Paper originally written for Interdisciplinary Studies 410 “Power, Politics, and Public Schools” taught by Dr. Sherry Giles, Guilford College, Greensboro, NC.Originally written 12/10/2012, last updated 7/15/2014.

Education in Politics and Peace – an Interdisciplinary Study

Introduction – Education as a Human Right and an Economic Necessity

The United States is a representative democracy, which ostensibly means

that citizens elect others to represent their interests in the halls of government and

hope that those elected officials will advocate for desired legislation and

government actions. Many citizens of the United States today, however, complain

that elected officials no longer represent them, but represent some special interest

agenda.1 Indeed, public opinion surveys show that political efficacy, defined broadly

as citizens’ senses of trust in government and view that politics can meet their

needs, has been steadily declining since the 1960s.2 That this is going on at the same

time as a rise in the overall education level of the public, with more people than ever

getting college degrees, is puzzling to many political scientists and social scholars, a

growing number of whom have expressed the concern that US democracy is in

decline.3

In order to examine this trend, it is necessary to examine the institutions that

provide a foundation for our society. Of these institutions, many Americans agree

1 Lessig, Lawrence. “Democracy After Citizens United.” Boston Review (September/October 2010). Web Source. Retrieved 12/10/12 from: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.5/lessig.php. Page 1.2 Wayne, Stephen J. Road to the White House 2008: The Politics of Presidential Elections. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth (2008). Page 83.3 Dalton, Russel. The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press (2009). Dalton presents a comprehensive list of such sentiments on pages 3-4.

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that education is among the most – if not the most – important in terms of

empowering citizens to be effective participants in social decision-making. A

community speaker at the November 8, 2012 Guilford County School Board meeting

expressed this sentiment succinctly when she said, “Public education is a

cornerstone of our democracy” during an open speaking session on an issue

regarding public funding for private schools. Indeed, most of the world counts

education as a human right. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(UDHR) articulates that education is a basic right of all people, and thus should be

free and even compulsory in the elementary and secondary stages, as well as

“equally accessible to all” in the higher education stages.4 Interestingly, the UDHR

also implies that democracy is a human right in Article 21, saying that “everyone has

the right to participate in the government of his [or her] country” and that periodic

elections should be part of this.5 This supports the assertion that democratic citizens

need to be empowered through education.

President Barack Obama recognized the necessity of education to US

democracy in his 2012 State of the Union address, in which he implored states to

increase support for education, legally mandate staying in school until age 18, and

recognize that “higher education can't be a luxury - it's an economic imperative that

every family in America should be able to afford.”6 Interestingly, the President in

this statement affirms the importance of education to the economic well being of

4 UN General Assembly. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 217 A (III) (December 10, 1948). Web Source. Accessed 12/10/12 from: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b3712c.html. Article 26, Section 1.5 Ibid. Article 21, Section 1.6 Obama, Barack H. “State of the Union Adress.” 2012 State of the Union. Capitol Building. Washington, D.C., January 24, 2012.

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our society but does not overtly express a sentiment that education is important as a

democratic value.

What the President implicitly recognizes is that there are a host of problems

confronting the educational system in the United States today at all levels, in

elementary, secondary, and higher educational institutions. However, in

approaching those problems from the perspective of education as an “economic

imperative,” President Obama seems to confirm that his personal views reflect a

market-based view of education, which is a problematic characteristic of his

educational policy called “Race to the Top.” Education must consist of much more

than an economic imperative in order to effectively engage students and prepare

them for a life as active, engaged citizens capable of sustaining a democratic society.

As we have been examining in the class IDS 410: Power, Politics, and Public

Schools, a debate is raging in this country over how to fix some of the

aforementioned problems facing educational reform. In this paper I hope to present

a new perspective on this debate by exploring education’s role in a democratic and

peaceful society. I will examine how the current conditions in public schools do not

allow US educational institutions to meet this function. Finally I will briefly discuss

approaches to reform, contrasting the market-based and community-based

approaches, and show why community organizing in and around schools is

necessary to pave the way towards a truly peaceful society.

The Interdisciplinary Nature of this Study

To construct an effective analysis, I am drawing on theories from the

wellsprings of my education: political science and peace studies. Concurrently, this

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paper revolves around the way educational institutions play into the dynamics of

politics and peace. I aim to explore the role of education in the United States as a

democratic society striving for peace. Important to that goal is the definition of

these terms and concepts from their disciplinary homes.

From political science theory comes two contrasting views of democracy. The

standard lens through which most contemporary scholars and politicians view

society, according to political scientist Mark Warren, is that of classic liberal-

democratic theory. In this theory, stemming from influential political theorists such

as James Madison, democracy is “an aggregation of pre-political interests” and

should be limited so as not to threaten individual freedoms.7 In other words, people

participate in politics for selfish reasons, to meet certain individual interests, and

are thus afraid that without limits, democratic institutions would intrude on their

lives outside of these interests and become oppressive. This is a valid fear, and an

example of such an intrusion is when a political process uses majority rule to dictate

whom people can and cannot marry, such as in the case of restrictions against same-

sex marriage.

It is certainly the case that some personal interests, such as love and

marriage, free practice of religion, and other practices ought to be free from political

interference. However, Warren argues that such a classical theory of democratic

politics limits recognition of the contributions that democracy can make to other

social institutions, such as education.8 He offers another view of democracy,

7 Warren, Mark. “Democratic Theory and Self-Transformation.” The American Political Science Review Vol. 86, No. 1 (March, 1992): 8-23. Web source. Retrieved 12/10/12 from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1964012. Page 8.8 Ibid.

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consolidated from the work of more radical democratic theorists such as Jean-

Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey, which he refers to as

“expansive democracy.” In this view, “democracy” refers more broadly to “to the

effects of institutions in increasing individuals' control over self-determination and

self-development.”9 Increased democracy thus means that people have more control

over the social conditions in which they live, and that people participate in decision-

making to improve life not just for themselves but for others as well. Education is a

target for this expanded participation, as I will explore later in this paper.

The goal of an expanded theory of democracy is to allow for a more

comprehensive view of political participation that recognizes the importance of

social change outside of traditional political processes, which center around political

elites. Peace studies scholar John Paul Lederach recognizes this concept in his

theory of peacebuilding, in which he argues that positive action is necessary on all

levels of society – top (political and economic elites), middle (somewhat wealthy

and educated people with increased access to the political process), and grassroots

(most of society concerned with survival).10 This means that building peaceful social

systems mandates the engagement of people and institutions that are not readily

involved or associated with the traditional political process. Lederach calls for this

participation to involve problem-solving workshops, conflict resolution education,

and training in “bottom-up” methods to deal with local problems.11 In a sense, this

9 Ibid. Page 9.10 Lederach, John Paul. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press (1997). Page 38-44.11 Ibid., 51-55. Lederach focuses especially on dealing with the effects of direct violence, especially trauma healing for victims of violence.

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view necessitates an expansion of the democratic process in a way that truly

engages the polis on the level of solving problems in their neighborhoods and

communities.

In response to this, some might argue that peacebuilding in the United States

is unnecessary because our society is peaceful, especially compared with war-torn

nations like Syria. This paper draws on the assumption that this is not the case

because peace, as the seminal scholar in the field Johan Galtung defined it, is more

than just the absence of violence. Galtung defined peace in positive and negative

terms where negative peace is the traditional conception of peace as the absence of

violence while positive peace (the theory on which I draw) is the presence of social

justice and an “egalitarian distribution of power and resources.”12

Critical to this definition of peace is the concept of structural violence, which

is also critical in this paper’s explication of the educational system in the United

States. Structural violence is a kind of violence that is “built into the structure [of

society] and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life

chances.”13 This kind of violence is what largely stands in the way of the United

States being a truly peaceful society, which is well represented by inequalities in our

educational institutions that I will explore later.

The Role of Education in a Peaceful Democracy

“Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and

12 Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1969): 167-191. Page 183.13 Ibid., Page 171

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friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”14

This excerpt from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights eloquently

illustrates the ideal role of education in society. Students should leave schools more

informed and prepared to live peacefully in diverse communities. Ultimately, the

belief underlying this statement is that effective and equal education helps build a

peaceful society on local, regional, and international levels. An effective public

education system, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a

necessary part of transcending merely negative peace and moving towards positive

peace.

Progressive-era philosopher John Dewey drew on such a sentiment in his

argument for a nationalized education in the United States, saying that, “To

nationalize our education means to make it an instrument in the active and constant

suppression of the war spirit, and in the positive cultivation of sentiments of respect

and friendship for all men and women wherever they live.”15 For Dewey, an ideal

education would contribute to democracy by creating those democratic values in

pupils that would enable them to not just live, but thrive cooperatively together.

Without these democratic values, collective action towards a more peaceful society

is impossible.

This is why a guaranteed education was so important to Dewey, who argued

that the appearance of class struggle at turn of 20th century put “a definite

14 UN General Assembly, Article 26, Section 2.15 Hickman, Larry A. and Thomas M. Alexander, ed. The Essential Dewey Volume 1: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (1998). Page 269.

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responsibility upon the schools to sustain our true national spirit,” which he defined

as brotherhood and unity.16 This sentiment can also be seen in political theorist John

Stuart Mill’s idea of an educative society, in which the role of education is to build

the social cohesion and unity that makes a society sustainable (“permanence”) and

also to help society improve (“progressiveness”).17 Mill was writing in 19th century

Britain, where divisions between “learned elites” and laborers who lived in extreme

poverty were much more visible than they are now. However, he effectively

articulated a concept of “human capital” that is still used by sociologists to explore

human potential today. Mill argued that foremost direct government action was

necessary both to provide “effective national education” and to alleviate the

“crushing poverty” that would continue to prevent the laboring class from having

time for education, and thus, to realize their potential through human capital.18

For Mill, the aim of this education “should be to cultivate common sense; to

qualify [students] for forming a sound practical judgment of the circumstances by

which they are surrounded.”19 In other words, the intent of the educational

institution should be to empower citizens to make judgments about their

surroundings and lives, or, to be autonomous and self-governing. Through a lens of

expansive democracy, this means that education is very much a political institution

where citizens learn about democracy and economics and prepare to engage with

society as empowered stakeholders. Importantly, expansive democracy means

16 Ibid., Page 268.17 Garforth, F.W. Educative Democracy: John Stuart Mill on Education in Society. New York, NY: Oxford University Press (1980). Page 41-43.18 Ibid., Page 46-47.19 Ibid., Page 48.

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empowering citizens to do more than just rationally choose within a competitive

marketplace. Dewey and other Progressive reformers wanted to facilitate this by

encouraging student creativity and developing “a classroom process that modeled

and promoted values of community, cooperation, justice, and democracy.”20

In the United States in the 21st Century, some of the goals of Mill and Dewey

seem to have been met, as there is a publicly guaranteed, nationalized education

system. Furthermore, contemporary statistics show that education is indeed a

predictor of political participation, as Mill and Dewey speculated it would be.

Political scientist Steven J. Rosenstone, in his 1993 analysis of political participation

in the US, noted that higher levels of education positively correlate with

participation.21 He speculates that this is not only a correlational relationship, but

that education is a causal predictor of participation when he writes that, “In the US

the educational experience fosters democratic values and nurtures a sense of citizen

competence, both of which encourage participation.”22 Political Scientist Stephen

Wayne notes “the lesson that voting is a civic responsibility is usually learned in the

classroom” and that education has a larger impact on participation than any other

social factor because it provides people with the skills of political analysis and an

increased stake in the political process.23 The positive relationship between

20 Larrabee, David F. “How Dewey Lost: The Victory of David Snedden and Social Efficiency in the Reform of American Education.” In Pragmatism and Modernites, ed. D. Trohler, T. Schlag, and F. Osterwalder, 163-188. USA: Sense Publishers (2010). Web Source. Retrieved 12/10/12 from: http://www.stanford.edu/~dlabaree/publications/How_Dewey_Lost.pdf. Page 169.21 Rosenstone, Page 13.22 Ibid., Page 14.23 Wayne, Page 83.

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education and political participation has even been called “one of the most reliable

results in empirical social science.”24

Not only is education a predictor of traditional forms of political

participation, but also forms of participation that are closer to the kinds of direct

action that Lederach calls for in his theory of peacebuilding. Literature in

peacebuilding has focused extensively on the role of education in transforming

societies that experience violent conflict (negating direct violence), but education

also has a role to play in building positive peace (overcoming structural violence).

As Constance Flannagan and Peter Levine note in their 2012 article “Civic

Engagement and the Transition to Adulthood,” colleges are the most effective

institutions at motivating participation in civil society and building social capital in

young people.25 Ostensibly, we see that an effective education will create young

citizens who perceive their roles as agents of social change in whatever sector they

pursue. Political scientist Russell Dalton notes results from the General Social

Survey in 2004 that showed that young people, especially educated ones, were more

likely to participate in forms of direct action such as protesting or participating in a

boycott than older people or their peers who had not been as well educated.26

24 La Due Lake, Ronald and Robert Huckfeldt. “Social Capital, Social Networks and Political Participation.” Political Psychology Vol. 19, No. 3. (September, 1998): 567-584. Web Source. Retrieved 12/10/12 from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3792178. Page 567.25 Flannagan, Constance, and Peter Levine. "Civic Engagement and the Transition to Adulthood." The Future of Children 20, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 159-180. Web Source. Retrieved 12/10/12 from: http://futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/docs/20_01_FullJournal.pdf. Page 159.26 Dalton, Russel. The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press (2009). Page 71, fig. 4.4.

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At first glance, the contemporary sources presented above appear to show

that the contemporary institution of public education is meeting the goals of Mill

and Dewey as an institution that prepares citizens not only to participate in

democracy, but also to cooperate with their peers in that participation. Public

education is supported at the highest level of government, a condition that society

today takes for granted because no political leader, no matter their views on reform,

would suggest getting rid of the nationalized education system altogether. However,

this cursory analysis only reveals part of the picture.

Unequal Democracy: Education as Part of Structural Violence

Progressive reformers like Dewey wanted to build educational structures

that would encourage unity and prepare citizens to engage in the democratic

process. However, the nationalized education system today does not do this for all

people. In order to explain why, it is necessary to look at education as an institution

of structural violence, which I defined above generally as unequal life chances. More

specifically, as Johan Galtung notes, an important indicator of structural violence is

“when income distributions are heavily skewed, [or] literacy/education [is]

unevenly distributed.”27 Education in America meets these conditions because of

how drastically (and often blatantly) it is stratified along racial lines.

In 2011 the National Center for Education Statistics compiled data into a

report entitled The Nation’s Report Card: Civics 2010. In the results of standardized

testing, students who identified as “Black,” “Hispanic,” or “American Indian/Alaska

Native” consistently scored 20 or more points lower than students who identified as

27 Galtung, Page 171.

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“White” or “Asian/Pacific Islanders.”28 An analysis from the Educational Testing

Service significantly fails to analyze these racially stratified results.

Problems with such standardized testing aside, these test scores indicate a

failure in the US public school system to prepare students who are of African

American, Hispanic, and Native American descent in “civics.” Testing statistics are

only the most basic way structural violence can be seen in our schools. The Center

for Community Change, in a report outlining major events and reforms to education

in the United States, confirms this when they say that despite attempts to correct a

faulty “separate but equal” mentality, “today’s public schools often manifest a sharp

contrast in their racial segregation and their uneven distribution of resources.”29

Activist and author Jonathan Kozol, who has exhaustively studied public schools in

America, goes as far as to call these conditions “America’s educational Apartheid”

because of how disproportionately poor, inner-city schools are composed of

students who are minorities. In a 2005 article for Harper’s Magazine he presents

shocking statistics and anecdotal evidence of the terrible conditions in the schools in

America’s urban centers, including unsanitary facilities and lack of teaching

materials.30

28 Coley, Richard J. and Andrew Sum. Fault Lines in our Democracy. Report prepared for the Educational Testing Service (April 2012). Web Source. Retrieved 12/8/12 from: http://www.ets.org/s/research/19386/rsc/pdf/18719_fault_lines_report.pdf.Page 8, fig. 29 Center for Community Change. An Organizer's Thumbnail Sketch: Milestones in the History of Public Education. Report prepared for the Center for Community Change. USA (January, 2005). Page 1.30 Kozol, Jonathan. “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid.” Harper’s Magazine Vol. 311 No. 1864 (September 1, 2005) (no page numbers).

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Many of these issues stem from underfunding. The Center for Community

Change notes that despite positive momentum towards education equality from the

Civil Rights Movement, by the 1970s “the growth of the suburbs had drained

property wealth from cities and funding from schools serving their residents.” 31

These inner cities are where Kozol sees the “educational Apartheid” most drastically

reflected in the lack of resources and isolation of racial minorities. However, there

are issues besides the lack of resources that contribute to structural violence in the

educational system. In an examination of local organization research into 12

different public school systems in 2000, the Applied Research Center found that

students of color, especially African American students, are “suspended or expelled

in numbers vastly disproportionate to their white peers” and are more likely to drop

or be pushed out of school.32 These instances are impossible to generalize; they may

be related to prejudice and bias on behalf of the instructors, disciplinary problems

caused by the inner-city conditions in which many people of color live, or a myriad

of other factors.

The purpose of this paper is not to delve into the social conditions that cause

these racial disparities, but to note that these are some of the factors that make

public education a system of structural violence in itself because it

disproportionately sets up students of color for less success in life. Indeed, a college

education remains the most likely predictor of success and social status in the

United States. Just a basic Bachelor’s Degree guarantees its recipient nearly twice as

31 Center for Community Change, 16.32 Gordon, Rebecca, Libero Della Piana, and Terry Keleher. Facing the Consequences: An Examination of Racial Discrimination in US Public Schools. Report prepared for the ERASE Initiative. Oakland, CA: Applied Research Center (2000). Page 2.

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much income over a lifetime as someone with only a high school diploma, according

to results of a 2012 survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.33 Beyond that, these

same results show that people with less than a high school diploma were

unemployed at nearly twice the national average of 7.6% in 2011. 34 Most Americans

are educated (or not) in public schools, meaning that due to the discrepancies

examined above, the public school system is setting racial minorities up for failure.35

I further build my case for education as structural violence because it affects

how much access people have to decision-making institutions. When Stephen

Wayne, one of the contemporary political scientists cited above, says that education

increases participation because it increases a person’s sense that they have a stake

in the political process, he forgets to include an analysis of people who do not

participate and uneducated people. Do they not have a stake? Is their voice not as

important? Most political elites seem to think so. Rosenstone observed that political

elites are more likely to target people for mobilization who are more educated,

wealthier, and partisan than average because those people are more effective at

disseminating a message through social networks.36 In other words, the politicians

deliberately do not pursue the engagement of people who are not educated, because

they are less likely to participate. In a sense, this can be seen to doubly affect these

less educated groups – citizens who are not compelled by their political leaders to

33 Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Education Pays…” Infographic prepared from: Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey (March 23, 2012). Web Source. Retrieved 12/10/12 from: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm. (No page numbers).34 Ibid.35 Center for Community Change, Page 15.36 Rosenstone, Page 33.

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participate are further marginalized from the democratic process. A lack of

education also pushes young people away from nontraditional forms of political

engagement, according to a 2012 report prepared for the Center for Institutional

Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). The report cites a number of

reasons for this, but one strong commonality is that non-college youth feel

ostracized by their communities for not pursuing education.37

The purpose of this section is to give a brief glimpse into why I call public

education a reflection of structural violence: both because it isolates and stratifies

society along racial lines and because it keeps non-educated people from achieving

success and, concurrently, from having as effective a voice in the political process.

As an institution that should prepare people to participate in democracy and build

unity in society, public education is failing. While this view of public education

deserves more exploration, I turn now to the attempts to address these problems

and reform education.

Reforming Education: The Failure of Market-Based Approaches and the

Peacebuilding Achieved through Community Organizing Approaches

As the report cited above from the Center for Community Change notes, there

have been many attempts to fix racial inequalities in the school system. However,

most seem to have made things worse. The common approach from the top level of

society is market-based, which means that the reform strategies are based on fixing

37 Godsay, Surbhi, Kei Kawashima-Ginsburg, Abby Kiesa and Peter Levine. “That’s Not Democracy.” How Out-of-School Youth Engage in Civic Life and What Stands in Their Way. Report. Massachusetts: Charles F. Kettering and CIRCLE (2012). Page 5-6.

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schools through such methods of corporate evaluation as accountability through

high stakes testing and promoting competition between schools.38

These theories are deeply rooted in our society and can be traced back to the

turn of the 20th century when Progressive reformists, championed by Dewey,

clashed with reformers who advocated a social efficiency view of education. In his

famous book Democracy and Education, Dewey critiqued advocates of social

efficiency, saying they wanted education to ensure “subordination to social rules.” 39

Bowles and Gintis offer a historical perspective on this debate in their book,

Schooling in Capitalist America. They explore primary sources to show how

prominent capitalists of the 1920s favored the vocational education movement

because it would allow them to take control of recruiting the workforce away from

skilled laborers.40 To sum it up, Progressive reformers who wanted education to fit

the democratic roles described above were fighting against prominent social

capitalists who wanted to enforce social class divisions – the same figureheads of

industry who argued that laws against child labor or for a minimum wage would

ruin their profits and force them out of business.

Dewey and the Progressive reformers lost this debate, as noted by historian

David Larrabee who writes, “Dewey’s critique of social efficiency…had no significant

effect on the direction of American public education, which by the early 1920s was

38 IDS 410 Lecture Notes, 11/12/12.39 Hickman, Larry A. and Thomas M. Alexander, ed. The Essential Dewey Volume 1: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (1998). Page 261.40 Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. “Corporate Capital and Progressive Education.” In Schooling in capitalist America, ed. Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. 180-200. New York:  Basic Books (1976). Page 193.

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lining up solidly behind the social efficiency vision.”41 The debate between

proponents of Dewey’s view and the social efficiency model continued through the

20th century, but the market-based reforms passed by the Reagan Administration in

the 1980’s virtually eliminated the progresses made and set the stage for the

structural violence in schools today.42 Philosopher Michael Crawford notes how

schools are still doing this, as they prepare most students for a life where doing is

separated from thinking, and they are merely cogs on a modern assembly line

known as “expert systems.”43 In other words, schools, especially franchise-model

private schools, are being designed to instill in students a worldview where they are

a small part of social efficiency, rather than active and engaged citizens in global

economies and local democracies.

While the professed goal of market-based reforms is to improve student

outcomes, they only serve to exacerbate structural violence. No Child Left Behind,

for example, the Bush Administration policy that represents the epitome of market-

based reform strategies, “offers ‘choice’ to low income parents to move their

children out of poorly performing or ‘persistently dangerous’ schools – without

insuring that there will be better quality, safer schools for them to attend.”44 In this

way private and charter schools are undermining public schools without offering a

better alternative. Ideally and historically, private schools play a critical role in our

public education system, providing meaningful recompense for students of differing

41 Larrabee, Page 168.42 Center for Community Change, Page 11-12.43 Crawford, Matthey B. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work. New York, NY: Penguin Books (2009). Page 45.44 Center for Community Change, Page 14.

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beliefs or educational needs. However, without proven and sustainable charter

models, students may be left without a preferable option and bounced from failed

charter to failed charter without ever gaining an effective education.

As Kozol found out in his research, the de-facto segregated inner-city schools

underperform on tests and therefore get less money in a market-based

accountability system. This is a vicious cycle because in order to meet standards,

these schools are forced to make decisions that teachers (telling Kozol in

interviews) know will undermine education, teaching students solely material to

succeed in the tests and discouraging thinking for themselves.45 Based on case

studies of market-based reforms in different cities, Former Bush-era Secretary of

Education Diane Ravitch argues that market-based reform undermines community

values by teaching test-specific material without emphasizing real world

application, removing the ability of education to prepare students to work together

with diverse groups.46 Further illustrating the undermining of democratic values,

and suggesting it may still be intentional (recall the prominent capitalists of the

1920s), Kozol recalls the head of a Chicago school who was criticized for using

methods that “turn students into robots”. The school head responded not by

denying the charge but saying, “Did you ever stop to think that these robots will

never burglarize your home? … These robots are going to be producing taxes.”

Robots are not very good democratic citizens, unless their purpose is to resign to

outside influences. This seems to run counter to the American spirit and the role of

45 Kozol.46 Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. New York, NY: Basic Books (2010). Page 222.

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education as an empowering institution, consistent with the expanded democracy

worldview.

These strategies ensure that education will allow power to stay concentrated

in the hands of the elite and privileged. Rosenstone observes that political elites

have no desire to change the status quo of low political participation as they “have

little interest in citizen activism, per se” but rather use engagement by citizens to

further their own political ends.47 In order to counter this, communities must turn to

bottom-up peacebuilding and begin to address the structural violence extant in

schools through community organizing. This exists in what is referred to as

community organizing-based reform, or education organizing. This approach to

school reform involves cooperation between students, teachers, administrators,

parents, and community partners to identify what issues confront schools in certain

communities.48 This kind of reform relies on building social capital and focuses on

school reform in the broader context of empowering groups that are

disenfranchised and serving specific student needs.49 In this approach, which can be

seen to fulfill Lederach’s model of peacebuilding, tools such as classroom

workshops, peer mediation, community forums, etc., are used to build relationships

and peaceful relations among diverse groups in schools and communities.

An important reason that top-down and market-based reforms fail, from this

perspective, is not necessarily because political elites are evil and desire to

47 Rosenstone, 30.48 IDS 410 Lecture Notes, 11/12/12.49 Lopez, M. Elena. Transforming Schools through Community Organizing: A Research Review. Report prepared for the Family Involvement Network of Educators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Family Research Project (December, 2003). Introduction.

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perpetuate structural violence and class divisions. Rather, it is because they ignore

the needs of the communities around schools. Education organizing is rooted in

these communities, building links between the school administration, teachers, and

the students and parents who are most affected by educational quality.50 In this way,

the direct action motivated by this approach to reform builds the structures of a

peaceful society in the most effective way, as Lederach notes: from the grassroots

level upwards.

A powerful example of this is documented by social activist, CUNY professor,

and author Celina Su, who examined a New York student school reform coalition

called “Sistas and Brothas United” (SBU) in a 2009 article called “Teenagers as

Empowered Stakeholders.” One student she interviewed was Bronx high schooler

Nathaniel, who joined SBU when a friend asked him to. He emphasizes the

importance of the invitation coming from a peer in Su’s article: “It was partly

because it was him asking me… I thought I could relate” (emphasis and ellipses in

original).51 If the request to participate had come from a stranger, Nathaniel makes

it clear he would not have engaged with the movement.

Su chronicles the activities of student leaders in SBU over time to show that

the students in SBU gained a sense of confidence from organizing together in their

local community. This empowered them to take action on a larger political scale and

participate in a political program that resulted in the opening of a new high school

50 Warren, Mark R. “Communities and Schools: A New View of Urban Education Reform.” Harvard Educational Review; 75, 2; (Summer 2005). Page 166.51 Su, Celina, Gaston Alonso, Noel S. Anderson, and Feanne Theohari. Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education. New York, NY: New York University Press (2009). Page 158.

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focused specifically on developing student leaders and future community leaders in

New York.52 Importantly, the organizing that students were doing with peers gave

them a sense that their actions would actually make a difference; they were

successful when the new high school opened.

Rather than reform being pushed from the top-down desire to “help” these

students, SBU as an organization treated students as important stakeholders with

legitimate concerns and ideas. Examples of other successful community organizing

approaches include many projects spearheaded by organizers from the Industrial

Areas Foundation (IAF), the well-established community organizing institution

pioneered by Saul Alinsky. Unfortunately, this perspective is struggling to be

accepted by mainstream society as an effective and legitimate strategy for reform.

As Aaron Schutz found in his comprehensive review of why organizing many times

does not achieve effective results, student-, parent-, and teacher-driven efforts are

often hindered by obstacles put in place by political and school officials. 53 There are

some examples of cooperation along these lines, such as the Alliance School

Network in Texas, which was set up by an IAF affiliate and designed to empower

citizens to take charge of problems and advance reform.54

Education organizing ultimately provides foundations for social change

movements in other areas. Through the lens of expansive democracy (in which, as

defined above, empowered citizens make representative government work better),

52 Ibid. 171.53 Schutz, Aaron. “Home is a Prison in the Global City: The Tragic Failure of School-Based Community Engagement Strategies.” Review of Educational Research, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Winter, 2006), pp. 691-743. Page 716.54 Berger, 162.

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we can hope that the direct action on grassroots levels will carry over to the top

levels of society by creating truly effective and sustainable reform. Through these

strategies, we can build a truly integrated approach to building peace and

overcoming violent structures in the United States. A promising initiative that could

illuminate the way to integrate education organizing into mainstream reform efforts

is Project Citizen, a program noted by Ben Berger in his book Attention Deficit

Democracy. In this program, middle and high school students are invited to

participate in identifying and discussing local problems and ways to solve them,

problems that could be related to schools or quality of life in general. Berger notes

that this kind of invitation increases the likelihood that students will want to take

further initiative in the area of politics and social change.55 Initiatives that seek to

increase students’ efficacy and knowledge about their identity, the economy, and

social and political dynamics can only benefit democracy.

Conclusion: School Reform, Peacebuilding, and Politics

“The schools will surely be failures if students graduate knowing how to choose the right option from four bubbles on a multiple-choice test, but unprepared to lead fulfilling lives, to be responsible citizens, and to make good choices for themselves, their families, and our society.”56

In this paper I have presented a view that education is meant to play a

central role in democracy by preparing students to be engaged citizens and

peacebuilders. Despite that, the public education system today is a reflection of

structural violence, which I examined along racial lines, although others (such as

gender identity) deserve as much attention. Finally I examined the debate between

55 Berger, Ben. Attention Deficit Democracy: The Paradox of Civic Engagement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (2011). Page 155.56 Ravitch, Page 223.

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market-based and organizing approaches to educational reform and argued that

top-down approaches are reinforcing structural violence and that in order for public

schools to meet the needs that democracy demands of educational institutions they

should adopt an education organizing approach to reform.

Much work needs to be done and the thoughts I have presented here only

offer a cursory, too-broad examination of the problems and solutions. Problems of

the 21st century demand that citizens on all levels of society to take charge of their

lives and communities and work together to overcome structural violence. The most

critical place to start this work is in the schools, as they are the single most

important institution to the function of democracy. Indeed, without a more effective

education system, it is hard to see how the United States can become a healthier

democracy and overcome low rates of participation. First, organizations and

individuals interested in social change must focus on some of the direct issues of

structural violence that create terrible conditions for people of color and differing

abilities in public schools. In order to do this, we must use education organizing to

reshape approaches to reform by demonstrating how organizing around relevant

community issues can successfully and sustainably rehabilitate both schools and

neighborhoods. This should be followed by citizens demanding a shift from failed

market-based policies to community-centered problem solving approaches, which

will ultimately result in lower government spending on recurring educational woes.

The scope of these problems and the magnitude of the work to be done demands

further research based on the political theory of expansive democracy, the goal of

building a peaceful society, and experience-based approaches to reform.

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