Benevolent Dictatorship: How Good Intentions Maintain the Status Quo

• In Event: Reconceptualizing Humanization, Social Reproduction, and Social Transformation in Teacher Education: Transforming Schooling's Structural Violence

Abstract

For American schools to shift from sites of social reproduction towards sites of social transformation, they must courageously and intentionally engage the history of this country. America has always prided herself on her love of history. Yet, the White House and Mount Rushmore are characterized as monuments that reflect a rich history of democracy and justice, rather than painful reminders of slave labor and colonization. According to Lynn (1999), “To ignore this reality is to belie the history of this nation entirely” (p. 622). A full appreciation of history would allow us to confront all its parts: both the experiences of those who have carved their way into the fabric of this country and of those who have been strangled by oppressive ideologies, legislation and more directly, nooses. There is nothing neutral about confrontation. It assumes an area of concern. Therefore, a confrontation of American history acknowledges and operates from the standpoint that the dominant characterization of history is myopic and renders devastating outcomes. (Coates, 2014)

This paper examines what it means to confront history within the context of education by: 1) exploring the day-to-day violence that is inflicted on students when schools and educators are unwilling to respond to the “socially toxic environments” (Garbarino, 1995) that emerge from historical oppression and by 2) re-conceptualizing teacher education as a viable source of interruption of these socially toxic environments. Through participant observations and student interviews, this paper presents the findings from a case study that follows the socially toxic schooling experiences of two black boys (one middle school and one high school student).

The use of critical pedagogy (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; hooks, 1994), critical race theory (Ladson-Billing, 1998; MacKinnon, 2013) and decolonial (Bhabha, 1994; Smith, 2000) frameworks within this paper help to explain the study participants’ schooling experiences as an outcome of the historical and contemporary ways in which research(ers) and social institutions, such as schools, perpetuate social inequities. These frameworks provide the language to understanding the processes by which structural violence produces concentrated poverty and consequently concentrated violence within marginalized communities, much like the communities in which the study participants reside. Essentially critical pedagogy, critical race theory and decolonial frameworks engage a fuller appreciation of history; these frameworks forces us to deal with what has happened, to endure the pain of what has been done to people and to engage the consequences of ahistorical frameworks within our analysis of how we understand the world today.

Finally, this paper draws from critical pedagogy and decolonial research, in addition to cutting-edge research in public health and adolescent development, to make the case that schools, teachers and teacher education programs must engage with this research to improve our ability to more intentionally and effectively deal with our shortcomings and to provide a more responsive and humanizing educational experience for youth.

Author

• Tiffani Marie, San Jose State University