A Critical Discourse Analysis of Philanthropic Spectacle(s) in K–12 Education Reform

• In Event: Using Theories of Language and Power to Investigate Pressing Aspects of Education

Abstract

According to a number of critical scholars, philanthropic foundations are, in fact, legally sanctioned, tax-exempt means through which economic elites maintain control over (non-) taxable wealth (Saltman, 2010), demonstrate “social responsibility” (Aronowitz, 2008), and deflect attention from structural inequities that produce the very problems on which their charity depends (Kovacs, 2011). The emergence of “venture philanthropy,” a new mode of philanthropic giving that conceives of schooling as a private good and draws upon finance and business strategies to “deliver impact” and to “fix” broken schools (Saltman, 2010; Scott, 2009; Ravitch, 2011), signals the increasingly powerful role foundations have assumed within the cultural political terrain of education reform debates.

Aligning with this year’s annual theme, “Public Scholarship to Educate Diverse Democracies,” this paper theorizes the role and positionality of foundations in relation to issues of educational access and opportunity. Integrating spectacle theory (Edelman, 1988; Smith, Miller-Kahn, Heinecke, Jarvis, 2004; Kellner, 2003) and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2013/2001), this paper explores the discursive frames philanthropic foundations circulate and the extent to which mainstream print media outlets publicize these particular discourses. Drawing on philanthropic (n=71) and mainstream print media coverage (n=61) of the top-three most publicized foundations (Broad Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Gates Foundation) during the year 2014, this empirical and theoretical paper examines the distinctive and overlapping features of philanthropic spectacle(s) that shape and are shaped by historic discourses of reform.

Based on this conceptual lens, three claims are put forward. First, each foundation advances a distinctive spectacle of reform characterized by a unique deployment of symbolic language, casted roles, and dramaturgical events that advance a particular narrative of reform. Foundations converged through “front-stage” performances of “partnership” that belie “back-stage” social practices of “investment” wherein foundations control and direct grantees’ movement, stabilizing subject positions of “investors” and “invested”, and ensuring that grantees’ actions align with foundation’s spectacles. Based on these analyses of foundation-circulated texts, I argue that mainstream print media serves two functions: as public broadcast of each philanthropic spectacle; and as a way of obscuring the active, political investor-roles foundations assume by casting foundations’ practices through apolitical, financial terms (e.g., “funded”, “donated”, “backed”).

By detailing the actual published narratives through which lay public are invited into the education reform debate, this project directly addresses “the interplay of research, politics, and social analysis.” Specifically, this project contributes to scholarship on the role of venture philanthropy in education reform and its constitutive role in shaping the broader political culture through which particular politically laden visions of schooling are maintained, contested, and occasionally transformed.

Author

• Ethan Chang, University of California - Santa Cruz