the assumptions that public
education was once built upon have been dismantled and the assumptions they
have been replaced with (vulgar individualism) I don't see as being able to
hold public education together. Most I know see education as an individual
project - enlightenment, transjectories etc - which makes it difficult to
base a concept of public education upon. I don't think the enlightenment
idea of individualism and public education are necessarily that compatible.
"Is education to be immune from the economic transition in the rest of
society from the mode of mass production to the mode of customized
production? How could it be?"
No, it definitely is not immune to it, but it could serve as a buffer to
it. The decentering of the economy has its own pressures, consequences,
isolation which public education can certainly serve as a buffer for. We
all need a base and the home is not that anymore for many families in our
society. Parent/s working twelve hours a day, picking kids up at
afterschool, stopping at McDonald's, and then going to bed is a more common
schedule. Stop by a fast food restraint at 7:00 at night and your bound to
see it packed with families and their kids. Public education in contrast
to choice and vulgar individualism, whatever its form, implies a societal
responsibility that is so needed today. Mass production gave people steady
jobs, a good union, security etc. in which many would gladly take back in
place of customized production. While we need to acknowledge the economic
sphere we ought not become it. It seems to me customized production in the
economic sphere makes a rather strong argument for the need for strong
public education in the social sphere.
Nate