A Point in Time: A Point of Origin

• In Event: Inside Educational Activism and Organizing: Insurgent Insights on the Advancing Endgame Revolt in U.S. Education

Abstract

The focus of this paper is the historical realities leading up to the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action in 2011 and what has grown out of it. By contextualizing the movement in both scholarly texts and historical events (including very recent history), we will demonstrate the ways in which our thinking about reform and resistance contributed to the fomenting of actions. We will challenge the ethical and moral responsibilities associated with knowing, as a form of “conscientization” (Freire, 1997). By rooting our work within a chronological setting, we intend to demonstrate that moments are reached during which scholars make decisions about their position in the world – viewing this, again, as an ethical and moral dilemma. This piece becomes, then, an interrogation of epistemologies informed by morally- and ethically-based actions.
Although there is a plethora of responses in the media to legislation and policies affecting schools, there is a dearth of such responses that specifically call for action within the academy. Put simply, we are quite competent, as Dick Allington (2005) has noted, in interrogating a problem or situation from multiple perspectives, but lack in the necessary skill sets to respond beyond the intellectually and physically safe spaces of the mind. The failed Reading Excellence Act in 1999 gave birth to the pernicious No Child Left Behind iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This iteration dissolved dedication to solving problems of poverty in a solution of blame that focused on parents, teachers, and even children themselves. The excessive testing, praised on both sides of the congressional aisle in 2001, has given way to Common Core State Standards, more testing, abuses of testing by using it for teacher and school evaluation, and more.
This brief history served as the backdrop for the coming together of about 50 in Washington D.C. when, in 2010, a professor from a small university in Connecticut decided to walk across the country to confront the president and congress about the tragic results of NCLB. Jesse Turner walked into D.C. and greeted a small group that planned to make a larger return in 2011. This paper documents the ways the group was formed that spent a year – from July 2010 until July 2011 – planning the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action. We will explain the use of multiple forums at the July event (a two-day activists' conference, the main march and rally, and the post-rally summit). This four-day event gave birth to United Opt Out, the Network for Public Education, Badass Teachers, and more. Summer 2011 marked a notable shift from silence, complicity, and obedience to activism, talking back, interrogating, and challenging policies, mandates, and laws. Our moves from compliance to resistance will be presented, with a particular focus on challenges teachers and some brave (finally!) faculty are making to the mandated malpractice imposed on teachers and children for the past few decades.

Authors

• Richard J. Meyer, University of New Mexico

• Bess Altwerger, Towson University