In a nutshell, I want my dissertation to be about the following:
The story I want to tell is about how the media gets it wrong on education. And by, "how they get it wrong," I mean how they tell the wrong stories about education. This entails 1) detailing what stories they're telling, 2) explaining where those stories are coming from [is this particularly necessary to explain why they don't work?], 3) explaining why those stories don't work, and 4) giving examples that might "get it right".
So now, let's break that down: Two big questions arise, but which do I address first?
1) How do I do that? (i.e., method)
2) What does this look like in a more narrowed down way (i.e., forming a question).
Let's start with 2 (even though I've spent the semester reading about #1). The main story (that I see) they're getting wrong is parroting "all children can learn" uncritically. We're starting to see it crack as NCLB is coming up for reauthorization and one of the main issues states are starting to confront is that there's no way that they'll hit 100% by 2014, and all those states that started with low annual pass rates (hoping that reauthorization would change the goals) are realizing that now is the time because their curve is really trending up now. The other pressures are: the need to add science as well as English and math, and the fact that we're now seeing a number of schools that are coming up for "restructuring" and no confidence that the most drastic measure for failing schools under NCLB will be any more effective than anything tried before. So the pressure on that narrative is starting to show, so we're at a point where a new narrative may emerge.
But I'm not seeing that emerge...willingly, I should say. The storyline that's emerging is that states are trying to figure out how to get to 100%, and that's difficult. On one hand, it's tailor-made for the news--as far as education stories go--it's got conflict (schools vs. whatever various struggles the article cares to detail that schools face to get to 100%), drama (in the sense of a timeframe schools are working against), in a story that is a tight package (look at the test scores--how close are we?).
1 comment:
In reading this, and in considering your two later blogs, I'm now thinking that the problem with media coverage of education and of education policy is the result of there being no national consensus of what "education" really means in America. One of the repeated acclamations about the China Olympics was how orchestrated everything was, how the participants were always in sync with one another, how the masses of people worked as one unit for the greater good of China. Many were surprised at this; a few were appalled at this. The point, however, is that China's educational system is one system with a common goal that is not (openly) questioned or challenged: the individual's purpose is to achieve for the good of the State. In America we don't even have discussion about this. We take it for granted that the individual should achieve his/her "full potential," whatever that means, but to what end is never discussed. Assumptions are made that every child can "succeed" if given the right circumstances and resources and time, but what success is is not defined. America is quite contradictory about what the purpose of an education is, and I'll bet the language about educational policy shows such contradictions regarding the individual vs society, personal gain vs national economic gain, getting a job vs getting a life, the need for authority vs the need to be independent and challenge authority, the role of higher education vs the role of K-12, etc.
The point is this: How can the media adequately cover educational policy if no one agrees what the policy should be and no politician wants to raise the questions that would highlight the contradictions in our policies?
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