Yeah, yeah...so this act of blogging regularly will inspire me to be more productive just isn't quite working out as I had hoped. That said, let's not cry over spilled milk. I attended the Rhetoric Society of America and an interesting session revisiting Dewey vs. Lippmann (in short, it's the debate about the nature of "the public" in a modern age, where Lippmann argues that the modern world is too complex, and people are too busy to take an active interest in everything they need to know as members of the public; therefore a technocratic elite--in Lippmann's world "objective" journalists--would sift through the information, distill it, and then present it, and the public's job would be to get behind those people who they perceive to be the smartest at handling it VS. Dewey's version of New England town meeting writ large, where even if people can't understand the nuances of the farm bill, they can understand the major issues at stake and engage with others in a community to make good decisions...a sort of lots of mini-publics discussing a number of ideas--not necessarily all they need to know or do--and people would be part of many different publics...a sort of interest group democracy).
And it got me thinking about my "question"...I know it revolves around the confluence of the terms "media" "education" and "public" (and probably some form of "hegemony" or "global economic supremacy" etc. set in contradistinction to "democracy" or some similar concept), but is it best expressed as:
1) what is the role of "the media" (a term I recognize to be problematic, but in popular discourse for a reason; therefore used without estrangement quotes hereafter--i.e., I'm not looking to have that conversation now) in [influencing/ creating/ framing] education policy? [Is a concomitant, "what should it be" implied? necessary? And there we get to the question of how big does the question need to be? How small a slice am I looking to carve out so as to be manageable--since obviously that's a problem--yet still large enough to constitute "a contribution to the field"--and absent a defined field of folks engaged in this debate, how does one determine that? But that's another existential crisis for a different post.] Or is it:
2) what role does [and again, could/should] the media play in creating a public who can advocate for education[al change beneficial to democracy and not corporate hegemony]? Or is it:
3) etc. (a.k.a., to be continued)
And I suppose the issue again here is "is 'the question' supposed to perform a 'rhetorical"'function?" That is to say, is it supposed to be a "rhetorical question", the straight man to set up my punchline, of the answer I already know, and the work from proposal onward to be the marshaling of evidence to drive that point home? Or is it more the role of defining an area I believe worth investigating and the work from the proposal forward is to trace the outlines of what's profitable to talk about in that "field" (however constructed)?
I presume it to be the first (especially since that's more manageable), but I'm more intrigued by doing the work of the second--though perhaps that's presumed to be the preliminary work (that I'm supposed to already have completed) to get me to the first. All that said...I think what's interesting about that formulation/musing about the definitional aspect of the "question" is that it reflects the larger question above. That is to say, what I'm really interested in is how does one construct a public capable of talking about these things intelligently? (i.e., since I can't find more people like me to talk to, how do I grow them...or put less arrogantly--how do I get people to understand me, for it's in that act of dialogue that we come to a shared set of frames/common language/mutual understanding that is also associated with "community" "democracy" "the unforced force of discourse" or whathaveyou.)
So the problem that needs sense made of it, that we need to get smarter about, etc., is (in this iteration)...how do we get people to view the purpose of education (more) as the induction of the young into democratic practice, limited hierarchy, and/or social justice? [I am, of course, presuming here that I don't need to argue that as a value set worth espousing--though obviously it's contestable, otherwise it wouldn't be a condition we would have to work to obtain--and that points out that I don't think that it's necessary to show that we need more of it. Is that an unreasonable assumption? Isn't that the challenge of being an academic? One has to (be ready to) question every assumption?]
So the answer I would pose would be to say "through presentations of education (and educational policy issues) in the media". Why?:
1) Current depictions are exceedingly focused on hierarchy (either as meritocracy, or as [unintentional? does it matter?] neoliberal worldview)
2) most people's interaction with education [policy] comes through the media (warranted assertion? acceptable as axiomatic? I'd say yes.)
2b) I'd say this about that point: people have limited knowledge of what actually goes on in schools...their conceptions are informed by their experience as students (however long ago that was), and descriptions of it in the media (which fall into two major types [is it even a question of major vs. minor? Are there any "minor" types?]: narratives about the heroic teacher struggling against the odds (one of which is always an uncaring bureaucracy) to touch the hearts of h/er students, who repay h/er efforts with learning and love, and the other type--the broadside against the institution in general as bloated, uncaring, overly afraid of lawsuits [and consequently irrational], that churns out students unprepared for anything.) [Anybody wanna argue with that?]
3) these depictions make it easy to withdraw support from schools because they're presented as fundamentally broken (because all depictions show systemic failures--all successes come in spite of the system, rather than because of it--even depictions of successful interventions (e.g., some curricular innovation or some new intervention program tried within a given school)--present it as the work of dedicated teachers, parents, or staff members, who fought to make it happen, and are worried that it won't continue to receive funding, etc. In other words, even though it's pitched as an attempt to highlight systemic interventions, the fear that the intervention won't be able to get up to scale undercuts the idea that any systemic change can work.
1 comment:
Very interesting points about the consistency of the depiction of education (defined as real students learning relevant things) as functioning only occasionally within an inherently dysfunctional system. Such a depiction allows society to see most educators as too lazy or incompetent to break through the system and teach the students well. Yet, you are correct that the system itself is the one thing all politicians and the public are terrified of dismantling lest anarchy reign. No one (except the teachers' unions and individual teachers) want to
"just allow the teachers to teach whatever they want." In short, all seem to agree the system is the problem, but most fear the solution more than the problem. And there is merit in the fear. In Ohio, the legislature has tried to experiment with charter schools for the past decade, allowing the charter schools to set their own curriculum and rules and freeing the charter schools from all the bureaucratic red tape and standards mandated by the State. The result has been pretty uniformly disastrous. Having millions of State dollars to spend, having no unions to contend with, having open-ended hiring and firing policies for teachers and staff, and having sole discretion to teach how and what they want, the charter schools have (with very few and very well funded exceptions) performed abysmally. Many have gone bankrupt; the students consistently underperform on State tests; and evidence of fraud and mismanagement is everywhere. That is all an aside and not relevant to your questions of how to proceed to study such issues.
In speech classes, a common technique for preparing persuasive presentations (which is what a dissertation is) is to force to students to decide whether their speech will focus questions of fact, of value, or of policy. It sounds as though you are struggling with those same issues, but I get the clear impression from your questions that you haven't separated those questions out and want to cover all three basic areas of inquiry. Here's what to ask yourself:
(1) Will your dissertation attempt to define the facts about educational media (thereby marshaling evidence to show what are the terms and borders and tropes and frames of media that deal with education)? You believe that there is a genuine slant to discussions of education that prevent it from being effective, but not all people would agree with you. If your dissertation is attempting to prove the facts about the media slant, your job would be to prove there is and that it can be different (not necessarily better or worse, but different). Nothing can change unless there is an understanding and an agreement about the nature of language regarding education and educational policy. Your job would be to outline the nature of that language if your dissertation focuses on the questions of fact.
(2) Will it attempt to argue for or against the values of that media as it presents a view of education as being necessarily (or preferentially) hierarchical or democratic, for example, as authoritarian or collegial, as aiming for good democratic citizenship or for good economic returns, as being globally focused or locally focused, as rewarding the elite or as placating the masses, etc.? You have a bias toward the collective good whereas many politicians and business people would argue that individual freedoms are more important. If your dissertation intends to deal with questions of value, and the values of education, and, thereby, the media's responsibility to shape education toward a certain set of values, you would have to justify your claims and your vision of a better education and a better media in addition to step (1) showing that there is a media bias. Rarely is that easy in a dissertation, and especially in a social science dissertation that prefers to describe reality rather than value reality.
(3) Will it attempt to argue for a change in educational or media policy? It sounds as though this is where your heart is, but it is not clear what policy you have in mind. And if you do decide that your dissertation is really going to address the need for changes in educational policy or media policy, then you will probably take the tack that you want your dissertation committee to simply passively agree with your analysis rather than inspire them to act. In either case, your organization would have to show there is a need for a change in the policy, would have to show the plan for a change and would have to establish that the plan is practical and possible.
Dissertations usually focus on questions of fact, but your outline proposal sounds like it wants to jump into the more difficult realms of value and policy change.
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