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105: A Look Inside "No Excuses" Charter Schools w/ Dr. Joanne Golann
25 Plays3 years ago
Today we are joined by Dr. Joanne Golann. Dr. Golann is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, and focuses on how culture shapes educational policy and practice. Her recently released book, Scripting the Moves: Culture & Control in a "No-Excuses" Charter School, follows Joanne over 18 months as she observes a “high-performing” charter school, documenting the various regimented structures, student and parent perspectives, what the teachers do...and more - which we’ll begin to talk about in this interview.
GUESTS
Dr. Joanne Golann, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University
RESOURCES
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 105 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:00:19
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
00:00:23
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Abraham Angel, Sally Orna, and Tim Fox.
00:00:32
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:34
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Introduction to Dr. Joanne Golan and Her Work
00:00:55
Speaker
Today, we are joined by Dr. Joanne Golan.
00:00:58
Speaker
Dr. Joanne is an assistant professor of public policy and education and an assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University and focuses on how culture shapes educational policy and practice.
00:01:09
Speaker
Her recently released book, Scripting the Moves, Culture and Control in a No Excuses Charter School, follows Joanne over 18 months as she observes a high performing charter school documenting the various regimented structures,
00:01:20
Speaker
student and parent perspectives, what the teachers do and more, which we're talking about in this interview.
00:01:25
Speaker
So Joanna, it's nice to see you.
00:01:26
Speaker
I'm glad that you're here.
00:01:29
Speaker
And the first question I have is really like, why?
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Why do this for such a long period of time?
00:01:35
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And if you could provide like a little bit of context about the school.
00:01:39
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Sure.
00:01:39
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So I did observations for about a year and a half in a no excuses charter school that I call Dream Academy.
00:01:47
Speaker
And for a little context of what no excuses charter schools are, charter schools are public schools of choice.
00:01:53
Speaker
So you may have one in your community and students apply to them.
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Speaker
So instead of going to their zone neighborhood school, they may choose a charter school as an alternative.
Understanding Charter Schools
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charter schools started in about the 90s, and they now serve, you know, maybe six or 7% of all public school students.
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Speaker
They sometimes have a theme, they tend to have a little bit more, they do have more flexibility than traditional public schools in terms of what they can do, what their school day looks like, what their curriculum looks like.
00:02:25
Speaker
So no excuses, charter schools are a subset of these.
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And they've
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kind of garnered a lot of policy attention because they've been pretty successful in raising standardized test scores for the low income Black and Latinx students they predominantly serve.
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So you may have heard of schools like KIPP, Achievement First, Success Academies, Uncommon Schools.
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These are all classified under what we call the no excuses label.
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Speaker
And why did I spend so long in one of these schools?
00:02:56
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Well, I was a graduate student at the time and I had to write a dissertation on something.
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And I happened to hear about these schools.
Methods and Environment in No-Excuses Schools
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Speaker
And I actually happened to hear about a particular practice that they had called SLANT.
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Speaker
And SLANT is an acronym and it stands for sit up, lean forward, ask questions, nod for understanding and track the speaker.
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And it's a way of kind of teaching kids how to show attention in what you might think of as a kind of
00:03:26
Speaker
white middle class way.
00:03:28
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So, you know, when I talk, I not a lot, but, you know, no one ever explicitly taught me, you know, this is how you need to show attention.
00:03:36
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Well, I was sort of intrigued by this explicit attempt to teach what we in sociology called cultural capital.
00:03:44
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So I went into the project with this sort of theoretical kind of idea in mind, and learned a lot by sort of immersing myself in the school.
00:03:52
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The experiences that you share are, I mean, they're fascinating.
00:03:56
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Just to be like a fly on the wall in a system that is so, it's odd to be controlled as much as you are in an academy like this.
00:04:05
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Could you describe just briefly, like, what does a school day look like for a student that goes through this process?
00:04:11
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Yeah, so the school days are longer.
00:04:12
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The school I was at, I think it was 730 to 4, and I
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it has a very rigid set of kind of behavioral expectations.
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So if students do not arrive by 730 and there's no bus transportation, they receive a same day detention.
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There was a particular tiled square, line of tiled square in the school that students had to walk on and they had to walk in straight single file lines.
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hands on their, you know, by their sides, they couldn't touch the walls, they couldn't talk to each other, so hallways were silent.
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There was an elaborate set of rules, kind of rewards and consequences system, which lots of schools use, but in this, in these schools, it's much more elaborate.
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So, you know, you might get an infraction for putting a head on a desk, or, you
00:05:05
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you know, having a side conversation in a classroom or not having a shirt tucked in or rolling your eyes at a teacher.
00:05:13
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Over the course of the school year, you know, there were 15,000 infractions assigned to about 250 students at the school, which amounted to about one infraction assigned every three days.
00:05:27
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So it was just a very, like you said, tightly controlled system, both for students and I would argue for teachers as well.
00:05:35
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Before we jump into the specifics there, because I really want to dive into those discipline statistics because it's shocking to me, just to contextualize kind of the purpose of the book, because you talk about how it's not necessarily just to demean this one individual school.
00:05:51
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but to make those connections to the broad work that's being done across a variety of different schools.
00:05:58
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Like you talk about like broken windows policing being similar to what they call the sweat, the small stuff policy.
00:06:05
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As a teacher reading this work, what do you hope that folks are taking away?
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Yeah, I appreciate your kind of note noting that in the book, because that is what I'm
Narratives and Equity in Education
00:06:15
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trying to do.
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I think there are these broader,
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narratives and practices that we can find in all sorts of schools, not just these charter schools.
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Maybe we see them to the extreme in some cases in this school.
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But I was just talking with a friend yesterday who was complaining about the bonus bucks that her first grader gets in school for behavior and gets these dollars given and taken away.
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So yeah, what I'm really hoping teachers and administrators
00:06:44
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get from the book is a way to reflect on their own practices and their own assumptions.
00:06:49
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So I definitely understand that teachers and administrators have a very difficult job and, you know, constantly putting out fires in some cases, making decisions on the fly.
00:07:00
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So it's not to, it's actually not to criticize them and what they're doing, but to say, hey, if you step back and think, you know, when you're saying, you
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you know, this student just has no structure at home or his parents never show up.
00:07:13
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Do you realize that's actually connected to sort of a broader narrative about poor kids, right?
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And a narrative that might have racist implications or
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You know, if you think about your school's disciplinary practices, have you ever thought of the ways in which they're tied to racialized social control and what's been happening in the Black Lives Matter movement, right?
00:07:35
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So just trying, and I've tried to sort of make sociology written in a way that's accessible so that someone can, like a teacher, can sort of make connections and say, oh, huh, I never thought about it that way.
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Maybe that'll make me rethink something I do or say.
00:07:50
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It's interesting to kind of tease apart the intention versus the practice.
00:07:56
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If we were to take this at face value and not be cynical about it, the idea behind this is equity minded.
00:08:02
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I was reading something like so slant, the Douglas Moms, teach like a champion and teach like a champion 3.0 is coming out pretty soon.
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Speaker
And they're talking about how it's going to shift to more equity driven language.
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And I think they're rebranding slant to something else.
00:08:16
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So it doesn't sound as harsh.
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but it's still ostensibly the same thing.
00:08:21
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You know, in your read of this, is the work that's being done actually accomplishing the thing that it's set out to do?
00:08:31
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Yeah, is it promoting equity?
00:08:33
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I think that's a tough question because I guess it depends what lens you put on it, right?
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So I think a lot of people think about equity in terms of individual outcomes.
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you know, I think that's how schools think about it a lot.
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Are we getting this particular kid?
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Are we giving them more opportunities than they would have had had they not been in our school?
00:08:54
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As a sociologist, we think more about systems and society.
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So are these schools actually making a positive impact, you know, on society, on public education?
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Speaker
Are they
00:09:08
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helping students develop a critical consciousness that's going to lead them to feel empowered and make social change in their communities and in the world.
00:09:16
Speaker
You know, so there are different metrics, you know, you can say they're very successful on a standardized test scale, but you know, they're, what about, you know, career outcomes?
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What about health outcomes?
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What about, you know, did they feel respected and affirmed or, you know, to your own podcast, do they feel humanized, you know,
00:09:36
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treated like human beings at school.
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So all of those things I think are related to thinking about equity.
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So I would say it depends, yeah, it depends what viewpoint you're taking.
00:09:49
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It's very intriguing because it has almost like a utopian element to it where it's all at what cost.
00:09:57
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And it seems like we've created this heavily regimented dystopia in our attempt to improve schools.
00:10:04
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I wanted to list off some of these discipline statistics.
00:10:08
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Because this was the page, like I had read, I was reading through the stories and I was like, this is bad, this is bad.
00:10:13
Speaker
Like, this seems a little bit too controlled for me.
00:10:15
Speaker
And then you listed the actual stats and I'm like, my God, this is insane.
00:10:20
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In this one school over the course of 188 days,
00:10:24
Speaker
there were 15,423 infractions for 250 students.
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And only six students did not receive one of those infractions.
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And three-fourths of the infractions resulted in detentions, which is something like 12,000 detentions.
00:10:42
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And all of this work is meant to, quote, prepare students for a better future.
00:10:50
Speaker
And that concept, it seems like everyone slowly, teachers and students, maybe started to internalize.
00:10:59
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And a lot of that's related to that pull you're up by your bootstraps.
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It's very meritocracy style language, which...
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looking into those things you begin to realize that they're not true there's no such thing as a meritocracy uh there are systems that place that hold certain people back and not others it doesn't acknowledge those systemic structures
00:11:21
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And it seems like as a result, those schools then are ignoring, that are minimizing those structural problems and focused entirely on the individual.
Cultural Narratives and Systemic Issues
00:11:30
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And while I was reading this entire book, I couldn't help but note that the same folks that tend to support these inner city charter schools are the same folks who, at a much wider angle, are looking at things like critical race theory, counteracting the concept of systemic racism,
00:11:49
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very, very individually, like Americana focused of this like old, like John Wayne type figure who can, you know, can accomplish anything with the right mindset.
00:12:00
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But do you see connections between the modern culture war in schools and what these charter schools are doing?
00:12:10
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I'll touch on a couple of things you said before I jump in there, because I think they're, they're also relevant.
00:12:18
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This idea of the
00:12:19
Speaker
ends justifying the means, right?
00:12:22
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So yes, if anyone were to take a clear look at the rigid discipline and the consequences, they would say, like you said, this is crazy, right?
00:12:29
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But you know, how is it then that you have, you know, intelligent, hardworking, caring teachers and principals justifying implementing, you know, systems like these?
00:12:41
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And I think there is a mindset that like, hey,
00:12:44
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Think about the counterfactual.
00:12:46
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Like, you know, we know we've been in schools where there's no learning, you know, where there are fights going on every day.
00:12:53
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And so here's a system where at least, hey, it works.
00:12:57
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We can get students in their seat.
00:12:59
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We have some evidence, you know, that our students are learning.
00:13:02
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I think you can't, though, justify the means by the end.
00:13:07
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You know, I think you need to think about, you know,
00:13:11
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Are there limits to the means?
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What are really acceptable means?
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What do we think is appropriate for schools to do?
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Can they do anything in the name of equity and boosting standardized test scores?
00:13:25
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So I think that's really important to consider.
00:13:27
Speaker
You also said there's no such thing as a meritocracy.
00:13:30
Speaker
I appreciate that because, yeah, I think it is connected with sort of CRT in that way.
00:13:38
Speaker
So I think that pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality is very much embedded in American culture.
00:13:47
Speaker
And education is deeply tied to that American dream.
00:13:50
Speaker
So lots of parents, you know, lots of immigrant parents, lots of probably low income parents, lots of parents in general will say like schooling, you know, is your ticket to upward mobility.
00:14:01
Speaker
Schooling is your ticket to success.
00:14:03
Speaker
And there's something to be said for that as well.
00:14:06
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But I think what CRT is pushing is to ask us to carefully and critically think about who's included in that American dream and who's excluded both historically and currently.
00:14:22
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And I think part of, you know, the pushback against CRT is, well, oh, you know, if we talk, if we say racism is endemic, then people are going to feel, you know, like there's nothing they can do.
00:14:34
Speaker
But I think thinking about structural problems doesn't take away agency, right, of students or teachers.
00:14:40
Speaker
Right.
00:14:42
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it doesn't make you powerless.
00:14:43
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In fact, I would argue the opposite, right?
00:14:45
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If I were a principal, and I recognize that, you know, there are racial inequities and discipline in my school, that empowers me to really make significant changes to my school's disciplinary practices that can change, you know, the trajectory of my students, you know, maybe I'm not aware of that, right, that there are so many implications, but there are, there's so much work on sort of the school to prison pipeline, and how these
00:15:09
Speaker
these disciplinary practices in school can impact, you know, can send students on sort of the wrong pathway, you know.
00:15:17
Speaker
So, you know, and I think students themselves too, if they recognize the structural problems in society, they can start to brainstorm ways to sort of dismantle those.
00:15:28
Speaker
So yeah, I think there's, I see the worry, you know, like, oh, this is not American.
00:15:34
Speaker
This is sort of gonna make people
00:15:37
Speaker
you know, feel hopeless, helpless.
00:15:41
Speaker
But I guess I see it differently.
00:15:50
Speaker
Hey there, I hope you're enjoying the podcast so far.
00:15:52
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:16:44
Speaker
Now, back to the podcast.
00:16:55
Speaker
Do you think that for students who are going through this schooling experience from a very young age, folks that have enrolled in this charter school industry for 10 plus years of their life, that they internalize that message?
00:17:09
Speaker
Like, do you think it takes away power in a sense?
00:17:12
Speaker
so to an
Messages of Powerlessness and Family Choices
00:17:13
Speaker
extent, right?
00:17:13
Speaker
I think, you know, there's, I give, I give people a lot of agency.
00:17:17
Speaker
So I think there's certain, it's not like you've been socialized into a system and students have room to resist and they do all the time.
00:17:26
Speaker
And I saw that all the time in the school, but I think it certainly doesn't encourage students to think, I think in a structural way about change and, you
00:17:38
Speaker
you know, I remember having a conversation with someone about, you know, why haven't students organized more in these schools?
00:17:44
Speaker
And I was like, that's interesting.
00:17:46
Speaker
And it really has happened more so in light of, um,
00:17:51
Speaker
social movements in society, right?
00:17:53
Speaker
So with Black Lives Matter and Me Too, you know, seeing that activism in the community has motivated some students within these schools, right, to take action and to start forming these kind of Instagram groups and whatnot.
00:18:05
Speaker
But why not before, right?
00:18:06
Speaker
And I think that that is part of it, right?
00:18:09
Speaker
If you're
00:18:11
Speaker
If what you're told is, hey, following these rules, following these policies, these are going to get you to college.
00:18:18
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If you keep hearing that, then you kind of maybe resign yourself to, OK, I don't like being here, but if I do this, it's going to help me be successful.
00:18:29
Speaker
And so I'll just keep going with it.
00:18:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:34
Speaker
They are teaching a mindset of perseverance in a sense.
00:18:38
Speaker
It's kind of an odd approach to it.
00:18:41
Speaker
You always have to be like a go-getter.
00:18:42
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And if you're staying behind, life is basically passing you by.
00:18:47
Speaker
which is a strong mindset to have, but it just seems so odd when juxtaposed next to, like if anyone hasn't seen the Uncommon Schools YouTube videos, like the training videos, where they show an example of a quote unquote good class.
00:19:04
Speaker
And when you see what these students are subjected to, it's,
00:19:08
Speaker
It's so, it's really weird.
00:19:11
Speaker
Like you'll see a group of usually about 25 almost entirely Black or Latinx students with one white teacher.
00:19:19
Speaker
And they are led almost military style.
00:19:23
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Second grade, they are all like moving in a regimented, like everybody stands up completely silently, walks out of the room.
00:19:29
Speaker
Look at how great this transition is.
00:19:32
Speaker
It's just, it's so odd to me that those two different ideas are juxtaposed.
00:19:36
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You have this idea of extreme control next to a go-getter society.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, that is interesting.
00:19:44
Speaker
And I actually show, so Teach Like a Champion comes with a set of video clips as well.
00:19:50
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I think many, you know, maybe some from Uncommon Schools of those teachers.
00:19:54
Speaker
And I also show a couple of those clips to my own undergraduate students.
00:19:57
Speaker
And they are also quite taken aback by the level of
00:20:02
Speaker
kind of conformity and compliance, you know, emphasized there.
00:20:06
Speaker
But yeah, I think the school also, you know, I've read this and overheard this in other schools too, not just the one I was at, you know, they'll say things like, there are three other students, you know, who want your spot.
00:20:18
Speaker
So like, if you can't handle this, you know, you can go somewhere else.
00:20:23
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They'll kind of say that it's your choice.
00:20:25
Speaker
or things like, you know, we are the best school in this city and show their, their statistics, you know, their test scores, compared to others, you know, other schools.
00:20:38
Speaker
So there is
00:20:39
Speaker
this, yeah, this push of like, we're better, you know, you know, I, yeah, I do see it.
00:20:47
Speaker
I, you know, they might not say it that explicitly, but it is sort of telling students like we're doing things differently, we're better.
00:20:55
Speaker
So you, you know, you need to follow kind of what, what we're doing here and show good and get through because they are explicit about sort of teaching character as well.
00:21:06
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A lot of these schools kind of embrace positive character
00:21:09
Speaker
And the idea of, yeah, we're going to show grit.
00:21:11
Speaker
We're going to show self-control.
00:21:13
Speaker
I think that kind of builds into, too, understanding how this relates to the family.
00:21:19
Speaker
So you have parents, family members, extended family members, who at many times throughout the book, they're upset with how the school is managing their kids.
00:21:28
Speaker
Like they'll get a phone call and be like, you know, how dare you?
00:21:30
Speaker
That's racist.
00:21:31
Speaker
Like you shouldn't be doing this.
00:21:33
Speaker
But at the exact same time,
00:21:35
Speaker
They tended to, mostly, accept those circumstances.
00:21:39
Speaker
They kept their kids in the school because at the end of the day, they're seeing this as their ticket, their ticket to get into college or have a good career.
00:21:48
Speaker
How do we balance that?
00:21:50
Speaker
Because there's an argument to be made that you're taking away family agency by arguing against this because the alternative is not so great either.
00:22:00
Speaker
And criticizing this and perhaps even dismantling
00:22:05
Speaker
those schools doesn't leave a solid structure.
00:22:09
Speaker
Does criticizing the practices and documenting the school have that counterintuitive effect of being, you know, this is not what the parents actually want.
00:22:18
Speaker
They want this.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a very interesting tension that you raise.
00:22:23
Speaker
And I would say supporters of charter schools often
00:22:27
Speaker
often will say that, like, well, this is what these parents want.
00:22:31
Speaker
So, you know, it's their choice to put their students into these schools.
00:22:37
Speaker
And I would say, yes, it is their choice.
00:22:39
Speaker
But in kind of my own research, as well as other research, it, you know, finds that low income families really have fewer choices, you know, when it comes to school choice than middle class
00:22:49
Speaker
parents who are tend to be sort of more empowered and have more resources and time and networks to find the school they really want.
00:22:57
Speaker
In the case of low income parents, there's often constraints like transportation, like a lot of these schools don't offer transportation.
00:23:05
Speaker
So it's got to be a school you can get to, you know, or they have other issues like that child, you know, they thinking about childcare needs and what school fits those needs.
00:23:16
Speaker
So I found, yeah, when I was interviewing or just talking to parents at the school lottery day, I was surprised to find like they knew very little about this school.
00:23:26
Speaker
And they were actually asking me like, oh yeah, tell us, you know, what are the practices like?
00:23:29
Speaker
They'd heard it was a good school.
00:23:31
Speaker
They'd heard it was a strict school and they liked that, but they didn't know what really strict meant.
00:23:36
Speaker
And you're right.
00:23:37
Speaker
When they started hearing, you know, from their students or seeing, I mean, from their children or seeing their children's own anxiety,
00:23:45
Speaker
from being in the school or hearing that their students were disrespected.
00:23:49
Speaker
That's something I felt parents really got in arms with, you know, if they felt a teacher, a white teacher had disrespected their black, you know, child.
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, they would get very upset.
00:24:03
Speaker
And, um,
00:24:05
Speaker
you know, in my right, in my taking a critical lens of the school, does that, right, reduce the choices these families have?
00:24:12
Speaker
Well, my hope is, of course, that these schools will modify their practices.
00:24:16
Speaker
So, you know, the schools, I don't think my book is going to shut down any school.
00:24:21
Speaker
It's not going to have, unfortunately, that much of an impact.
00:24:24
Speaker
But if it can help, you know, someone in Camp Uncommon,
00:24:29
Speaker
success, whether that be a teacher, whether that be an administrator, you know, rethink their practices or policies to be sort of more affirming of students, to be more humanizing, to really consider, you know, the racial implications, the class implications of their practices, then I think
00:24:52
Speaker
then I think I would have done my job.
00:24:53
Speaker
And I think parents would also appreciate that, right?
00:24:56
Speaker
They want what all parents want, schools where their students are learning, schools that are safe, schools where their kids are cared for and respected.
00:25:06
Speaker
So that is what I'm hoping the book moves someone towards or some schools towards.
00:25:13
Speaker
There's a bit of like a chicken and the egg component here.
00:25:17
Speaker
Because it seems like for many of the families, their argument for why they were willing to accept these disciplinary structures is because the workplaces, especially for working class families, tend to also be incredibly regimented and dehumanizing.
Preparing Students for the World
00:25:35
Speaker
And it's difficult to navigate those waters because that's also a problem.
00:25:41
Speaker
So do you prepare students for the fact that life is going to suck?
00:25:45
Speaker
Or do you try to teach them a critical angle to that while simultaneously recognizing like you have to make money?
00:25:52
Speaker
So it's pairing those two things together to me, it seems so incredibly difficult.
00:25:58
Speaker
As you're reflecting on this experience of being in this school for so long, do you see a solution where the public school, just like the typical public school, like where do they fit into the equation?
00:26:12
Speaker
I don't know.
00:26:13
Speaker
Part of it is...
00:26:14
Speaker
You know, you always come back to resources, but I think, you know, I visited a private school, but it was a private school for low income students, you know, endowed by someone, you know, who was very wealthy and
00:26:29
Speaker
walking in there and visiting there, it felt like a private school, you know, like, it felt like a school, you know, my kids would go to, you know, progressive, open, lots of attention and care, not at all, you know, like, like the school I've been observed observing.
00:26:45
Speaker
And I should say there was also, of course, care in the school I was at, I don't want to say that, you know, certainly teachers and administrators were caring of students, but it was a very different kind of environment.
00:26:55
Speaker
And that made me think like, you know, they,
00:26:59
Speaker
they come to this what works model because it's like the last resort, you know, like things that weren't working in many of these traditional public schools where you have just, yeah, like a lack of control.
00:27:11
Speaker
And they said, okay, this is the only thing given what we have, novice teachers, given kind of, yeah, the conditions, this is what we can make work.
00:27:20
Speaker
So I think, you know,
00:27:23
Speaker
there are some studies about school funding.
00:27:25
Speaker
Does it matter?
00:27:26
Speaker
Does it not matter?
00:27:27
Speaker
But in reality, I think it's like, you need so these schools need so much more funding than, you know, sort of a typical school because there are just so many more things, um, that come with that, that environment, you know, so, um, I feel to support students, you just need so many more, um,
00:27:48
Speaker
student support staff, counselors, wraparound services, smaller classroom sizes.
00:27:54
Speaker
I mean, that's when you can start imagining something that will work that's not maybe so rigid, right?
00:28:01
Speaker
But it takes a lot to get there, right?
00:28:04
Speaker
So in the meantime, what do you do?
00:28:08
Speaker
I don't know if I have the answer for that.
Teaching Cultural Capital
00:28:10
Speaker
Based off the experiences that you had at the school,
00:28:13
Speaker
What was kind of an assumption going in you had about either students or teachers, administrators, kind of like from like the research you did and what you read about the school?
00:28:23
Speaker
What was an assumption that you had that kind of surprised you that it wasn't true or something?
00:28:27
Speaker
The big assumption of going into the project was where I started with this idea of teaching cultural capital, that what this school was trying to do was to teach cultural capital.
00:28:37
Speaker
They were trying to teach like middle class norms to these kids, and that was helping them to be successful, like how to tuck in your shirt, like how to show attention, you know, be respectable.
00:28:50
Speaker
What I found that it was partly that that
00:28:53
Speaker
was more justification, you know, for it helped them make sense of these really rigid practices that they took on, not to teach any of these skills, but they took on because they needed to establish order.
00:29:08
Speaker
And basically the school said, oh, here's a model that here's an orderly school, let's copy it, you know, and that's what they did.
00:29:14
Speaker
They just copied the practices of another school.
00:29:16
Speaker
So really became a justification and an interesting justification because one that
00:29:22
Speaker
that they would use to, to say, yeah, this is why we're doing what we're doing.
00:29:26
Speaker
What we're really doing here is teaching these skills they're going to need, say, in the workplace.
00:29:32
Speaker
But it's kind of a contradiction.
00:29:33
Speaker
And that's what a lot of the work of the book is sort of about, because the school is a college preparatory school.
00:29:41
Speaker
And it's really thinking about setting these kids on a different trajectory.
00:29:44
Speaker
So not to work at McDonald's where, yes, you need a clock on
00:29:48
Speaker
in on time, you don't have room to express yourselves.
00:29:52
Speaker
So in their mindset, we're sort of preparing students for that avenue.
00:29:56
Speaker
Yet we're using these really rigid practices that actually don't develop any of these kinds of skills, right, that middle class kids learn, like how to be assertive, how to be creative, how to take initiative.
00:30:10
Speaker
So it becomes, yeah, this sort of weird contrast.
00:30:14
Speaker
And it took me sort of a while to kind of
00:30:17
Speaker
sort that out.
00:30:18
Speaker
I kept asking, are they teaching cultural capital?
00:30:20
Speaker
Are they not?
00:30:20
Speaker
Do they think they are?
00:30:21
Speaker
What is cultural capital?
00:30:24
Speaker
So that was one of the big things I kind of wrestled with in the book.
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah, there are extreme contradictions of control.
00:30:31
Speaker
Because I believe you note this in the book, I mean, if you're going to go to college, that's the exact opposite of what a college environment is.
00:30:37
Speaker
Like, it's not controlled.
00:30:38
Speaker
And I think there's an argument to be made, like, I would argue that the vast majority of very rich people do not send their kids to schools that look like that.
00:30:46
Speaker
In fact, they send them to those progressive $50,000 a year schools where kids just play all day and read books, and there is no control.
00:30:54
Speaker
And kids...
00:30:55
Speaker
break rules at those schools and do things that might get you in a lot of trouble if you were at a school with not as much funding that had stricter disciplinary policies, et cetera.
00:31:05
Speaker
There's so many different things as you're reading through this book that you wonder to yourself how it reflects society at large and the assumptions that we have about the working class and assumptions we have about even things like race and gender and how that plays out
00:31:22
Speaker
to a T in how the school's policies are enacted.
Societal Assumptions in School Policies
00:31:26
Speaker
The entire time I was reading the book, I felt like it wasn't real.
00:31:29
Speaker
Like it's hard for me to imagine that that is actually a real thing that's going through.
00:31:33
Speaker
But I think you're right.
00:31:34
Speaker
By analyzing that at a typical school, it makes you critically reflect on things like three-strike discipline policies, telling kids they don't belong there, policing language or how loud people are.
00:31:49
Speaker
There's so many different discussion topics
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:31:52
Speaker
And I feel there has been an influence of books like Teach Like a Champion, right?
00:31:55
Speaker
It's a bestseller, millions of copies sold that began in the charter world.
00:32:00
Speaker
I mean, that book was written by No Excuses School's founders, but now are everywhere, right?
00:32:07
Speaker
In traditional public schools.
00:32:09
Speaker
So those methods are spreading.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I think, yeah, I think one can sort of step back and think about them.
00:32:18
Speaker
To what extent did these right stigmatize students or make relationships between students and teachers more antagonistic than they need to be?
00:32:26
Speaker
Or, you know, a host of other questions.
00:32:32
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Project's podcast.
00:32:35
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:32:39
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.