Grading based on growth is huge.

We model the behaviors we want students to emulate; we teach so primarily by example. If I will go out on a limb and try new things in front of my students, they may be more likely to do the same with me.

This is an example of the practitioner of connected learning in the classroom also using those same tools to enhance their practice before even bringing it to the classroom...

Even harder to do and be involved in when you aren't the classroom teacher most of the time (resource classes as opposed to general education classes)

These skills, not measured or valued in schools, do have a level of transferability to the outside world -- AND could be integrated or leveraged in with learning to make learning more engaging...

How do we overcome this division?

And maybe also learners?

This is some of the work we can do in the Inquiry Group.

This is like targeted advertising.

It's fine to assert that we need "a surge of effort," but how exactly do we get there? How do we create a sense of urgency or desire from all stakeholders?

These are my favorite things that I've read about so far. Makes me think of the free online visual editor I used when I was in journalism school and was using a computer (mine) that didn't have access to Photoshop. These kinds of tools make all the difference for a student who can't afford these higher costs.

This is a pretty amazing program.

This kind of writing intervention was also mentioned in the Educating Children of Color Summit in Colorado Springs -- having occurred in the physical classroom and correlating with improved graduation rates.

I feel a little weird about this bullet point and the previous one -- probably because there seems to be a level of stereotyping here that attempts to be culturally responsive (or gender-responsive?) in order to make technologies more palatable for certain groups. Just the mention of adding hip-hop dance into something to better appeal to students of color makes me anxious, and I'd wonder if Scratch is executing this completely appropriately. Same with this Digital Divas project.

Does this help address the socioeconomic factors that limit parents' and mentors' access to technology? How do we help build their capacity but also give them greater access?

Including students in decisions made ostensibly for them immediately increases their sense of connection to and engagement in those decisions.

It just doesn't seem to make much sense to implement a program without consulting those it's intended to benefit. But then again, developers and schools do it all the time. Schools do all kinds of things without consulting students or parents.

This is a broader issue with programs bringing technology into communities without building capacity in those communities to build and/or repair their own tech, AND those programs simply leaving the community afterward, which then would allow the tech to fall into disrepair. (This was an issue with solar panels being brought into communities in poverty throughout Nicaragua which I reported on in 2015 when I was studying journalism in college.)

"Anticipate" seems like a kind word here. In truth, it appears that they were at heart unaware of the realities; they made assumptions about what families in poverty needed rather than doing the research on which to base their programming. There needs to be a connection between those trying to do work for equity and the actual communities for whom they are trying to do this work.

I think in many schools serving these populations, there is great concern with students mastering "more basic skills" as those are the things students are tested on, and those are some of the areas of learning students are missing because of their socioeconomic and educational contexts. Also as SarahLW mentioned, these schools are under extreme pressure to perform well on standardized tests, and often curriculum becomes narrower under those pressures, and teachers are not encouraged to use technology creatively because it is viewed as though we are not being urgent enough.

I am hopeful to see if/how students who receive special education services are included in this discussion.

What schools are capable of is defined by policy at the district, state, and federal level. True though this assertion may be, it overlooks certain structural obstacles at play here. I believe most educators can be creative and adhere primarily to their curriculum while also creating constructive, real-life learning opportunities -- but I have had little experience with this myself as a special education teacher whose role is to coteach (but who is often relegated to the role of in-classroom support). That aside, "schools need" is a one-dimensional assertion. This is not just about "schools need." It is also about what policymakers, communities, and voters need to do to make this accessible for schools.

Paola and her team were funded partly through a grant. What do we do when we don't have those kinds of grants? Or, alternately, how can we provide the skills for students to seek out and apply for those kinds of grants and resources? Further, how do we train teachers to teach students these things?

I love that this example takes place within Paola's school.

This is my favorite example so far. Zaina promotes educational equity for women of color, which is incredible justice work. And, further, these girls are working as a team (using collaborative teamwork) to solve community problems, which is huge. This is the kind of work I would like to do. I wonder what further intersections this project has with class and disability. Are some of the girls involved with this project identified with learning disabilities? Do some of them come from poor homes? I would like to know more.

Once again -- Nate has a lot of resources at his disposal, not just in terms of technology but in terms of connections with his family members and their access to resources as well. And once again, his interests developed outside the classroom in his home environment. I come back to the question of how do we import this into the classroom, and how do we do this into the classroom, taking into account available resources, class sizes, school funding, curriculum, etc.? These limitations are difficult but not insurmountable, of course, but I would love to see (and perhaps I will?) some examples of these kinds of educational projects and opportunities happening in classrooms where innovation with resources is also necessary.

I see interviews as an incredible learning tool because they often don't cost anything, and provide connection between students and their community. This is something I personally would like to do more of in my own classroom.

Jeremiah appears to have selected his own passion, made connections, and pursued them. This is certainly learning, but it's self-motivated learning in a "real-world" context. How do we import that into classrooms and scaffold these types of highly self-motivated activities, particularly for students who don't currently have the ability/desire/self-esteem/inclination to pursue them on their own (yet)? His story is one success story and a highly independent one -- how do we convert this into a culture within an educational institution, that leverages the different skills and abilities of all students?

Torres' ongoing use of terms with "power" as the root ("powerful," "empowered") is interesting. What does it mean to have power in your learning -- and, in opposition, to lack it? Does this language indicate that most learning is not powerful?

I am excited to see what is in store in this article but do want to interrogate the concept of "power" that is at work here.

In essence reducing students to capital.

I see examples of all of these everywhere ... and I am one more often than I would like to be.

Further evidence of Payne's situatedness within Social Efficiency theory. She backs up the status quo with the argument that we must improve within that status quo - that students must leave school more efficiently prepared to contribute to the status quo, and that those in poverty must learn to not be in poverty so that they might better contribute to the status quo.

Social Efficiency theorists.

Null curriculum.

Echoing Payne's sentiments about the abilities those in poverty lack to plan or create abstract mental structures.

I agree with this. Payne treats these values as an objective norm for what designates success, without recognition of how they are constructed by dominant groups in the first place, which is one piece of her null curriculum.

Osei-Kofi recognizes here the explicit and hidden curriculum within Payne's work.

WOW this train of logic is wild. Just wild.

I made this comment on Gorski's work, but it seems in many ways like Payne's work is a contemporary example of the historic movements that served to perpetuate oppression in education for students of color, like IQ testing.

Excellent way to respond to counterarguments and further nuance the perspective.

And such a thesis is inherently classist as it perpetuates notions of classism being appropriate or expected.

D--does this actually work? Like, is there any evidence that bringing Payne's work into schools has improved educational outcomes (whether those outcomes themselves are overwhelmingly inequitable, a la standardized testing)?

Further, we must remember that families in poverty who do present within many of the characteristics Payne describes will nonetheless have more depth and complexity than the generalizations she makes; and that even if there are people living in poverty who fall into Payne's categorizations, they are still affected overwhelmingly by these oppressive structures.

The implication (or rather, hidden curriculum) being that poverty costs wealthier people money and therefore we would want to raise others out of poverty so that they aren't a financial burden.

I love that Osei-Kofi pulls out this quote from Payne, because when I read it I thought that it really set up the scenarios to already be viewed from a deficit perspective, because at heart Payne is saying, "There's something I'm not telling you, and I'm not even going to quantify how bad it is or what it looks like, but just know all this Bad Stuff is going on in these households on top of what I'm about to describe."

This is a piece of Payne's explicit curriculum - to identify the available resources which can help educators understand what families in poverty are actually able to do within the guidelines of educators' expectations. The hidden curriculum here, however, is that families in poverty are deficient in numerous ways (also per Osei-Kofi's next paragraph). This is a way Payne reifies subtractive schooling in her work.

This message is socially aligned with the mindset of the "American dream" and pulling oneself up by their bootstraps- and the idea, prevalent in education, that a good education is the way to "get out" of poverty. Even now I still have those discussions with my students--seeking to empower them--but in reality that empowerment is only surface-level when it doesn't involve critical consciousness.

I see the "faulty circular reasoning" here as the claim is made that poverty leads to the development of these values and beliefs; but that those in poverty remain there by virtue only of these values and beliefs.

Basically the same assertion Gorski makes.

This is an example of the broader hidden/null curriculum that is present socially and in the process of socialization outside just the walls of the school (though the school building is often a microcosm for these social patterns).

CALLED OUT

Osei-Kofi had already seen, at this point, an unwillingness to critically engage with poverty--so the exposure to Payne's work is framed within that lens.

Apartheid is such a notable term Osei-Kofi uses here, as the physical resegregation of neighborhoods is one of the significant pieces that perpetuates poverty and the inequity present in schools.

An excellent point -- because poverty is perpetuated specifically by this class system and the capitalist system that keeps it securely in place.

Once again a tie back to Stone, with her discussion of stories and symbols.

In some ways, Payne's work may seem "unintimidating" because it does not seek to undertake these kinds of huge changes that can seem impossible in the eyes of individual educators.

Per Gorski, Payne is a contemporary example of the trends and movements that historically have served to perpetuate oppression based on stereotypes, ie, IQ testing and school tracking.

I would definitely assert that Payne is a Social Efficiency theorist.

I mentioned this in my video meeting, but I think this particular point is a key one I would focus on in exploring Gorski's critique of Payne's work among colleagues. This point gets to the core of the problem with her work, which is that it presents as if it is against poverty but really serves to reify mindsets that perpetuate poverty and the systems that construct poverty while eluding actual anti-poverty theory.

Payne's work is rife with paternalism--the simple fact that she is writing as an expert on poverty as someone in a position of privilege and power is an indicator of that.

A piece of hidden curriculum that Gorski outlines here.

This is tied to the Social Efficiency theory of curriculum, which Payne might be considered to fall into as we think about the ways she seeks to basically teach those in poverty to function more "efficiently" within the existing (oppressive) systems.

More null curriculum. And this particular null curriculum, in this case, serves a hidden curriculum of villainizing those in poverty, or treating mindsets some of them may have with an inherent sense of derision.

All this is part of Payne's null curriculum, which, as mentioned before, consists widely of a lack of attention to systems, trends, and policy that perpetuate poverty.

I agree with Gorski here. Teaching "classroom survival skills" means not critiquing the nature of the classroom that fails to provide a sense of safety and cultural relevance to students in poverty.

Payne toes this line in interesting ways. Her assertion that those in poverty lack resources is not untrue. But, her framing thereof constructs a hidden curriculum that does serve to fit that assertion into deficit theory, much more than creating a broad critique of structures in place that serve to limit access, opportunity, and power for those in poverty. In truth, she really could have gone either way starting from that foundation; she chose to explore such things in a way that makes those living in poverty a scapegoat and in many ways personally responsible for their poverty.

One element of this I find particularly odd is that Payne herself asserts that she is trying to help develop a better and more equitable understanding of those living in poverty. But, in reality, her work perpetuates stereotypical misunderstandings--the opposite of what she is claiming to want to do. I find myself wondering what impact her trainings and readings from her book actually do have on educators and how they actually do end up presenting in the classroom.

These examples are a really bold way of demonstrating how Payne's list of characteristics for those in poverty is so overwhelmingly negative.

This is part of Payne's explicit AND hidden curriculum, that perpetuates this myth by depending on it to make her assertions--and thus also reinforces the policymaking that seeks to limit government assistance provided to those in poverty.

A huge piece of the issue with this mindset is that it puts much more of the onus on those in poverty to improve their own conditions by thinking differently than on those in power to strive toward effectively eliminating the conditions perpetuating poverty.

This idea in itself is an interesting one and I think does illustrate a tightrope we have to walk as we continue through this program and move forward in social justice - how do we seek to strive toward equity while sustaining cultural values?

Interesting how Gorski brings in his own anecdotal experience in clear and valid ways here to illustrate his concerns with Payne's "anti-intellectualism" and "self-serving 'scholarship.'"

Here, Gorski illuminates Payne's null curriculum. She entirely averts any mention of systemic issues within education that are perpetuated by policymaking.

Payne's model is an inherently capitalistic one, which by default means she supports to some extent perpetuating the systems that promote inequity and therefore construct poverty.

With this paragraph, Gorski effectively elucidates Payne's explicit and hidden curriculum in her perspective. Payne asserts that she is seeking to help educators understand the perspectives of students in poverty and thus better work with them, with the intent of giving them the tools to "leave poverty."

In many ways, this criticism does address one of the issues with Payne's work, which is that she doesn't attend to the systemic issues that perpetuate poverty for students. We must look at the broader picture: Rather than just critiquing Payne, we also have to critique a society that allows claims like hers to grow in popularity and prevalence.

"If one follows the implications of a male identity as one who is a fighter and a lover, then one can understand why the male who takes this identity ... cannot have a stable life. Of the three responses to life--to flee, flow, or fight--he can only fight or flee. So when the stress gets high, he fights, then flees from the law and the people closest to him" (p. 60). As I read I become more and more disgruntled with Payne's work, particularly because it uses many of her observations and assumptions to underlie assertions she makes and states as if they are fact. To place all men in poverty into this kind of container is deeply problematic.

P. 50 - conversation based on expectations of those in generational poverty - Payne is really just making things up here and that's bothersome.

"Students need to be taught the hidden rules of middle class--not in denigration of their own but rather as another set of rules that can be used if they so choose" (p. 45). It does sound here like Payne is trying to treat this in an additive way--not a replacement but a second set of norms to be understood.

P. 39 - Per the discussion Bric and I had earlier in the comments, I can see pretty clearly here how Payne treats certain things as mutually exclusive. She basically decides which rules are the most likely ones to align with poverty, middle class, and wealth, and then makes those into quizzes that are supposed to indicate which category one would fit in. But, in so doing, she also creates a value judgment and a set of stereotypical characteristics one "should" expect from those in poverty. Again, it seems like her intent is to bring what she sees as a hidden curriculum -- the norms and rules associated with different class groups -- into explicit curriculum so that those in poverty might develop more resources that will help them "leave poverty." However, the way she does this work really perpetuates stereotypical ideas based primarily on her individual, biased observation.

Also re: Payne's scenarios - she expresses teachers' and schools' expectations of students but does not indicate that teachers and schools also have choices about the kinds of enrichment activities and resources they offer to students. If we dig deeper, that discussion gets into school funding, but we won't go there; at the least we can see how Payne places the full responsibility on the people living in poverty for 1) the fact that they are living in poverty and 2) the "choices" they might make to "leave poverty."

The scenarios Payne provides demonstrate some of the areas where families are truly lacking in resources but also seem to include some latent negative assumptions she has about these families and their motivations. This is again a point of concern regarding the stories of those who are marginalized being voiced (and, in this case, made up???) by someone from a position of power and privilege.

"The reality is that financial resources, while extremely important, do not explain the differences in success ... The ability to leave poverty is more dependent upon other resources" (p. 8). This statement raises some concerns for me that Payne is treating these resources as disparate -- as though one's emotional energy is not often entirely sapped by lacking financial resources.

P. 7 - I take issue with Payne's inclusion of "spiritual" resources here. As someone who grew up nonreligious, I of course flinch when people indicate that one's life is somehow deficient because they aren't "spiritual" or religious.

P. 4 - The list of statistics Payne uses include a lot of sources that were published 10+ years before she wrote the book. This makes me wonder how viable those sources were at the time of her writing, and especially how viable they would be now.

"For our students to be successful, we must understand their hidden rules and teach them the rules that will make them successful at school and at work" (p. 2): Payne's understanding of the hidden curriculum appears to be that we must raise the hidden curriculum of middle-class norms into the light of explicit curriculum, so students can learn them. However, this is also an example of subtractive schooling -- Payne presents these as "the rules that will make them successful" and therefore inherently treats their cultural backgrounds (which of course are not just class backgrounds but also tie in other marginalized identities) as part of "what makes them unsuccessful."

P. 2 - List of key points - It seems to me that Payne is failing to indicate the ways that society operates from the norms not just of those with money but also dominant groups ie, white, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual etc. Her indication that class, and "class norms" are the only barrier, lacks nuance.

"The Illinois students had no more native intelligence than the poor students I had worked with earlier in my career" (p. 2): Payne does seem to want to develop a more equitable view of students in poverty that deconstructs ideas that somehow those in poverty are inherently less intellectual. Nonetheless, this makes me wonder what Payne's definition of "native intelligence" is, and what she considers to be "intelligence" that she is discussing in this work.

P. 2: "Where had I gotten the data?" Payne indicates that she has had decades of incidental or observational data. Observational data is powerful but I also wonder what kind of hidden curriculum Payne is indicating by presenting herself as the expert on other people's lived experiences of poverty, rather than allowing them to speak for themselves. That's definitely an ongoing point of concern in social justice, where the powerful use their voices to speak for those who are marginalized rather than using their power to help give an audience to marginalized voices.

This reminds me of Audre Lorde's assertion that the master's tools cannot dismantle the master's house. Gorski asserts that he must be disliked by and threatening to people in power in order to be an intercultural educator.

This is central to Social Reconstruction ideology - which is what Gorski has been promoting quite clearly throughout this entire essay.

This sounds again like Social Efficiency theory - as though outcomes can be improved for individuals by simply making them more "efficient" according to current societal wants.

These types of experiences, then, must move from the explicit or hidden curriculum to the null -- this must not be a dimension of intercultural education and curriculum for it to succeed.

Highlights the way this commitment is a null curriculum in the majority of instances of intercultural education: indicates that this commitment must be explicit curriculum for intercultural education to be effective.

This seems like an overwhelming task. What can we do to ensure that we are always doing this? How do we know for sure? Especially if we are part of the dominant groups that hold societal power -- how do we push always against neo-liberal interests when we are the white gaze, the male gaze, at times the inherently neoliberal gaze due to the fact that this is what we have been socialized to believe? The task is daunting.

"If we are to give you power, you must first make you vulnerable to us so that we might gift it to you" - the idea that the powerful might "cede" power to oppressed groups - that it therefore becomes a "gift."

I am reminded of the Heineken commercial that literally brings participants together at an "even table" when some are participants in the dominant ideology that perpetuates oppression (the most notable pairing being the man who doesn't believe trans people should exist and the trans woman). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wYXw4K0A3g

These definitions sound so "good" and wholesome before we break down the hidden or implicit messages and what they mean for oppressed groups. For instance, simply drawing the division between "majority and minority groups" in this particular definition implies the continued marginalization of "minority groups."

This vulnerability is not just on an individual level - vulnerability to disdain and conflict - but even at a professional level - everyone I have known to seek to address inequity and injustice in schooling faces fear of retribution from the educational institution which, inherent in Social Efficiency ideology, treats the school as a "neutral" place when, at heart, all schooling has some sort of political message (per Social Reconstruction ideology).

I have seen this play out and been an example of it myself at times. Trying to fight oppressive conditions from the bottom often means placing responsibility on individuals within the system rather than holding the powers at the top accountable. But how do we do so when we do not have our own powers? How can we hold corporations and governments responsible?

This is the null curriculum of Social Efficiency theory and the education policy of NCLB and Race to the Top, etc.

I am curious what an explicit capitalistic end-goal would be. The "fruits of this process" result in further marginalization of oppressed groups. What would the end goal or "ideal" of this process look like? Where does it attempt to get to?

Arguably, the idea of "hidden curriculum" could be extended outside the realm of schooling. The world outside of the school also exists in an educational capacity - in that we learn from it - and the hidden messages we receive from such things as advertising and television media are part of a larger societal "hidden curriculum" that reiterates messages supporting the dominant schema. The concept of EHN, I think, could be applied to almost any message that is transmitted to others, regardless of scale, and regardless of its existence within or outside of the schooling environment.

"To compete in the global marketplace" ... and therefore be efficient vessels for US economic imperialism.

This is indicated in the recent rise of Social Efficiency ideology in the standards movement. Social Efficiency theory is explicitly and implicitly concentrated on reinforcing current societal practices, with the caveat of making them "more" effective.

Despite the time we've spent learning about and critiquing these things, I've never heard this specific perspective on globalization elucidated so clearly, and I'm a little surprised because -- of course -- it is so obvious, and yet I am so used to the narrative of globalization being "good" that I hadn't ever considered this perspective clearly. Globalization of economy is, at heart, a new form of imperialism and colonialism, sinister in that it is being done under the guise of worldwide "good."

How do we help to transmit and develop these shifts in consciousness to educators in our communities?

An example of the hidden curriculum of intercultural education that is developed without critical eye to inequity and injustice.

Is this possibly because this practice is being constructed primarily by white educators and therefore comes from the white gaze?

This is one example where impact > intent, and where intentionality in planning that seeks to minimize such impacts is so critical. None of these "intents" may have been there, but they are examples of both a hidden (reinforcing stereotypes) and null (failing to integrate any "real" aspects of Mexican culture) curriculum in play in this instance.

This is an intercultural education that emphasizes stereotypes and how cultures are viewed from the white gaze rather than from internally within the cultural group, based in that group's appreciation of its own strengths and cultural heritage.

Already indicative of the othering or marginalizing of cultures that are viewed as "outside" the dominant narrative.

"Students are treated as 'minds' to be filled equally with the same quality material. Nowhere is there proper consideration of the persons" (p. 187) - Again gives the direct point of conflict between the Scholar Academic ideology Adler is proposing and the Learner Centered ideology Noddings here discusses.

"It is not the subjects offered that make a curriculum properly a part of education but how those subjects are taught" (p. 186) - again, an interesting assertion I just wanted to highlight. The focus here is more on the teaching method -- one that integrates student interest and real-world experience "against the whole continuum of human experience" -- basically the richness of learning students encounter.

"One can imagine, however, several such beautifully designed curricula, equally valuable, each characterized by internal breadth, offered on equal levels and freely chosen by well-informed students. This sort of plan might realistically avoid premature specialization" (p. 185). This assertion is enticing to me, but I am not sure about the argument behind avoiding premature specialization ... After all, college student change their majors numerous times, and even adults in the working world have difficulty settling upon work they find satisfying. I wonder if even what Noddings promotes with this is too limited for the flexibility needed in our current society.

"The beautiful truth is that when we take all of the valuable aspects of life into consideration and when we respect all of our children's legitimate interests in our educational planning, it becomes easier to teach the basic skills" (p. 184) - this is the Learner Centered mindset. Paideia seems to be more of the Scholar Academic mindset.

"Even if we were to deny the existence of classes in our current society, we would inevitably produce them under the Paideia. In this system, everyone is to be judged by the standards usually applied to the academically talented" (p. 184) - Not much to say here except this quote really hit me. The Paideia is based on the fallacious assumption of a comparatively "classless" society - but were it to be implemented, it would develop those classes anyhow due to its natural ranking of students.

"it is not subject and activity demands that have overburdened our schools but, rather, demands to solve the problems of a society unwilling to bear its burdens where they should properly be shouldered" (p. 184) - We have heard this before but it remains a thought-provoking assertion for me. In this line of thought, schools are the scapegoat, seen as the place of socialization for the values that the rest of society has failed to bring to light. But yet, how can we blame society as a whole? Society is made up of institutions and individuals... where do we go to further specify this critique?

"How is a youngster who has been at the bottom of the heap for twelve years going 'to understand' that his or her failure so far is only 'one form' of failure?" (p. 184) - I see this so evidently in my students in special education whose self-image is impacted so negatively by their performance in academic subjects that it in many ways shapes their entire identity.

"What the schools need to do, instead, is to legitimize multiple models of excellence" (p. 183) - This aligns perfectly with what Sir Ken Robinson asserted in the video we watched last week, that we need to redefine what we consider excellence in education.

"When children must all study the same material and strive to meet the same standards, it becomes infinitely easier to sort and grade them ... Are we to say, then, that they all had an 'equal chance'?" (p. 183) again ties to definitions of equity. Is giving all students the "same quality of education" by providing all students the same content based in the same standards equitable? Or does it present itself as equity when in reality it is inequitable? (As if giving everyone the same size of a piece of cake when several members of the group have allergies or food sensitivities to ingredients of the cake is an equitable practice.)

"I was interested in the sort of material the school wanted me to learn" (p. 183) - takes a Learner Centered view, considering student engagement with content driven by learner interest, and also considering the way what schools and curriculum developers value students learning diverges from what some students want to learn.

"Adler wants all children to receive an education that is, in content at least, the education designed for our academically best students" (p. 182) - this seems a more reasonable assertion than the one I attempted to interact with in my previous comment. This aligns with what I interpreted Adler to be arguing - which was that the assumption that some students are "ineducable" has withheld from them the education that the "academically best" students receive.

"It is eminently clear that Hutchins meant to refer to an intellectually best when he used the word" (p. 182) - I question whether this is really "eminently clear" - if these authors are so taken with rhetoric as Noddings suggests, could it also be true that they are not critically observing what they themselves mean by "best" and are using the term almost entirely due to its extreme/inflammatory nature? "Best" places the students of whom we speak at one extreme--the "best" of us--and that aligns perfectly with the argumentative techniques these authors use, according to Noddings.

"It assumes an essential sameness in human beings and values that suggests, logically, a sameness in education" (182) - returns to the inherent question of how equity is being defined and what form of equity is actually the most equitable.

"Dewey would certainly challenge this premise if 'best' is interpreted as 'intellectually best'--as it surely is in the writings of Hutchins and Adler" (p. 181) - This was a source of confusion for me in Adler's piece as I was reading, and Noddings' critique deepens the concern I feel about this. Adler critiques how schools have failed students and treated some as ineducable; but if he truly means the "intellectually best" here, then he himself is perpetuating that mythology. It is hard to tell here exactly what it is Adler believes about students compared to what he proposes as the best method for educating them.

"Perhaps he believes that it is high time for reconciliation between Hutchins and Dewey" (p. 181) - indicates that the assumptions underlying Adler's work are perplexing to Noddings as well.

In regards to critical pedagogy, this proposition seems to run counter to a key piece of the ideology, which is that education must be contextualized within the communities where it is being provided. The needs of communities differ radically and therefore the education meaningful to those communities also differs radically.

"All sidetracks, specialized courses, or elective choices must be eliminated" (p. 178) see my previous comment - this is what I believe to be a highly inequitable suggestion posited as equitable. The question being how we are defining equity -- is it that all students get the exact same content in their education, or that all students get educated toward the same level of self-determination and sense of self-worth? These things can be (and so often are) on opposite sides of the spectrum.

"There are no unteachable children" (p. 178) - I do appreciate this sentiment. Yet, so many policies -- even those that harm our students and society -- are built on this position, that things thus far have been inequitable but we can and must make them more equitable. It takes further digging to find out if a policy posited as equitable truly is.

"We are politically a classless society" (p. 177) I disagree. Class pretty clearly has an influence in multiple political spheres.

"those destined solely for toil and those destined for economic and political leadership" (p. 177) - this makes me think of the video we watched last week, wherein Sir Ken Robinson stated that we need to undo the dichotomy in our thinking of "educated vs. uneducated" that is currently inherent to our school system. The argument posited here is based on the same mindset.

"The halfway mark was reached when we finally managed to provide twelve years of basic public schooling for all our children" (177) - who defines this as the "halfway mark"? Against what measure? What would the endpoint look like?

"Suffrage without schooling produces mobocracy, not democracy" (p. 176) - indicates this author's assumed purpose of schooling to be toward civic education and democratic participation. (Also per Moses/Gutmann - how democratic education cannot exist without those being educated being given the skills of self-reflection and critical analysis)

"we have so far failed" (p. 176) is a story of decline (Deborah Stone) - that a challenge was presented and if we continue to fail to meet it, things will face "disastrous consequences." The question is of course how we are defining "quality of education."

"Many drop out for many reasons, some of them understandable" (p. 176) - what does this mean? There are a lot of assumptions underlying this statement. The statement assumes the inherent negativity of dropping out. But it also assumes that some reasons for dropping out are more valid or "understandable" than others. Yet it does not further elucidate this for readers.

"I believe that there can be no adequate conception of appropriate curriculum content without consideration of the context in which it is to be provided and the students for whom it is intended" (p. 106): And again we return to the concept of context, that an appropriate education for a particular group of students can only be defined by their context and their needs.

"We teach what we teach largely out of habit" (p. 103). I tend to agree with this, but I wonder what someone who disagreed might say. What kind of justification might we see for continuing to teach today the subject matter areas we have taught for so long? I see the author's perspective here, but wonder what a counternarrative might entail.

"Not only does the neglect or absence from school programs of nondiscursive forms of knowing skew what can be known and expressed in schools, it also biases the criteria through which human competence and intelligence are appraised" (p. 99). Fascinating to think about in regards to, for example, my students in special education who are so often rated and quantified according to a certain set of standards for thinking and perceiving.

"Not all thinking is mediated by words or numbers, nor is all thinking rule-abiding." Interesting line of thought to follow. What would it look like to foster thinking that is not mediated by words or numbers, or that does not abide by rules? What would it look like to value and/or explore that? It is so far outside the realm of what we are used to that it's hard to imagine.

"Many parents as well as students recognize such qualities and guide their children to places whose implicit curriculum is compatible with their values" (p. 96). This quote reminds me of my own college search experience. When I toured prestigious colleges, I found myself turned away, precisely because there was something about their implicit curriculum in terms of their cultural milieu that made me unhappy and uncomfortable. I don't think I would have felt that my values aligned had I gone to one of those schools.

Commentary on prestigious colleges (p. 95) illuminates how the explicit curriculum is the same, but there are cultural elements pervading (implicit curriculum) that make such colleges attractive to middle-class students.

"Tools interlock and reinforce their power to control" (p. 94). Very interesting commentary on the way the elements of our lives intended to organize also control us. If tools seek efficiency but also exert and restrict, what do we then replace them with?

"The brute fact of the matter is that our civilization is now weighted in favor of the use of mechanical instruments, because the opportunities for commercial production and for the exercise of power lie there" (p. 93) - yet another dig at materialistic/capitalistic thinking. Interesting to see how this value set becomes implicit in the school system (tying back, also, to the concept of "schools as factories" that I believe was mentioned in chapter one).

"the intellectual belief structure that separates cognition from affect, a structure whose consequences are as deleterious for educational theory as they are for psychology" (p. 92) - really engaging commentary here. I had not considered so explicitly this dichotomy before, and I recognize it as an element of schooling where the belief is at times that we must teach the content without first and continuously ensuring the emotional safety of our students. Something to continue considering.

"Is it the case that the less able are less honorable or less worthy?" (p. 91) - Grouping students has value in terms of how we differentiate our teaching, but this is a critical, critical question. Recently at my school someone raised the question of tracking students the way some other schools do and I found myself vehemently opposed, without having formulated a completely clear understanding why I felt this way: I think this rhetorical question gets to the heart of my resistance.

"Most jobs do not afford an individual the opportunity to define his or her purpose" (p. 90) - interesting implicit critique of capitalism and wage work here.

Behavior modification/extrinsic rewards = B.F. Skinner psychological theories around reward and consequence.

"The most important means for doing this is for the student to study the teacher, to learn just how much effort must be expended" - Another statement I agree with fully. So often the socialization process of school is about figuring out what the teacher wants and expects (rather than how to independently think and take initiative in one's work). And this is also one of the most anxiety-inducing parts of school - not meeting the teacher's expectations even when one tries their hardest.

"These investigators have helped us understand how schools socialize children to a set of expectations that some argue are profoundly more powerful and longer lasting than what is intentionally taught" (p. 88): I would completely agree with this. We carry the expectations we are socialized to believe (or, in some cases, to push back against) in our histories long after we have departed from the school environment.

"The culture of both the classroom and the school socializes children to values that are a part of the structure of those places" (p. 88): And in so many schools, the values they were built around continue to reflect a culture that was prevalent when schools first arose, rather than what is necessarily common today; and they more often than not also reflect the dominant culture. (For instance, at my school students are expected to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.)

"The fit between the teacher's 'score' and the students remains as critical in the classroom as it is in the concert hall" - considering different unique music tastes, and the contemporary changes music undergoes brings about an interesting interpretation of this metaphor. Does this metaphor serve to oversimplify at any point (per Stone)?

Textbooks are a critical part of curriculum diffusion because so much of schooling centers around them when they are available. I wonder if we will delve more into the role of textbooks in curriculum diffusion.

"Claims reflect beliefs about the nature of knowledge." I wish I could get an example of this. I feel like this is about at the edge of what I'm able to understand here, and I'm not quite certain I fully understand this particular assertion.

"For such students, mathematics was miseducational." Oh, wow. This is a huge commentary to consider especially in working with students with learning disabilities who struggle with math and literacy, who have so long had experiences that we could argue have been miseducational by closing them off to these fields of study.

Educational experiences as a vessel for a certain set of values = normative theory. If the educational experiences work contrary to the values, then they are not explicitly educational ("miseducational")

"the existence of a well-planned body of curriculum material is no guarantee that they will be used effectively or with enthusiasm in the classroom." - I have seen this play out in my school setting. The sheer existence of curriculum, even if well-planned, is not enough to ensure its use in a compelling or engaging way.

Examinations - ie standardized tests - assess intended curriculum and therefore assess an ideal rather than a reality in terms of what truly plays out for each student in a classroom.

A planned and written curriculum allows for dispersal and critique, while a curriculum that has not been written down and may not have been preplanned can only be assessed through observation. What are the strengths/weaknesses of each practice? What are the benefits of a curriculum being left unwritten or even planned as it is going on? I would like to hear more about this because it seems so unusual right now.

"The general assumption underlying the work of these groups is that teachers would welcome such materials" - In developing curriculum with the resources and access to scholars of more renown, the expectation is that teachers would welcome this curriculum - but yet this again ignores the hyperspecific needs of any given student or community. How can the two sides of this spectrum interact?

In the Norwegian model, educators are primarily translators of policy and do not make or formulate curricular policy. Our model seems very similar, but I wonder how it differs.

Progressive educators = view entire range of student experiences as curriculum; differentiate from course of study, which includes content

"In a sense, one could have a curriculum only after it was experienced by a child." - This is an interesting thought only because it goes so strongly against what we are accustomed to considering "curriculum" in the current practice of education. However, it does bring into consideration the way that teachers need to be efficient at assessing themselves and their students while they teach in order to check on how student experiences need to be adapted to ensure learning.

Students coming to schools with different backgrounds = if background knowledge is one of the, if not the, most important elements to comprehending a text, then such a wide variety of backgrounds can clearly have a difference even on students' ability to read and comprehend passages.

"the entire question of the kind of general education one wants students to receive enters the picture." - This ties back to the purposes of education. What do we view as being the core purpose(s) for which we do school?

"Despite these efforts, schools remained essentially the same." - the vast majority of reform efforts do not address elements of the school system that were developed arbitrarily or around ideas that are now archaic. (Failure to challenge assumptions/expectations.)

"Indeed, B.F. Skinner himself has said that he regards his work as a footnote to what Thorndike started" - it's fascinating that early curriculum theory actually had this kind of influence on other disciplines.

"comparisons among students who start at different places and who go to schools that have different resources to provide is not necessarily a way to create an equitable society" - considerations of how we define equity and what comparison-based testing as a policy considers to be "equitable"

"The belief that behavior was controllable" contributes to the accountability mechanisms in place and the common rhetoric that teachers should be able to inspire 100% compliance and engagement from all students.

"To assume that schools are like factories is ... to reduce schools to factories." This is HUGE when we consider the school-to-prison pipeline and the standardization inherent in the prison system.

"The unique needs of particular individuals, constituencies, and circumstances are unnoticed" - reminds me of the differences between working in a school district where many students come to school hungry because their families struggle to feed them, students don't see themselves represented in curriculum etc. compared to a district where families have more money but perhaps there is, for instance, a cocaine epidemic. Each community's individual needs must be considered carefully.

Formulating educational goals also means defining the purpose of education. We can't set goals without an understanding of vision and purpose. All these elements consider the core question, What is it we want to achieve? What is the outcome we are seeking?

Critiquing the concept of "renaissance" = the metaphor used in the Bush administration for educational reform. "How one can have a renaissance without the fine arts is something that is not altogether clear" indicates a callback to the inherent concept of renaissance used to critique the metaphor. However the critique itself does seem surface-level, because the inclusion of the concept of arts in schools here doesn't tie super closely to the thesis of this chapter.

"The profession, according to Finn, has failed." - The narrative that educators should not be in charge of the teaching profession; that those who would be expected to know best do not actually know best because they (as opposed to systemic constraints) have historically failed (despite that educators are not a monolith)

Schools' interaction with socioeconomic environment = the core of critical pedagogy

Interesting how this ties back to the first week in the course: shows how the goals of education that we embrace also define all of the policy goals and choices that we make.

This is such a critically important piece that often gets missed or ignores. We know a lot of learning outcomes don't happen all at once, and that sometimes the lessons teachers give don't come into relevance for students until much later. This is an interesting suggestion because it means recognizing the importance of patience, which runs counter to much of education policy.

This is a broad-based reform suggestion that extends beyond schools and teachers to a much wider web of services.

Throughout our work in this course this has been revealed to be the new dominant narrative in what type of educational reform may be most effective. Are there limitations or blind spots to this narrative/proposal? What could be some elements that run counter to it that are worth considering?

Again -- use of symbols. The language here is created by how NQTs feel about policy, but also functions to continue to create that reality. (I know it because this was me last year as a new teacher ... and I will probably, to some extent, continue to feel this way until I have my feet fully under me. Interesting to consider.)

Really interesting critique - how the practice doesn't align with the language/theory being posited. The critique is not so much on the "Every child matters" theory itself but on the misalignment of the theory and what is actually happening; or the use of the theory to mask what is actually happening.

What circumstances might have led to this? Why at this time is the role of policy critics so minor?

A critical piece of policy - the question of whether it is meaningful and doable, and how to do it.

Raises the questions we've been asking throughout this course - how does effectiveness become quantified, how do educators become the scapegoats for struggles in other areas of the system? What are our accountability mechanisms and how do they work?

We discussed this in our video discussion last week when we talked about the "chain of accountability" and the question of who holds people at the top accountable, and how does that affect those at the bottom?

Is this a role we can play in our schools based on our understandings of critical pedagogy?

Interesting how this also ties to Stone's discussion of symbols re: fragmentation and how the concept of fragmentation is always negative (which is how this sentence reads here).

Use of metaphor to frame the narrative.

Centralization of power

Another symbol - use of economic terminology in describing the school.

How does the symbolic narrative define the policy, the articulation of the policy, the enactment of the policy? How does the narrative of the policy interact with the narrative of the individual school, where do they align or diverge?

Stone's use of symbols - in this case a story of improvement/growth.

Vouchers don't do anything to improve schools, so I wonder what the thoughts are on that. Does this not just relocate students to other schools, upping attendance and making their resources more difficult to attain? I guess I am still somewhat confused.

What kind of weaknesses?

Arguably a larger music metaphor is in place here. Like maybe "Oh, the early 2000's weren't the end of 'good music as we know it' as some people assert!"

Interesting to consider, anyhow.

A metaphor within a metaphor.

Jazz is still growing and changing. Breakthroughs are breakthroughs toward progress, not as an endpoint of it.

Changing the script - seeking new metaphors that reframe the story. Yet, is it dangerous to propose a new metaphor at all? Can this metaphor not be distorted to overlook elements of the reality? Or do we as a people require a metaphor with which to tell our story and crystallize our national identity? Can we survive without a national metaphor?

Seeking to remove the symbolic power of a metaphor that oversimplifies or overlooks the reality.

Use of metaphor to symbolize national identity.