Searching for Freedom Within a “Low-Ranking” School in a Neoliberal Age: A Work in Progress

• In Event: Education for Democracy in the Age of Neoliberalism

Abstract

As teacher and bricoleur, I “identify socially oppressive forms of meaning-making” by accounting for power-inscribed discourses and social practices that (mis)shape learning at Alternative High (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004, p. 11). The school itself, serves as a nexus of multiple Point Of Entry Texts (POETs) (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004). I present competing articulations of the school that emerge from a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992) that draws from the following POETs: curriculum documents; the Fraser Institute’s justification of school rankings; and interviews with students and staff. A contextualized analysis of (a)similarities among the texts indicate hegemonic and emancipatory social practices, forms, and structures that animate Alternative High. Possibilities of agency in relation to Freirian conceptions of liberatory pedagogy are considered.

Author

• Rodney Handelsman, McGill University