As the
nation erupts with demonstrations and protests against the police killing of
George Floyd and the long years of systemic and institutional racism that it
represents, I have been thinking about the role each of us has in trying to
form a more perfect union. Since 2006,
the Journal of Educational Controversy has been trying to shed light on
the inequalities in education by examining topics like “The School to Prison
Pipeline,” “Black Lives Matter and the Education Industrial Complex,” “The
Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education,” “Challenging
the Deficit Model and the Pathologizing of Children: Envisioning Alternative
Models,” “Schooling as if Democracy Matters,” “Who Defines the Public in Public
Education?” and “Jonathan Kozol's Nation of Shame: the Restoration of
Apartheid Schooling in America Forty Years Later,” among others.
We cannot examine the tensions in our schools
without understanding their roots in our larger political philosophy and
history. How do institutions like schools reproduce the
larger inequities in society? How does
the socializing experience of the hidden curriculum contribute to the
reproduction of class and racial injustices? How are taken-for-granted
assumptions rooted in history experienced at the level of our commonplace
understanding? How does such
understanding provide categories that tacitly accept an ideology about what
counts as “normal”? How do the values embedded in school culture contribute to
the powerlessness of students of dominated cultures? How does the way we define our problems
contribute to the ways we construct our solutions?
At this
time, our efforts seem so small and insignificant when you watch the moral courage
of protesters on the streets and all the pain and suffering that is being experienced. Still I
have to believe that there is some power in the pen. The late philosopher Maxine
Greene who fought tirelessly for social justice wrote the words that we have
used as our logo: “This journal opens
and reopens spaces for thoughtfulness and concern.” Perhaps, in some small way, we can face
boldly the controversies, injustices and tensions of our time and help to clarify
and deepen an understanding of their moral significance. Hopefully, this will contribute in some small
way to the understanding and solutions we seek.
