dogs playing cards: powerbrokers of prejudice in education, art, and culture dennis earl fehr, ed.d.

SECTION TWO

EDUCATION, ART AND CULTURE TODAY

CHAPTER 6

CENSORSHIP, PATRONAGE AND EDUCATION

Part I: CENSORSHIP

Fear, fibs and fanatics

Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world.

                                                                                         —Adolf Hitler   

  painting by Adolf Hitler

The twentieth century’s loudest battle over censorship of the arts emerged in the late 1980s and the two sides are still scrapping like the Montagues and Capulets. In the eye of this maelstrom lies the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In 1987—in a move that no one could predict would propel religion-based censorship onto front pages around the world—the NEA awarded a $75,000 grant to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This grant was to support the gallery’s annual Awards in the Visual Arts program, a national competition also funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Equitable Foundation. It drew over 100 nominees. SECCA assembled a jury of distinguished curators and visual artists and selected ten winners, each of whom received $15,000. One recipient, a New York photographer named Andres Serrano, displayed a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a jar of his urine.  He called it Piss Christ.    

Piss Christ
Andres Serrano

      In late 1988 an exhibition of the works of the winners began a tour of three cities—Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Richmond. Early in 1989 in Richmond, a visitor to the exhibition was offended by the Serrano image. The outraged viewer contacted an evangelical group called the American Family Association (AFA), headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi. In April, AFA director Donald Wildmon released a press release decrying the Serrano photograph and the involvement of the National Endowment for the Arts with it. In fact, no one at the NEA had seen the Serrano photograph. Nevertheless, Wildmon demanded that the NEA retrieve its money and produce a sacrificial lamb to be fired. After an article about the Serrano photograph appeared in the AFA newsletter, citizens began contacting members of Congress about what they believed was a direct grant to Serrano to create the crucifix image. Despite the NEA’s explanations to the contrary, public wrath increased.  The agency was staggered by the controversy. 

      A month later the NEA received a near knockout blow. The prestigious Corcoran Gallery of Art was scheduled to open a touring exhibition of the works of the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. 

Christopher Holly Robert Mapplethorpe 1981	Anemone Robert Mapplethorpe 1989

In 1988 the Endowment had approved a $30,000 grant to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to support a retrospective of Mapplethorpe’s work. A critically acclaimed artist (his photograph of then-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was used on the cover of Time), Mapplethorpe was receiving $10,000 apiece for his society portraits at the time of his death in March of 1989. The exhibition opened at ICA in December of 1988. It included 175 photographs, most of which were studies of flowers. Five of the photographs depicted images of the artist’s gay lifestyle. These were displayed separately from the rest of the exhibition. By the time it closed in Philadelphia, 10,000 people had seen the exhibition. It subsequently opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, drawing 47,500 people before it closed in April 1989. Intimidated by the Serrano controversy, officials at the Corcoran canceled the Mapplethorpe show. They felt that it would be politically unwise to bring the retrospective to Washington at a time when the Endowment was already under Congressional scrutiny. The cancellation only served to create more controversy. Artists throughout the country cried censorship. One after-dark protest involved showing slides from the Mapplethorpe exhibition on the gallery’s outer walls. In July the Washington Project for the Arts opened the Mapplethorpe show, drawing record numbers—close to 50,000—to its small gallery. 

      Meanwhile, members of Congress were debating the funding of the NEA.  In July of 1989 Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina), true to the motto that a mind is a horrible thing to use, introduced an amendment stating:

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated to this Act may be used to promote, disseminate, or produce—

(1)  obscene or indecent materials, including but not limited to depictions of sadomasochism, homo-eroticism, the exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts; or

(2)  material which denigrates the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion or nonreligion; or

(3)  material which denigrates, debases, or reviles a person, group, or class of citizens on the basis of race, creed, sex, handicap, age or national origin.

On July 26 Helms initiated a voice vote that passed. The Senate failed to note that examples abound (going at least as far back as Pharaoh Akhenaten in the fourteenth century BCE) of artists whose work offended their contemporaries but came to be admired later. In the House of Representatives an attempt to include Helms’ language failed (although the House did pass a symbolic $45,000 cut, a sum equal to the amounts appropriated to the Serrano and Mapplethorpe projects). Helms—as familiar with the byzantine modus operandi of Congress as anyone—knew the bill would not survive the House vote. He also knew it did not need to. The NEA dared not push Jesse into calling for a roll call vote. Few of our solons care to go on record voting for the ‘obscene and indecent’.

Because of differences between the House and Senate funding bills, a House-Senate conference committee met to work out a compromise bill.  That bill resulted in an FY90 appropriation of $171,255,000 for the NEA.  It also included the following amendment:

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated for the National Endowment for the Arts...may be used to promote, disseminate or produce materials which in the judgment of the National Endowment for the Arts...may be considered obscene, including, but not limited to, depictions of sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts and which, when taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The final bill also provided for the establishment of an independent commission to conduct a study of the Endowment’s funding procedures.  After the bill was signed into law, the NEA began including in its grant packages the exact language of the new legislation. The paragraph was buried among ten pages of “terms and conditions” applying to federal grantees, such as civil rights laws, nonprofit status regulations, and the Drug Free Workplace Act. A cash request form, which required a grantee’s signature, followed the grants package.

      Many in the arts community considered this law unconstitutional, calling the requirement to sign the cash request form an “anti-obscenity oath.” Eighteen Endowment grantees turned back NEA funds rather than sign the form. Four other grantees filed suit over the law’s constitutionality. NEA Chairman John Frohnmayer testified that he believed the language was unconstitutional. Despite these actions, the law remained unchanged. The NEA was compelled to carry out the mandate as best it could.

      Meanwhile, the Mapplethorpe retrospective continued to tour the country, its attendance figures swelling as the hubris grew. In Hartford CT, the show was viewed by 72,000. The numbers mushroomed to 106,000 in Berkeley CA. In April the exhibition opened at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, where it drew 80,000. Dennis Barrie, the gallery director, was charged with pandering obscenity and was acquitted the following autumn. The show closed in Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, drawing 109,000 viewers.

      In 1990, 1991, and 1992, Congressman Philip Crane (R-Illinois) revealed a level of awareness both pinched and over-reactive by introducing bills that would abolish the Endowment altogether. In 1991 the bill was supported by 65 votes; in 1992 by 85. As recently as 2002 the NEA's budget is less than half what it once was. In 1990, with the Endowment’s five-year reauthorization charter scheduled to expire, a number of bills and amendments were introduced, ranging from Crane’s to those containing a litany of content restrictions. Endowment grants, for example, would not be allowed to fund works that denigrate a religion or the American flag, or contain a human embryo. Following the release of the report from the independent commission which recommended reauthorizing the Endowment without restrictions, Congress eventually rejected attempts to abolish the Endowment and voted down all amendments calling for content restrictions. The Senate and House passed language originally crafted by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) that returned the onus of determining obscenity to the courts, where it has traditionally been. In a 1973 case, Miller v. California, the court held that obscenity should be determined by “local community standards.” A federal agency in Washington such as the NEA cannot determine ‘local’ standards on a national scale. If local communities determine that an Endowment-funded artist or artwork is obscene, the new law says the agency is to retrieve its funds.

      Congress reauthorized the Endowment for another three years, at the same time mandating a number of administrative and procedural reforms within the agency. In January of 1991 a federal judge in California determined that the FY90 laws covering Endowment grantees was unconstitutional. A month later the Endowment revised its grants management manual to reflect the new laws. The agency indicated that it will treat all FY90 grantees in accordance with the FY91 laws—the Endowment will rely on courts of law to determine obscenity, and it will continue to make its funding decisions based on artistic merit.

      Nevertheless, with its very existence threatened, the NEA has since been less willing to fund controversial work. This timidity has not paid off; the NEA again became a political football in the 1992 presidential election. Anne-Imelda Radice, the George Bush appointee who replaced the more thoughtful John Frohnmeyer as chair of the NEA, was not placed into her position to evaluate art on its merits, but to quell criticism (the fact that she is a lesbian did not emerge until fall of 1992).  Says Ronald Jones (in Cembalest, 1992), an art professor at Yale University and member of the NEA’s sculpture panel:

It’s clearly evident that she was using terms in broad and vague and irresponsible ways, to censor works that might cause problems in the election year. She faded for me as a professional and became for me a political hatchet man, a lapdog of Bush’s reelection campaign.

Much of the criticism that so intimidated Bush was generated by another 'art expert', Patrick Buchanan. A former aide to President Reagan, Buchanan stole this leaf from Jesse Helms’ playbook in a bid to become a contender for the 1992 Republican presidential nomination. Fortunately, political debutante Buchanan’s media dances (one might call them Pat Buchanan’s balls) were quickly  snipped, leaving him alone at the head of the staircase, all dressed up with nowhere to go.  Buchanan (1989) called Serrano’s and Mapplethorpe’s work “blasphemous filth”:

As with our rivers and lakes, we need to clean up our culture, for it is a well from which we all must drink. Just as a poisoned land will yield up poisonous fruit, so a polluted culture, left to fester and stink, can destroy a nation’s soul. With so many magazines, books, films and plays saturated with crudity and pornography, with our museums playing host to junk art, with the music aimed at America’s young far gone in hedonism, a question arises:  Is America a decadent country; are we a corrupt people? As we watch communism lashing out in its terminal crisis of belief, are we missing another story, the West sliding down its own slippery slope to cultural death?

      Buchanan masks a pallid point with perfervid prose. To his alarmist charge that the West is “sliding down its own slippery slope to cultural death,” I respond, “The West, heady from the smell of freedom’s ambrosia, is soaring on Mercury’s wings to Olympian heights of aesthetic conquest” or something like that. Buchanan is not the only writer who can sling metaphors like a manure spreader. His lycanthropic baying depicts an America drowning in a stygian cesspool of “pornography,” “junk art,” and “hedonism.” Let us examine the case he makes. Envision the image of a naked man tied to a crossbar, about to be whipped. Or a naked woman fondling her genitals. Or another naked man kneeling, about to be spanked by a naked boy. A naked woman sits on the man’s head. Images from Mapplethorpe’s show, you say? Images that will pollute and poison our land? The first is a description of Jusepe de Ribera’s The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, a painting that over the centuries has become an icon of Christendom. The second is Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, painted over 500 years ago. As anyone bothering to view the painting can see, Botticelli portrayed Venus not fondling her genitals but covering them. The third is a detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, one of the most serious Christian painters working at the turn of the sixteenth century. Greenberg (1989) points out that irresponsible writers such as Buchanan can make any art appear obscene to readers who draw conclusions without seeing the art for themselves.

      Why, such writers lament—proving that there is such a thing as a stupid question—cannot art experts recognize ‘sewage’ when they see it? The fact is that we can. Quite simply, no one is better able to discriminate between strong and weak art than one who has chosen a career in art and studied the discipline for years. Parallel examples exist in scientific fields. No one is better able to remove an appendix than a trained surgeon. No one is better able to pilot a rocket than a trained astronaut. No member of Congress would presume to do either. Few congressmen can pick ties that match their suits, yet they claim sufficient expertise to make judgments about late-twentieth-century art, which is just as complex, just as esoteric, as late-twentieth-century science. Helms’ bill would have placed the US Congress in the position of—as Senator Howard Metzenbaum pointed out—”telling the art world what is art” (Wicker, 1989). Government regulation of art-making processes comes in like a lamb and turns into a wolf. It leads not to ‘moral’ art but to vapid propaganda. This was evidenced in the Soviet Union, which borrowed from Nazi images of the blond Aryan ‘ideal’ to promulgate its own fantasy of the ‘noble worker’, a figure that toiled joyously in the fields of state collective farms. When Congress allocates funds to the space program or AIDS research, it does not presume to know how the funds should be spent. It relies on experts. As long as the hard-earned money of American taxpayers bankrolls the NEA, it is essential that decisions over how that money is spent are left to experts—the members of the art community—not aesthetic mountebanks such as Jesse Helms, who chooses to curse the darkness rather than light a candle. It is odd that, so many years after the presidency of Richard Nixon, Republicans still believe in bleeping out words, in blacking out images, in ‘erasing the tape’.

      Further, American taxpayers have every right to expect art teachers to provide our nation’s youth with substantive learning experiences. Among these I list 1) the ability to identify the agendas of those who create our culture, 2) deep appreciation of our constitutional right to free expression, and 3) respect for the rights of those with whom we disagree. A good art teacher guides students on the middle ground between cold intellectualizing and frothing emotion, between rigidity and ranting. A good art teacher instills in students a respect for freedom of expression as well as the maturity to exercise it wisely. And a good art teacher realizes that the mores of the local community are not to be trampled—nudged on a regular basis, but not trampled. Art can be the epicenter through which rumblings in the cultural substratum explode. Unfortunately—and this is the greatest problem confronting the art ed field—today’s artistically unschooled masses fail to understand the potential of art as a source of personal empowerment and as an agent of social remediation. It is hard for artists to make art when their hands are tied. And it is hard for teachers to teach art to a society wearing blinders stamped “Made in Washington.” 

      None of this is to say that most of the work produced in this century will stand the test of time. It will not. Then too, neither has the majority of art produced in any historical period. The twentieth century is not different from other centuries in the proportion of weak art it has produced. A trip to a museum may cause today’s viewer to lose sight of this fact if the viewer fails to remember that museums house only the best of what time has yielded. Art—regardless of its aesthetic, political, moral, sexual, or religious content—is judged by the even hand of time. Time tends to consign inferior images to art’s ash heap, and it makes these consignments according to artistic criteria that rise above the passions of a given day. Art that is controversial in one age may not be in others. Thus it has been and thus it will be. One may be bored or hurt by images promulgating mysogyny, racism, or religious mythology as gospel truth, for example, but citizens of a democracy have a right to display those images. An occasional encounter with an offensive or innocuous image is a small price to pay for artistic freedom, especially when one considers the alternative—succumbing to the comstockery (to borrow H. L. Mencken’s term) of the rabid Right. The far Right is like the far Left—birds on a wire. When one flies, they all fly. Thus it is the more important that the rest of us think before we act. 

      Timely examples of the failure to understand the importance of free speech are plentiful. In December of 1991 the mayor of Shreveport, LA, ordered the manager of the Shreveport airport to remove a work of art depicting three photographs in a triptych—a carnival snake charmer, David Duke, and an apocalyptic landscape.  The mayor caved. He failed to trust a thoughtful public to gauge the merit of the image. Reibman (1992) recounts that in 1992 Catherine A. White, Superior Judge for Plymouth County, MA, ruled that a Baptist congregation in East Bridgewater had the right to dismantle a ceramic and stone mural built by artist John Moakley in 1971 on property then owned by a Unitarian-Universalist congregation, despite a state law passed in 1985 that gave rights to artists over their work after the work had been sold. The mural depicted Native Americans’ encounters with the first Europeans and concludes with references to civil unrest, drug abuse, and other social problems. Arguing that this version of history conflicted with their beliefs, the members of Grace Bible Church convinced the judge to side with them. Grace Church minister Maurice Eastwick called the decision “a victory for religious freedom.” 

      In January of 1992 a painting titled A Peace Treaty and the New World Order went on display at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Center in Frederick, MD, a community thirty-five miles from Washington DC. The painting depicts George Bush, pigeon-toed and nude. To his right is Dolly Parton and to his left is Jesse Helms, dressed in red briefs and a military breastplate. Retired General H. Norman Schwarzkopf is shown wearing a breastplate, but is nude below the waist. He is holding a shield emblazoned with the face of the dictator cum watercolorist Adolf Hitler. Public controversy drew the attention of the Frederick area’s five state legislators, who promptly dropped their support for a $500,000 state grant to the gallery. These legislators and their constituents apparently did not realize that strong ideas conquer weak ones without their help. Rather than trying to silence views opposing their own, the good people of Maryland might have welcomed them, grateful for the opportunity to contrast them with others in the free market of ideas.

      Much media coverage of art-funding controversies portrays the art community as a snobbish clique that judges artistic merit on shock value. Unless one wants to argue that artists are a bunch of noncreative dullards, that is a difficult portrayal to make stick. 

The faces of honor
alternative Vietnam memorial
Frederick Hart

Nevertheless, Frederick Hart (1989), creator of the sculpture of three soldiers at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC, contends that art thrives on contempt for the public. He attempts to trace this contempt to the “bohemianism” of the late nineteenth century, claiming that rejection by the public has become the hallmark of great art. An old homily advises that one ought not argue with a fool for fear of being taken for one. This thought gives me pause, but a glance at the ignorance of those who occupy seats of power makes clear that one cannot be silent. Hart is unfamiliar with how the art world works. He subscribes to a stereotype. The French impressionists and the postimpressionists, the ‘bohemians' he refers to, were anything but happy about being rejected by the art establishment of the day. This rejection meant loss of income, which forced them to adopt  their so-called ‘bohemian’ lifestyles. The irony that impressionist art is embraced by today’s public underscores the folly of passing judgment on the art of one’s own time.  

The holy Virgin Mary
Chris Ofili
1996

      When the NEA comes up in dinner party conversation, the topic is usually the work of Serrano, Mapplethorpe, or Chris Ofili, whose portrait of the Virgin Mary so incensed then-mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani. Ofili's use of cow dung as one of the media included in the piece was understood by a large number of Americans to be disrespectful. The fact that it is commonly used in parts of India, Ofili's home. 

     Not figuring into these debates are the Opera House in Bishopville, South Carolina; Montana’s Indian Art/Culture Association; or its Center for the Performing Arts in Great Falls. Nor does the Dance Theater of Harlem, New York, which owes much of its existence to the NEA. Nor does the Idaho Dance Arts Alliance, which used its $4250 grant to fund dance workshops for children; or Lincoln Elementary School in Twin Falls, which spent its $1300 on an artists-in-residence program that in the past six years has brought a mime, a dancer, a storyteller, a painter, and a puppeteer to its classrooms. While we are in Idaho, let us not overlook the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind that spent its NEA award for an on-campus performance and workshop by a professional ballet troupe. In 1992 the Texas Institute for Arts in Education received $150,000 to fund a three-year partnership with the Houston Independent School District and five Houston-area performing arts groups to form an ‘arts in education’ partnership that trains teachers in the arts and sponsors art events for students, teachers, and parents. (Texans who support the arts should be grateful to the NEA; our state comes in last out of the 59 US states and territories on per capita spending for the arts, and has for many years.) A complete list would run long—since its creation in 1965, the agency has awarded over 100,000 grants.  Estimates of the number that received negative publicity range from ten to thirty.

      Many of the grim-jawed grinches who attack the NEA do not know that it supported a number of nonprofit theater productions that went on to fame in Hollywood and on Broadway, including Driving Miss Daisy, Children of a Lesser God, A Chorus Line, Madame Butterfly, and Annie. It regularly brings the award-winning series “Dance in America," “Live from Lincoln Center,” “American Playhouse,” “American Masters,” “Live from the Met,” and “Wonderworks” to television audiences numbering in the millions. It initiated arts events in our rural heartland, such as the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada; the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico; and Ballet West in Salt Lake City. It supports art education, annually funding 10,000 artists-in-residence at over 11,000 sites in all fifty states, reaching 103,900 teachers and 4.5 million students. In 1990-1991, six Pulitzer prizes, fourteen MacArthur Fellowships, two major Tony awards, and fifteen Emmy awards were presented to NEA grant recipients. Crowley (1992) writes of the San Antonio Museum of Art’s wildly successful exhibit titled Mexico, Splendors of Thirty Centuries. This show attracted all the whos in Whoville—more than 265,000 visitors, of which 131,000 were from out of town. Nearly half of the out-of-towners cited the exhibit as the primary reason for their visit. These visitors spent an average of $626 per person in the city, for a total of $82 million. This generated $8.2 million in taxes. These dramatic results exemplify the fact that, every year since 1985, Americans have spent more money on the arts than on sports. These are the fruits harvested by a culture that celebrates free expression in the arts.

      Examples from the other pole are disturbing. The hate-mongering of Patrick Buchanan at the 1992 Republican National Convention still lingers in the American conscious. The Republican party will not quickly forget it either—it remains on the verge of splintering and handing over national politics to the Democrats. Clarkson (1991) describes the thought-control efforts of another would-be purity cop, Robert Simonds—a former leader of the Coalition on Revival, a Christian fundamentalist group whose to-do list includes abolishing public schools. Simonds has set his sights on taking over hundreds of local school boards nationwide. Simonds leads Citizens for Excellence in Education (CEE), a nationwide ‘ministry’ that is converting prayer into activism in hopes of creating a theo-political juggernaut. 

      “We have a plan to take our entire education system back and put it in God’s hands,” Simonds declares. “The way we are going to take it is to take control of every school board in America.” Simonds claims that he is “ordained of God” to be “a police department within the Kingdom of God.”

      CEE’s strategy is to capitalize on low turnout in local elections by concentrating on high turnout from evangelical churches. Since school-board elections often average only 13 to 15 percent voter turnout, 7 to 8 percent often means the winning margin.

      Not as well publicized, says Clarkson, is CEE’s reliance on the quiet flow of tax-free cash. CEE’s pattern of lobbying, election activities, and fund-raising appeals places it in possible violation of Internal Revenue Service rules governing its coveted tax-exempt status, which prohibits participation in outright electoral activity. According to the IRS, tax-exempt groups like CEE may use funds to lobby, but they are not allowed to help specific individuals get elected. How does Simonds describe the agenda of his tax-exempt, nonprofit ‘ministries’?  He claims that in 1991 CEE placed more than 450 school board members elected, with 1200 to 1300 running in 1992. CEE has a “Prayer List for God’s Will for Like Minded Prayer Warriors” that contains the following items:

All new like-minded candidates to gain support, be seen as valuable,

and be given wisdom from God.

Occult, meditation, and hypnotism be seen as dangerous in the

school setting, and removed. Church to teach the truth on this issue.

Planned Parenthood to be kept off school grounds in our Nation.

Revival in education to be Godly and permanent.

Republican party platform to be Pro-life; our people in control.

New teachers to profess Christian values.

Health textbooks to be written with Christian Values.

Christians in media group needed in San Diego.

God’s will to raise up a Christian Pro-family army in America; strong, wise, committed, prepared, powerful; God victorious!

      Martin (1992) comments, “Certainty corrupts, and powerful certainty corrupts powerfully.”

      The good news is that, nationally, reason prevails over such crackpottery.  As Simonds, Helms, Buchanan, John Ashcroft, George W. Bush and the other Peter Pans of the Right drift closer to Never Never Land, one observes that they probably won’t grow up there either. The brutish thoughtlessness of their scorched-earth policies lies exposed. Dennis Barrie (1992), the director of the Cincinnati Art Center who was arrested on obscenity charges for exhibiting the Mapplethorpe photographs, was acquitted after only two hours of deliberation by a mostly blue-collar jury of Cincinnati-area citizens. The US today tolerates a wider array of images than it has at any time in its 217-year history. In the arts, the efforts of the Right to censor certain images represent a backlash rather than a spearhead. Modernism expanded the edges of tolerance of what our culture will permit to be viewed. Overall, the NEA debate has softened the tenor of our national rhetoric. Conservatives, who once would have opposed the public display of Mapplethorpe’s photographs regardless of funding source, have backed off, now saying he has a right to display them so long as the display is not underwritten by their tax money—but that house too is made of cards. As Broder (1992) points out, one does not want to spend tax dollars on soldiers who kill their comrades with ‘friendly fire’ or on gangs of police who bludgeon suspects—but this does not place one in favor of boarding up the Pentagon or abolishing the police force. It is healthy to demythologize ‘forbidden fruit’—pornography, alcohol, drugs, spousal violence, or whatever—by dismantling its mystique. Sin holds a certain appeal; stupidity doesn't. We would be better off if the aphorism that we can no longer be shocked were true.     

     Larson (in Mayo, 1992) makes a summative response to the censorship efforts emerging in this country. Larson published a review of an exhibition called Degenerate Art in New York Magazine. The exhibition, which toured nationally in 1991-92, is a recreation of an art project curated in 1937 under the discerning eye of the esthete Adolf Hitler to discredit politically inconvenient artists. Larson writes:

Art is the canary in the coal mine. It irritates demagogues to madness. Its alienation from  the “healthy masses” [as they are defined by the demagogues] is the index of a free society—free to pursue intellectual inquiry against the populist grain....  The artist, the writer, the musician do not collaborate in the fiction that the world is small, flat, and pretty. They will not feed a craving for reassurance.

Part II: PATRONAGE

Influence, affluence and effluence

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “Who is to be master—that’s all.”

                                                                                                    —Lewis Carroll

A case in point: When Texas governor George W. Bush was asked during a 1999 presidential primary debate to name his favorite political philosopher, he answered "Christ" and won a bucketload of evangelical votes. But his conduct since becoming president confuses me—which aspect of Jesus's philosophy does President Bush like? It doesn't seem to be the part about the rich sharing with the poor. For the latest instance of executive penury as of this writing, read on.

       In January 2003 President Bush outlined what he billed as an "economic stimulus package" to a room full of rich people at the Economic Club of Chicago. It aligns with the dozens of fiscal decisions he has endorsed from the start: cotton candy for the bottom eighty percent of us and increasingly hefty tax cuts for the top twenty, especially the top tenth, and most especially the 200,000 or so families (about eight tenths of the top one percent) who make over a million dollars a year. The bulk of the plan (which will cost us close to $900 billion if you include the interest it will add to our public debt) is a proposal to make stock dividends nontaxable. Citizens for Tax Justice report that half the freed up cash will go to the top one percent of taxpayers (Hertzberg, 2003). A fourth will go to the rest of the top five percent. So—Wal-Mart's owners are spared taxes on their dividend income while their cash register checkers will continue to pay taxes on their minimum wages.

      "These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans," Bush told the Economic Club. Most teachers are middle income Americans. On what does the president base this claim? Well, let's see. "Ninety-two million Americans will keep an average of $1083 more of their own money," he told the fat cats. Hmm. If Bill Gates visited a shelter full of homeless people, the average worth of each person in the shelter would be a billion or so dollars. Such a statement is what Norman Mailer calls a factoid: A technically true statement intended to convey a falsehood. In fact the president's economic stimulus will not enable that lower eighty percent of us  to keep more of our own money. However, it is likely, down the line, to give us a tax increase in exchange for the new breaks given to the richest of the rich. 

      In 1955 the philosopher Herbert Marcuse published a social theory which included a notion that could be described as a principle of survival—a meta-structure used by humans to perpetuate the species. It involves practices such as delayed gratification, the subordination of pleasure, and a willingness to do unpleasant work. He stated that differing cultures evolve differing ways to employ this survival principle. In the West the those ways have been culturally Euro-centric, patriarchal in terms of gender, capitalistic economically,  democratic governmentally and Abrahamic in terms of religion (i.e., adhering to the three traditions that have emerged from Abraham: the Judaic, the Christian and the Islamic).  

      He suggested that cultures also impose social controls on citizens beyond those needed to maintain the principle of survival—what I simply call oppression. Examples of these in the West include schisms between means and ends (with ends on top), values and facts (with facts on top), feeling and intellect (with intellect on top), visual and verbal language (with verbal language on top), and play and work (with work on top). People who teach children need to understand this to avoid conveying their subjects' content in a mindless vacuum.

      These schisms are controlled by the educated and the wealthy. Class struggle develops when the lower classes too become educated. This is possibly the most important contribution of free public education. Armed now with knowledge, the under classes approach a point of counterpoise to the upper classes, but they aren't all the way yet. What is needed to even the match? Rage. This creates a delicately balanced mis-en-scene in which the upper classes are forced to negotiate power. But is education and rage truly a match for education and money? It was in the American, French, and Russian revolutions—not a bad string of precedents.

      Many who toil in consumption-oriented culture not only lack time to smell the roses, but they lack even the entry fee to the garden. According to Schor (1992), the average worker today in a year is putting in what, twenty-five years ago, equaled thirteen months’ work. Schor comments that we could reproduce our 1948 standard of living in less than half the time it took in 1948. Our materialist thirst cannot be sated so long as the Joneses stay even with us. We may end up owning the possessions we want, but lacking the time to use them. Art history is full of works dealing with this very issue. Is it not them worthy of attention in our art classes? 

      Why do we not enjoy life more? One reason is that we have traded the invisible—time—for the visible—possessions. Henry Thoreau wrote that someone could walk from Boston to Hartford more quickly than getting there by train, considering the time needed to earn money for the ticket. The peasants of medieval Europe were poor, but after they delivered the required percentage of crops into their lords’ larders, many took the winter off. Employed mothers average 65-hour work weeks between job and home. Many executive jobs involve eighty to one hundred hours per week. Capitalists can keep their underlings running in their squirrel cages by insuring that the ranks of the unemployed remain swelled. They teach these underlings the price of everything and the value of nothing. This observation is worth considering as material for building an art unit.  If you have the time.

      Our addiction to materialism was fed by the postwar economy. A person could perform the same job each year, and each year make more money. A sign of a husband’s success was a wife who did not work outside the home. The postwar economy ended in the 1970s, but no one noticed. Consumption continued unabated. This was accomplished by two means, the first of which was to buy on credit. American consumers did this so enthusiastically that the US quickly shifted from the world’s foremost creditor to the world’s foremost debtor (Klineberg, 1992). The second means was to redefine the working family. Mothers left the home to work. Meanwhile, the Swing Set continued to get out of school at three o’clock. The unsupervised hours between three and six o’clock have contributed to drug abuse among the young and other problems that gnaw on our national bones.

      Economic power, once held by those who controlled natural resources, has shifted to those who control knowledge. Japan, with almost no natural resources, is a good example. Education is the new century's most critical element in any nation’s economic progress. So how does the US stack up? Visit a school near you sometime soon and ask the teachers how much they make, what their class sizes are, and how grateful society is for what they do. Ask art teachers what they're doing about these and other social problems. Teaching gray scales and color wheels?

      Capitalism is not the worst economic system the world has seen. A contemporary example of an inferior economic idea—nightmarishly so—is that of communism as it was practiced in the Soviet Union. Communism made exploitation easier than does capitalism, demonstrating that a nation's economy is, surprisingly, not the central issue: Its form of government is. If the people are free to "vote the buggers out," the economy serves the people's will, whatever it is. In any case, as capitalists smugly watch communism crumble, they seem unaware that capitalism is a transitional economic state through which the world economy passes as it inches toward democratic socialism—a system that reduces the abuses of capitalism while leaving power of rule in the hands of the people. 

      Following in the footsteps of ancient Greek philosophy, the scientific revolution that began in the seventeenth century polarized humanity from the earth and reason from emotion, genderizing both. Capitalism unchecked by ethics began to turn the earth into a spiritual and ecological wasteland. Environmental scientists are showing us the cost of the view that domination of nature is desirable. Capitalism has demonstrated its ability to deliver a high materialistic standard to the elite (note the United States), and the elite often become seduced by their creature comforts. Ravaging the earth is a fair price, they say, not acknowledging, or perhaps realizing, that it is their children, not they, who will pay it. 

      Given the length of ecologists’ wish lists—which may soon become the wish lists of everyone—the lack of government response is disconcerting. Acid rain, global warming, rain forest depletion, ozone depletion, waste overproduction, toxic dumping, water pollution, and the extermination of plant and animal species are caused by private capitalist entities, but cleaned up with public money. Yet, demanding that corporations pay the costs of environmental damage may not always be the answer. Free enterprise is driven by private profit, so capitalist entrepreneurs perpetually strive to cut corners. Exxon, for example, might find that paying to clean up oil spills is cheaper than converting to double-hulled tankers. For this reason, taxpayers must acquire more direct control of these powerful entities through public ownership of corporations. Look for the “haves” (led by the United States) to resist this.

      The ruling class disgorges the claim that modernism has brought us to the end of history—words that fall gently on capitalists' ears. But like Lot’s wife, they cast their gaze where they ought not. As the capitalists preen and primp, the proletariat completes Thomas Wolf’s half-thought that we can’t go home again—nor do we want to. When the face peering at us through the restaurant window becomes too often that of a poor, minority female, elitists spew a cascade of defenses for capitalism’s failure to be democratic. They blame the victims—women, the underclass, and minorities. These overlapping groups are accused of being lazier and stupider than the elite. Elitist sophistry would have us believing that the society that pays together stays together, but this god is shown to have feet of clay. History demonstrates that an uncontrolled private sector does not police itself against discrimination. The pyramidal model of wealth distribution has been with us since the dawn of history. It remained untempered until socialism in the forms of government-subsidized schooling, social security, police and fire protection, national defense, and so on spread the largesse to the middle class. As we inch closer to becoming a socialistic society, we approach the point of underclass inclusion as well. But so long as we give powerbrokers opportunities to exclude and manipulate groups, they will.

      History demonstrates that the best means to achieve democracy is through a socialistic economy regulated by a popularly elected government—a socialist democracy. One wants to call George W. Bush the Last of the Mohicans, but such typecasting is premature. Industrial capitalism is only beginning to show signs of its demise. In fact, the collapse of communism, mistaken for the collapse of socialism, has temporarily revived it. Some are misled about socialism when brutal coteries such as those of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany—both of which are antitheses of socialism—call themselves socialist. In none of these cases was the leadership popularly elected. A democratic socialist model in which government representatives are popularly elected and industry is owned by the workers would be resistant not only to the abuses that characterize these pseudo-socialist models, but to those which stain US history as well, such as the atrocities foisted on this continent’s indigenous peoples, or the antebellum importation of West Africans as slaves. Jaggar (1983) speculates that under socialism:

...the competitive behavior engendered by capitalism would gradually be replaced by cooperation and, as the underlying commonalities in human interests emerged, the narrow egoism of capitalism would no longer appear to be rational. Production would be designed to satisfy human needs rather than to accumulate capital. Human needs themselves, moreover, would be redefined. As workers regained control over their productive activity, they would cease to believe that their chief interests lay in the consumption of commodities. If work were no longer defined by the needs of capital and no longer undertaken only for profit or for pay, human beings would acknowledge their need not only to consume but also to undertake free and socially meaningful activity.

Such as teaching and making art. Marxists challenge the liberal definition of government as an impartial mediator which functions to maintain individual rights and equalize opportunities. Marxists reject the view that the economy is regulated by any ‘natural law’ of supply and demand. They feel that the economy is explicitly driven by political decisions. Marxists see the state as the primary means by which capitalists maintain their dominance over workers by passing laws favorable to the ruling minority, and by making illegal any attempts of workers to challenge the system. Note how effectively they disseminate this message: When teachers, drained and frustrated by school boards that turn deaf ears, go on strike, many of their number side with school boards. Marx (1967) describes two versions of society, that of the capitalist and that of the worker. To the elitist in a capitalist society, the world is:

...a very Eden. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller are constrained only by their own free will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property because each disposes only what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other is the gain and the private interest of each. No one troubles himself about others, and all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together for the common weal and in the interest of all.

The proletarian sees matters otherwise:

...within the capitalist system all methods for raising the productiveness of labour occur at the cost of the laborers; all means of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage to a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated into it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his lifetime into working time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital.... Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the other pole accumulation of misery...toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation....

      Democratic socialists link such crises as urban educational decline, drug abuse, child abuse, health care inequities, unemployment, and crime in part to the undemocratic political power of corporate America, fueled by its disproportionate control of capital and unhindered abuse of free-market mechanisms and the environment (Democratic Socialists of America, 1992). The capitalist presumption that greed and hunger are the motivators that drive people to work is true only in a economy that denies people meaningful jobs and dignity in the workplace.  

      The era of the ‘new world order’ provides the opportunity to assimilate the Third World into the global marketplace, a vital step for the creation of worldwide economic stability. In 1992 the US signed a trade agreement with Mexico (Mexico possesses untapped potential for cheap labor and other forms of exploitation) as it denied entry to a few boatloads of Haitian refugees (Haitian refugees do not possess such potential). Had the refugees been Haitian residents of European descent, they may have been differently received. Racism remains one of the foremost tools of economic and therefore political control, although today it is more sophisticated than in the past. The following example shows how multiple forms of oppression—in this case racial and economic—unite to sustain the ruling class. Jacob (1991) discusses the results of Atlanta, Georgia’s conservative leadership of the during the 1990s. Opportunities were greater for the poor in the 1970s, he contends, before the national swing to the Right:

African American control of key urban institutions, such as city government or school system administration, cannot itself solve deeply rooted problems... Equal opportunity for African Americans must mean access to...white suburban areas where job growth is stronger and schools are better.  [A] pattern of escalating job growth [occurred] in predominantly white suburbs and importation of white workers from outside the region... Add to that conservative national policies that de-emphasized civil rights enforcement and restricted educational opportunities for black high school graduates.... Small wonder...that during a period of economic boom...inner-city poverty rose while metro area wealth increased. The clear lesson—especially for conservatives preaching the power of the marketplace—is that market forces and economic growth will not automatically pay off in opportunities for the black poor. Growth works only if it is backed up by programs that discourage discrimination and encourage education.  

      Black small businesses often have difficulty obtaining insurance because their business are located in inner cities, viewed as high-risk areas. A related statistic: What percentage of the billboards in Baltimore’s African American neighborhoods advertise alcohol or tobacco? Seventy-six. (What Counts:  The Complete Harper’s Index, 1991). And perhaps the greatest irony—in the 1980s, as capitalists soared to new levels of excess, the working classes turned not on them, but on each other. Note the within-class acrimony of blue-collar Whites toward blue-collar Blacks over affirmative action programs. From this acrimony racists such as David Duke and Patrick Buchanan built  their political campaigns.

      If the haute monde were to write a textbook, its theme would rest on the 

argument that reasons for their superiority are self-evident. They spend fortunes making the self-evident evident. Hirschman (1990) describes a phenomenon of materialist culture called “the attainment of secular immortality through consumer affluence.” One can achieve ‘secular immortality’ (a circumstance in which one’s name outlives oneself in a radius that extends beyond one’s family and friends) through notable achievements in any field, but in a consumer culture, possession of material wealth is the most heralded means. Calvinists, whose mores influenced American colonial culture, believed that material wealth was God’s reward for spiritual correctness. The hasty application of Darwin’s principles of biological evolution to the social sciences—social darwinism—provided rationales for an amoral marketplace. The Victorian writer William Graham Sumner (1963) stated the antithesis of social theory: That those who hold power in a capitalist society do so because they are the fittest. Reaching the peak of the economic mountain, he argued, demonstrated a man’s superiority, and therefore his fitness to lead. By creating a ‘scientific’ justification for leadership by successful capitalists, Sumner established a legacy. Ross Perot, a billionaire who in 1992 combined his dollars with a calculated one-issue platform, drew broad support as a presidential candidate, despite the fact that he had never held elected office.

      It is Ronald Reagan, however, who comes in first among this group of ‘secular immortals’. His re-election proved not so much that style is everything and substance is nothing, but that style is substance, that there is no such thing as ‘empty’ rhetoric. With the optimism of a high school cheerleader and the depth to match, Reagan, mouthing conservative platitudes as if he understood them, moved the country so far to the Right that the moss-covered ideologues at its fringes gained legitimacy. David Duke and Pat Buchanan became serious political players, thanks in part to the power of Reagan’s rhetoric. 

      Sniffing the wind, the private sector pounced. Hiding behind the screen of trickle down economics, US Steel (now USX) used its ‘tax credits for the rich’ not to invest in research and development, not to refurbish its mills, but to buy Marathon Oil. Frank Lorenzo almost single handedly plunged the American air industry into chaos. 

      This shark-like frenzy spread throughout corporate America. The phrase ‘junk bonds’ became part of the American lexicon. Madison Avenue stuck its fingers into the national melting pot, throwing away what did not fit the New American Menu. The leftovers were slid into the media microwave and melted down to a soup no one liked but most people could eat. By the time Reagan left office, Black faces had vanished from advertising. No one said much—it was hard to get a word in. The capitalists were busy citing the pledge of meritocracy: affluence gravitates toward those who most deserve it. Socialists tried to point out that capitalists fill their plates by forming a tight circle around the kettle and throwing an occasional bone to keep everyone else away. And ironically, powerbrokers were aided in the shouting match by workers and teachers who opposed unions. “We’re all in this together,” these groups foolishly roared. The socialists were drowned out. 

      The accumulation of wealth, however, is alone insufficient for achieving social prominence. Visible material consumption and social philanthropy complete the triad. One observes today’s wealthy reviving the medieval practice of enclosing oneself within walled and guarded conclaves. These insular communities populated only by PLUs (People Like Us) hire their own police and fire protection and send their children to ‘excellent’ schools.  Why should they care what happens in the inner city? Well, because their children will pay for their parents’ inability to see the chain that links the ghetto to the guarded gate.

      Congruent with these attitudes is a dichotomy between technology and nature. The former is considered a measure of one’s ability—if not duty—to control nature. This view approaches the cult-like deification of technology as a means to override nature and reach for immortality of one’s own body. Gadon (1989) states:

In [the West’s] denial of death, we avoid confrontation with a basic reality. We conceal the ravaged face of death with cosmetics and bury our dead in costly metal boxes outfitted with luxurious bedding to provide comfort and security and to ignore the inevitable decay of the flesh into a pile of bones. In our avoidance of the reality of death, we do not face our fears of the great unknown. In separating death from life, we have severed our connection to the universal chain of being in which plants and animals, the earth and its atmosphere, the planets and galaxies are united in a never-ending cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Advertisements for some products claim to reverse the aging process or perfect one’s physical flaws. Technology is read as promising control over life and death.  Hirschman (1990) quotes an article in Town and Country:

For many women the two most dreaded facts of life have long been lines and wrinkles.... [However] today...women need not fear the march of time. Using innovations that rejuvenate interior tissue and cell structure, research and development teams...have finally found ways to slow down the skin’s biological clock.... As a result, women are no longer buying only dreams, but exciting realities made possible by...advances in technology.

      One is struck by the fact that men build dynasties in their own names while women get rid of their wrinkles. This advertisement also portrays nature as destructive, and one’s body—which is part of nature—as imperfect and degenerating. An exhausted theme again rears its ugly head—the (male) intellect, through technology, can ‘overcome’ (female) nature. Have your students analyze the hidden messages in magazine ads and create their own ads that undermine those messages.

      Conspicuous acquisition of expensive possessions is another requirement for secular immortality. Donald Trump sees as desirable the acquisition the biggest and most expensive. After visiting the apartment of Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, Trump decided that his apartment was not good enough. A two-year renovation satisfied him enough to say, “I don’t think there is any apartment in the world that can touch it” (in Hirshman, 1990). Trump was proud rather than embarrassed by the fact that his apartment might be the world’s most opulent.  This illustrates the difference in mindsets of the capitalist and the socialist. The former pivots around the word ‘me’; the latter, ‘us’. The favorite number of the capitalist is Good Ol’ Number One; for the socialist it is One for All. 

      Some material objects—for example the Hope diamond—possess their own immortality, which is conferred on their owners. Trump has purchased a Boeing 727, the New Jersey Generals football team, a shuttle airline, an ocean-going yacht, and a 58-room, 38-bath mansion complete with a two-ton, inlaid-marble table that seats fifty, made in the Medici marble works in Florence. 

      The power politics of class oppression are mimicked within the narrower landscape of the art world. A major genre of conspicuous collectibles is objets d’art.  The community of affluence regards ‘significant’ collections as means by which owners achieve prestige through association with the presumed ‘genius’ of the artists. This system cannot exist unless art is comodified. Control of the economy of art is revealed in the advertising of such periodicals as ARTnews, which includes advertisements for Mercedes Benz automobiles, which few of the magazine’s artist readers can afford. Obviously the magazine aims at another readership. Joseph Hirshhorn combined social philanthropy with conspicuous art consumption when he willed a monument to himself housing his collection. It was built on the Washington Mall in the company of monuments to Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson. Although it is fair to describe the affluent community as fascinated with artists—to the point of making them celebrities—this celebrity is undermined by the fact that the affluent community seldom numbers artists among its members. Dissanayake (1991) states (and in so doing restates one of my theses):

Art in its...modern sense, the kind...that is in museums, has become increasingly a private predilection.... Whereas in non-literate society virtually everyone was a participant in the appreciation of art, in modern society, even when the public has learned that art is a good and desirable thing and dutifully throngs to certain well-advertised exhibitions, art remains an elitist activity, made and, more important, consecrated by the few.

      How threatened are powerbrokers by tides of change? Wealthy private and corporate art collectors are good at sniffing the wind since they generate most of it.  When they detect a new ideological current eddying about their feet, they wiggle their toes and enjoy it. Why not? They own the river. Note how the art community of the West, locked into an international capitalist system, is subject to the system’s fluctuations. The collapse of art’s modernist paradigm mirrors the crisis of capitalism in twentieth-century political history: too much product, not enough profit, too much unemployment, not enough market. Rosler (1979) describes how wealthy collectors engineer the art market to their advantage. Dealers respond to the sales of the financially safe and ideologically non-threatening work that these collectors buy by offering more of the same. Because that is what sells, artists crank out more of it. Angela Hampel (in Dornberg, 1992), an artist who emerged in East Germany before the Wall fell, observes how quickly capitalism erects this system in the vacuum created by communism’s demise. “Form and content are still being dictated. The difference today is that instead of ideology, the parameters are determined by money.” Art so dictated soon fills our museums. At each step, the body of non-selling work shrivels further. The artistic tastes of the huge non-buying public are ignored. This segment of the public accepts art’s comodified status and in so doing places art out of its own financial reach. Because everyone is so used to this, everyone assumes nothing can be done about it, or even that there is nothing wrong with it. 

      Social power is maintained by access, education, and wealth.  In the art world, access translates into censorship, wealth translates into patronage, and education remains education. The camel must pass through its choice of these needles’ eyes. The art audience is all of society, but the majority—the working class—are only onlookers. Their knowledge of high culture comes mainly through rumor.  They learned just enough visual art in school to develop what Rosler calls a “churchly” feeling about it. They are intimidated by it so of course they do not like it. When the viewer says, “I don't know much about art but I know what I like,” what is meant is, “I don’t know much about art but I know what I don’t like.” They embrace the myth that art is the legitimate terrain of the elite. This is to admit that they know their place. A middle group exists, comprised of the upwardly mobile demimonde and petit bourgeoisie, a cultural junior high school that tries to widen the materialist gap below it and narrow the one above. Its members have taken their badly taught art history courses, purchased their badly written coffee table books on Monet's lily pads, and subscribed to Art in America to find out which artist to love this month. They divide their time among counting their blessings, clinging to their cultural pretensions, and dropping over dead from the stress of it all.

      To discuss patronage of art without at least a cursory discussion of the economic theory which underpins it is little more than a waste of time. Such a discussion would tell us only that patronage does in fact control art, when the real question is how. During the 1980s art became another stock exchange, but the artifact qua commodity results not only from class distinctions. Duncan (1974) describes how capitalist class structure is reflected in the male/female relationship as portrayed in Western art, and how it is further echoed in the relationship between the artist and his clientele. The message of the art has been that of capitalism itself: liberation (in this case the artist’s) is defined by the domination of someone else. Rather than contest the social order in any way, the political message of this art has been to define women as objects of male erotic interest, and to depict minorities as stereotypes or ignore them altogether. Duncan suggests that these artworks are “splendid metaphors” of what wealthy collectors have done to those beneath them in sexual, racial, and class hierarchies. However, she adds, if the male artist is willing to use women as means to ends, if he is willing to exploit them to achieve his boast of virility, then he must in turn merchandise himself on the art market. He must promote his ‘vision’. He must cater to the whimsies of those bourgeois that he pretends to challenge. If he can fake the sincerity of his antiestablishment angst, he has it made. The establishment is charmed by his highbrow haughtiness so long as it does not go beyond posturing. Philosophically this artist is poised between the Heritage Foundation and the Franklin Mint. Parked in a creative cul-de-sac, he profits by producing the merely interesting, by repeating the progenitive ‘original’ that made him famous. The artist is not the star of his or her show’s opening night, but only a piece of performance art. The stars are the blue hair and mink coat crowd. Artists can reflect reality all they want, but they damn well better not try to make it. This bill of goods may not wash, but does it ever sell. 

      Just how powerful is the gallery machinery with which these ends are achieved? When Artforum attempted, in 1975-1976, to be more than a trade magazine by venturing into cultural criticism, advertisers—fearful that the Russians were coming—threatened to withdraw. Placed under this Damoclean sword, the magazine fired its editors and returned to gallery window shopping. 

     Since the world of private commerce makes little room for the work of marginalized groups, it is only with grants such as those offered by the NEA that such work can be made and viewed. The role of government in the arts is not to control them; it is to democratize them. The NEA does this effectively. US Census figures show that the overall artist population increased from 736,960 in 1970 to over a million in 1980. Today the working artist population in the United States stands at two million—many from marginalized groups. If not for the support of the NEA and other funding agencies, artists would be headed for a cultural oligarchy such as those of Louis XIV or The People’s Republic of China. And the single most powerful vehicle to keep this from happening is a robust public art education program that brings art into the life of every child who attends school.   

     Corporations at times seek to ingratiate themselves with the widest audience by presenting a front of ‘culture’ and ‘refinement’. They purchase art that is non-threatening to the consumer. Aesthetically, Leroy Neiman’s work curls up and blows away the instant it is made, but his career is safe so long as he targets the dying-to-be-hip corporate crowd. Ironically, minimal art—often misread as safely saying nothing—has done well in the corporate market. Donald Judd was making those silver boxes until his death.

      At the time, it was the tunnel vision of modernism that was heralded as its virtue; the more it denied ideology, the better it was. This aesthetic economy measured an image’s quality by the amount of pleasure it provided, and pleasure was determined by how far the viewer was transported from the ugly ‘real world’.  Modernism’s greatest failing lay in its insistence that the artwork be an object of pure reflection, free from the corruptive taint of cultural politics. It also insisted that art be free of economic commerce. It succeeded with the former and failed with the latter. The degree of its failure is best measured by the easy comodification of the modernist artifact into simply another form of capitalist investment. Today modernism’s most outrageous cultural figures rest entombed in the very institutions they attacked. As Wallis (1991) points out, Picasso, Joyce, Lawrence, Brecht, Pollock, and Sartre are now classic figures—Modern Masters.3

      The humble stoplight embodies the democratic principles of a tripartite government. It is no respecter of vehicles—its eye blinks with the democratic disinterest an accused person in a free society deserves from a judicial system. And like the legislation passed by a freely elected Congress, the stoplight requires the citizen to sacrifice a lesser degree of freedom—hurling headlong through the intersection—to obtain a greater one—the safe flow of traffic. Unlike the president, however, the stoplight rarely malfunctions.

Part III: EDUCATION

The teacher as revolutionary

It’s not sufficient [for the bleeding hearts] that students learn about other civilizations and are required to refrain from insulting various minorities; students and faculty are required to “affirm” the presence and value of various minorities and activist groups by studying their writings alongside those of Aristotle, Shakespeare and Locke.

                                                                                       —Phyllis Schlafly, racist 

This is the second section of the book in which I made no changes for the second edition. As mentioned in Chapter 5, I wanted to create a time capsule. Let's read what I wrote in 1992:

The fact that many might regard ‘teacher' and 'revolutionary’ as an odd juxtaposition highlights the naiveté of the public about the teaching profession. Today’s teachers are expected to teach reading writing, and ‘rithmetic (check for guns and knives), teach health and hygiene (cope with crack kids), teach social skills (eliminate racism), teach appropriate conduct (win the drug war), teach ‘high order’ thinking (coach students on taking standardized tests), teach vocational and clerical skills (watch for signs of child abuse), teach special-needs students (speak half a dozen languages), teach consumer skills (provide emotional counseling), and provide the myriad other services that promote the welfare of youth and the amelioration of social ills (adapted from Raywid, Tesconi, and Warren, 1984). Rather than being puzzled by the pairing of ‘teacher’ with ‘revolutionary’, one might wonder how anyone lacking the skills of a guerrilla fighter can survive a career in education. The connotation of the term radical is perennially negative; the term was used to stigmatize the American and French revolutionaries who brought us democracy, as well as the abolitionists and suffragettes who brought the hope of freedom to oppressed groups. It is still used today to label those who strive for freedom; those who do not see the world as ‘mostly okay’; those engaged in the struggles of women for power over their bodies, of gays and lesbians for equal rights under law, of all children for a good education. Americans clamor for their schools to do everything as they vote down tax referenda. Sizer (1984) states:

Teaching often lacks a sense of ownership, a sense among the teachers working together that the school is theirs, and that its future and their reputation are indistinguishable. Hired hands own nothing, and are told what to do, and have little stake in their enterprises.... Not surprisingly [teachers] often act like hired hands.

      Those who moan that our best and brightest go into fields other than education might note Kincheloe’s (1991) experience observing brilliant education majors who cannot get hired because of their intelligence. Of those who can, many desert teaching for other fields, not because of money but because careers in other fields involve greater personal power to resolve work-related issues. This lesson also applies to our students. The giving of power to students, rather than the imposing of it over them, provides students with an investment rather than a free ride. This includes making the school ‘user friendly’. Goodlad (1984) points out, ”The most important thing about school for the children and youth who go there is the living out of their daily personal and social lives, not academics.” 

      As we work to make our educational system the best it can be, we must understand that this does not mean we plead guilty to our nation’s ills, but that we acknowledge our potential to contribute to their healing. "What," Eisner (1992) asks, "can the schools do about the divorce rate in America? About child abuse, about children who come to school hungry? About low-birth-weight babies born to mothers who had no prenatal care? About unemployment? About a culture that worships Nintendo, soap operas, and game shows?" 

      One thinks as well of our obsession with materialism, our elevation of competition over cooperation, our racism, bigotry, and misogyny. Do these contribute to poor school performance? Eisner concludes, "Why do we seem to think that poetry, the fine arts, music, and literature have no contribution to make to the creation of a kinder, gentler America?" He challenges the simplistic ‘reform’ plans being being served and volleyed in legislative chambers, plans based on the belief that standardizing and streamlining are good. He points out that when powerbrokers feel their bases of support slipping away, they tighten up. They mandate programs, monitor ‘outcomes’, and lead the people into thinking that reducing the complexity of the school system will improve it. 

      They are wrong. Yes, it makes things look tidy. A single set of goals, a single set of standards, a single national curriculum, and a single battery of tests sound nice. They make comparisons between school buildings, districts, states, and nations so easy. If all students are made to run on the same track against the same clock, their places at the end of the race are easy to determine. Smitten as we are with competition, we are fascinated by who crosses the finish line first. This presumes that first is best, and that is precisely what causes the whole pretty plan to fall to pieces—it is based on the fallacy that all of the students started at the same line. The idea that each student needs a different finish line is unacceptable because it's messy. 

      Another theme we hear with growing stridency is that what our schools need is teachers who have deep knowledge of the subjects they teach (what they teach), but that teaching methodology (how they teach) is a pseudo-field. The truth is that a good teacher needs expertise in both content and methodology. The failure of leaders to provide for such balance can be disastrous. Kincheloe discusses the Reagan era as a time that called for a “return to a romanticized past, a golden era...” in which “educational leaders lay out what teachers should do and teachers just do it.” Methodology was elevated over content. Teachers learned not how to think, but how to be observed. Conservatives such as George W. Bush have lassoed our educational problems with the lariat of standardized testing, and as the loop floats down around the horns of this rompin’, stompin’ educational dilemma, they jerk it off balance, hogtie it, and branded teachers with a ‘Lazy F’. And the crowd goes wild.

      Rationales for standardized testing go back to the 1920s with a group called the Vienna Circle. They submitted the idea that one could know more through observation than through thought, thus elevating knowledge and devaluing wisdom. The practitioners of this approach became known as logical positivists. Logical positivism was rebutted at mid-century by a bunch of, well, illogical negativists, I suppose, known as the Frankfurt School. This group included Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. They challenged the positivists’ notions that ideas can be value-free or that politics can be neutral, claiming that such stances are simply props to support whichever body politick is in power.

      The Frankfurt School suggested that scholars who accept the notion of ‘value-free’ research ignore the codes and ideologies which shape knowledge, and produce findings which reflect prevailing values and politics. Positivists presume, for example, that ‘lists of facts’ are value-free. In rebuttal, Aronowitz (1973) states that memorizing facts so overwhelms curriculum that students have trouble on those rare occasions when they are asked to think conceptually. In Chapter 7 I will ask you to construct one such 'list of facts’ to demonstrate the fallacy on which logical positivism is predicated—that reason is the sine qua non of all thought. Such a view places reason into the role of pretender to the throne of thought.  “I think, therefore I sham.”

      That which is most scorned in positivism—human bias—is in fact the most valuable tool of the educational researcher. The higher our research cognition, the less likely it is to be accepted, not only by the taxpaying public, but by educational power brokers who have bought into the positivist ‘quest for certainty’. In analyzing experimental data, statisticians often use ‘probability cut-off points’, symbolized by p. These ‘probabilities’ are percentages that quantify the likelihood that a study’s findings are due to random chance rather than to the variable being tested. Because of the straightforward nature of much physical science research, probabilities of .0001 (.01%) are common. Studies with probabilities larger than that are often rejected by scholarly journals in the physical sciences. In educational research (not to mention social science research in general), probabilities as liberal as .05 (5%) are the quotidian stock of scholarly literature. This difference is telling. Social science research is messier than research in the physical sciences. Almost any education study involves a host of independent variables, and any implication that they can be substantially controlled is false. Applying positivist principles to such a setting is as scientifically rigorous as shooting in the dark.

      Using the model of the auto mechanic, Dewey (1916) disputes what is called ‘back to basics’ education. He distinguishes between skill acquisition and the ability to apply the skill in unfamiliar situations. Dewey contends that the mechanic’s skills will desert him when the machine does something unexpected, but that the mechanic who understands the machine can respond to the unexpected. This mechanic understands why the given habit works under most but not all conditions and is therefore better able to adapt the habit to the novel condition.

      Teaching education students only skills limits their wisdom to whatever ideology a culture imparts to them. Education students often demand of their professors, “Spare us the theory. We have to deal with crack kids, guns, and gangs. Give us something practical, something we can use!” Part of teachers' resentment may be due to their disenfranchisement from theory-building. Teachers suddenly recognize their manipulated condition. This recognition causes some to protest the very opportunity to become informed and thereby emancipated. However, this protest occurs not only because theory makes teachers feel voiceless, but because the crucial link between theory and good teaching is often poorly made by professors. Many teachers passively accept theory when it is invisible, embedded beneath methodology. They fail to see that a well-conceived philosophy of education is a bottomless well of practicality. James (1956) observes that science “has fallen so deeply in love with method that...she [sic] has ceased to care for truth by itself at all.” Lather (1991) states:

Critical Theory, feminisms, and European neo-Marxism have come to be coded with the term “postmodern” as, across the disciplines, profoundly unsettling questions challenge what we do in the name of the human sciences. An objective scientific reason is being displaced by a consciously political and social reason....

The question no longer is, ‘Are the data biased?’ The answer is yes. Now the question is, ‘Whose interests are served by the bias?’ Lather offers a rationale for praxis-oriented research:

Research programs that deliberately reveal their biases have been typically discounted as subjective and hence “non-scientific.” Such a view does not recognize that scientific neutrality is always problematic; it arises from a belief that scientific knowledge is free from social construction (Fox-Keller, 1985; Harding 1986). Rather than the illusory “value-free” knowledge of the logical positivists, praxis-oriented inquirers seek emancipatory knowledge. Emancipatory knowledge increases awareness of the contradictions found in everyday understandings, and in doing so it directs attention to the possibilities for social transformation.

Gebhardt (1982) redefines:

...what we want to collect data for decides what data we collect; if we collect them under the hypothesis that a different reality is possible, we will focus on the changeable, marginal, deviant aspects—anything not integrated which might suggest fermentation, resistance, protest, alternatives—all the ‘facts’ unfit to fit.

Teachers who believe that as long as they are not conscious of any bias or political agenda, they are neutral and objective, are in fact only unconscious.  They leave the door open for the prevailing ideology to tiptoe in when no one is looking Namenwirth (1986). Harding (1986) states:

Historically, relativism becomes a problem for dominating groups when their views are challenged.... The point here is that relativism is not a problem originating in women’s experiences or feminist agendas. The view that it is a problem is a sexist response to preserve the legitimacy of andro-centric claims in the face of contrary evidence.

The Myth of Archimedes—the belief in an objective body of knowledge—is based on outdated Cartesian-Newtonian models which suggest that complex phenomena can best be understood by separating them into their constituent parts and from this formulating causal laws. This model of separation resulted in the acceptance of alienation as a given of modern life. This acceptance of alienation in turn justifies school children's ignoring or even tormenting their peers who appear different. Now we know what some of those tormented children do when they have had enough.

      Cartesian dualism suggests two realms of human experience. The first is an internal, sensate realm; the second is an external, natural realm. Descartes and his followers theorized that the internal and external worlds were separate, and that the laws governing the external world could be discerned objectively. This belief has dominated Western scientific inquiry. Lather, however, cautions that much education research is philosophically adrift. Such research is easily co-opted by educational leaders to support the hidden politics of the presiding power structure. This again is done through the dumbing down of the teaching profession by elevating teaching techniques above theory. Shor and Freire (1987) suggest that teachers not submita to school texts or standardized curricula, that they resist the system's demand for bowing and scraping placed on them and their students. This demand emerges from the needs of industrial capitalism for a docile and submissive workforce. Educators content to pilfer crumpets from the glamour plate of capitalist haute theory condemn themselves and their students to membership in this workforce.

      Those who possess knowledge are more powerful than those who do not, but those who shape knowledge are the most powerful of all. They decide who is smart and who is stupid, who is rich and who is poor, who is jailed and who is free. They decide who lives and who dies. Those who possess education are often not the same as those who possess knowledge, if one defines education as that set of knowledge prescribed by the values of a given culture—i.e., the curricula of P-12 and post-secondary schooling. Such knowledge consists of whatever blend of truth and falsity must be presented by the owners of knowledge to maintain their occupancy of the seats of power. Sohn-Rethel (1975) comments:

The objectivity of science demands its neutrality with respect to social issues, and this acceptance of social neutrality is part of the training that every scientist undergoes. Scientific truths are held to be valid regardless of the time and conditions of their genesis and their application. In his [sic] professional life the scientist blinkers himself from all the rest of existence. But is this neutrality really intrinsic to science and conditional to its objectivity? Is it not perhaps a more profound blinkering to the role played by the scientist and science in the interests of capital? In that case, the very objectivity of science would be an expression of its alienation, denying the scientist an awareness of the significance of separating intellectual from manual labor.

Pagano (1990) speaks of herself as a woman who teaches:

Until I actually began teaching, I disdained the profession because of its press as nice work for a woman.... Every teacher of the poor...knows that teaching is through and through political.... All teaching is political, even teaching which disclaims its politics, even teaching the children of the privileged.... That we are changed in the process of education is no mere accident. We teachers want to change our students. And we are certain that the change is for the better. “Yes, but,” some say, “literature, art, history, philosophy, science—these are not political.” If this were true, churches and governments would be unlikely to have devoted themselves to suppressing scientific discoveries, literature, and histories as strenuously as various of them at various times have. Copernicus’ displacement of the earth from the center of the universe ramified throughout the religious, social, and political worlds. Darwinian natural selection deeply disturbed our notions of humanness, and Freud’s discovery of unconscious motivation made it impossible for us to rely even on ourselves. Photography, painting, and architecture have been known to transform our experience of physical space. Whether one thinks of the universe as an organism or a machine, whether one thinks of events as random or ordered makes all the difference there is. What we believe we know about human nature, about the principles of economics, even what we believe we know about what makes good literature or art has everything to do with how we choose to live our lives. I insist that any knowledge or understanding is political because we come to the world and situate ourselves there through what we know and understand.  For this reason, education is both intensely personal and intensely political.

      Kincheloe (1991) states that teacher preparation programs have “often emphasized the technique of teaching, focusing on the inculcation of the ‘best’ method to deliver a body of predetermined facts and the familiarization of teachers with the ‘proper’ format for lesson plans....” Teachers become an unthinking and powerless “peasant culture.” At its best, positivism contributes details, such as which classroom seating arrangements ‘maximize’ learning, or whether reviews of prior material should occur at the beginning or end of a lesson. At its worst it makes ludicrous instruments such as checklist-style teacher evaluation forms a reality.

      One irony of the movement to curtail methodology courses in teacher training programs is that it follows on the heels of the research thrust of the past two decades on methodology. Some researchers attempt to reduce effective pedagogy to the level of methodological formulas, whereas others overreact by discarding any research that smacks of method, even if it offers utility. An example is the lesson cycle, a heavily researched means (Cooper, 1986; Borich, 1988) for the presentation of lessons. Such research might be useful, but it can distract from the far greater importance of a curriculum’s vibrancy, a teacher’s enthusiasm, and other matters that, when handled well, eliminate the need for methodological formulae. 

      Let us examine the utility of the lesson cycle. Some studies show that if students are presented with an attention-getting experience relevant to the day’s lesson (variously called a ‘focus’ or a ‘set induction’) at the beginning of the lesson, more learning takes place (cf. Cooper, 1986). Compare these two scenarios:

      A.  Your students wander in and sit down, waiting for you to begin. Time passes as the stragglers arrive, as you take attendance, organize last-minute materials, and so on. The students have no specific focus, so they generate their own—often things the teacher would rather they did not. By the time class begins, even if only two minutes have passed, an additional task has presented itself—getting the students’ attention brought around to the day’s lesson. This task runs uphill—not the way to begin. 

Good teachers can remedy this:

      B.  As the class enters the room, they are met at the door by an attention-grabbing display.  Assembling the various parts of this display took some effort the first time, but now that it is together it takes only moments to set up—and it can be used year after year. The display reflects a combination not only what is important about the day’s lesson, but of what the students will find is interesting.  By the time the teacher begins to speak, the first task—introducing the lesson—is partly accomplished. Call this a set induction or simply good teaching. The problem is not that the lesson cycle is a bad thing; of itself, it is not. It can improve a teacher’s methodology. But when it is presented as the only way, students are misserved. For example, the lesson cycle is at times ill-suited for art classes. The confident, enthusiastic teacher with the exciting, relevant curriculum may teach in a manner that resembles the lesson cycle format—but this behavior will be theory-driven rather than rote. 

      Let us summarize the rest of the lesson cycle, comparing its prescriptions to the behavior of the strong teacher. The second step in the cycle is review.  Studies show that material which is reviewed is retained better than material which is not (Cooper, 1986; Borich, 1988). Review, combined with periodic testing, facilitates student learning and makes one a better teacher (Borich, 1988). The third step is called presentation, which simply refers to the presentation of the lesson’s content. The fourth step is guided practice. The students participate in the activity under the teacher’s supervision. This supervision usually involves both group and one-on-one interaction. As one monitors student performance, one adjusts and reteaches where necessary. The fifth step is independent practice—students further explore the day’s activities on their own. This can take place either in or out of the classroom. Any in-school activity lends itself to out-of-class involvement. When this is the case, a teacher who reinforces the day’s learning by assigning outside activities can provide students a more substantive learning experience. Engaging students in independent practice within class also provides them opportunities to resolve problems on their own. However, in-class independent practice can include periodic monitoring followed by adjustment if necessary. The sixth and last step of the lesson cycle is closure. The day’s activities come to a recognizable end (whereas the lesson itself may encompass several class meetings). During closure the day’s material is reviewed and summative observations are made. The activity has been turned into a discrete unit. Giving a day’s work an autonomous identity facilitates a student’s ability to recall it. The lesson cycle model offers some of the ‘how’ of teaching.  It does not address the ‘why’. The ‘why’ reaches farther than the ‘how’. A good teacher does not conform to the lesson cycle. The lesson cycle conforms to the good teacher.

      The issue of formulaic vs. holistic approaches re-emerges in a related topic, one that is a perpetual concern of education majors, student teachers, and a number of practicing teachers: classroom management—or 'discipline,' as it is misleadingly called. At education conferences, presentations on classroom management draw some of the largest crowds. The ability to manage a classroom, to create an environment conducive to learning, is obviously important. It is commonplace for some theorists to reduce the issue to a series of techniques:

      A.  “Always position yourself facing the class.”

      B.  “Move close to students who are misbehaving.”

      C.  “Seat ‘talkers’ at opposite sides of the room.”

      These techniques are clever, but this approach lacks a philosophical underpinning to propel it and thereby misses the point. Again we turn to the curriculum-driven classroom model (Dewey, 1916), taught by the energetic, enthusiastic teacher. Simply put, the curriculum-driven model offers students material which is interesting in its own right—interesting not only to the teacher but to the students. Most subjects are interesting in their own right. Each possesses a body of knowledge worthy of study. An intrinsically interesting subject becomes boring only if ineptly presented.

      Advocacy of a curriculum-based approach to class room management does not imply that a student-based approach is inferior. It is useful to construct hypothetical models of ‘curriculum-based’ and ‘student-based’ teaching philosophies for purposes of discussion, but the two need not be exclusive.  One can teach from a curriculum base and simultaneously foster an environment that is student-based. A theoretically critical curriculum speaks to the reality of students’ lives. It is natural and for the most part appropriate for students to be interested in themselves. When teachers teach critically, their students grow into informed adults, able to identify social inequity and act on it.

      Pagano (1990) recalls a lesson of her youth:

I remember being pleased as a young woman to be told that I thought more like a man than a woman. “Woman thinking” appeared, in fact, to be a contradiction. It is not that women are forbidden to think—it is simply that we cannot think as women. If we would think, we must think in the voice of the culture in which we are subdued.

Women and minorities who teach engage in tricky business. They are charged to teach a canon of knowledge that has recorded their contributions as footnotes.  Pagano (1990) describes the place of women in higher education:

We have been careful to hunch our bodies in secrecy as we walked the corridors of our departments for fear that someone would notice we were in drag.... We are affected in our deepest selves by the images and representations of those women in literature and art whom we identify as women. We should be shocked and dismayed then, when we notice that one easily spends four years in college classrooms meeting mostly harlots, courtesans, fishwives, and bourgeois consumers.... I teach a course, a “core course” at our university, in which we encounter an astonishing number of women for sale or use, along with a violent and threatening Mother Nature who must be brought to her knees.... In a single course, Darwin treats us to a discussion of the passivity of the female in all species and Marx ignores women altogether.... So this is Western civilization.... 

      The prototype of body knowledge is childbirth. A mother, under ordinary circumstances, does not doubt that her child is hers. Had Descartes borne children, Western philosophy might have followed a very different course. The father labors under no such conditions of certainty.... Paternity is textual. Maternal knowledge menaces the authority of the paternal text. A feminine position potentially subverts the text. A system of philosophy has been erected on this primal uncertainty. Descartes' story is the father’s.

      Feminist, racially liberatory educators have moved more slowly than their counterparts in art, literature, anthropology, and history to deconstruct modern myths of sexual and racial inferiority—this despite the fact that most educators are women. Pagano (1990) suggests that “...the dark continent of femininity is not the realm of unreason, disorder and silence.” But the restoration of the female voice is only the first step. What words will be uttered by this voice? One still senses that the word most spoken by men is ‘I’, while the one most spoken by women is ‘yes’.

      The price of being born into the dominant sex group starts early. The aggressive, independent behavior taught to boys conflicts with the quiet docility taught in the school (Frazier and Sadker, 1973). Hyperactivity is found in boys at nine times the frequency it is found in girls (Bentzen, 1966). Boys more frequently are identified as having emotional problems, and boys commit suicide at a greater frequency than do girls (McGuiness, 1979). Boys are taught stereotyped behaviors more harshly than are girls (Fling and Manosevitz, 1972; Hartley, 1979). Boys who score high on sex-stereotypical behavior also score high on anxiety tests (Waldron, 1976; Bem, 1974; Bem, 1975). Females choose each other more than males as best friends, whereas males more often name females as best friends (Komarovsky, 1974; Pleck, 1975). Males pay a greater physical price for conforming to their sexual stereotype. They are more likely to succumb to serious illness and to be victims of violence and accidents. The average lifespan of men is eight years shorter than the life spans of women (Waldron, 1976).  In 1969 Sexton wrote:

Boys and the schools seem locked in deadly and ancient conflict that may eventually inflict mortal wounds on both.... The problem is not just that the teachers are too often women. It is that the school is a woman’s world, governed by women’s rules and standards.

      Broverman et al. (1972) found that even bright women often fail to live up to their intellectual potential. Those who pursue professional careers seldom achieve eminence. Women college art majors continue to be less likely than men to display singleness of purpose in their degree of commitment to art. Their concerns encompass a greater variety of considerations and broader scope of life (Barron, 1972).  Horner (1969) suggests that women equate intellectual achievement with loss of femininity and social ostracizing. These factors motivate women to avoid success. Laura Chapman (1978), a prominent art educator, writes, “As educators, most of us find our satisfaction in the achievements of others. When we do something well, the most natural response is...to think last of the role of our own wit and hard-earned skill.... Women...have been programmed...not to claim credit for what we do.”

      As Cadoff (1992) comments, parents and teachers can do much to negate the effects of a woman-hating culture on their daughters and sons. “The good news is that the same experts who have painstakingly documented [how unrelenting society is with its esteem-eroding messages] are also full of suggestions for how to encourage [children to be whomever they want].” Young girls can be empowered to choose. Preschoolers develop independence by choosing their clothes and picking their snacks. Even wrong decisions—like wearing mismatched clothes—teach them that, while mistakes do have consequences, they are not the end of the world. Grade school-aged children’s textbooks may need to be supplemented with grittier stuff. Children need to be familiar with their libraries. Boys and girls need to learn of important women in history. Betsy Ross is not enough. Give children experiences that are traditionally the domain of the opposite sex. Take girls as well as boys fishing or to the ballgame. Teach boys as well as girls to sew and cook. Give dolls and trucks to both sexes.

      If we choose to have television in our homes, we might watch it with your children. Talk with them about the good and bad things they see. It is better to bite our tongues during scenes that make us uncomfortable and then discuss them than to change the channel or order children from the room. Developing curiosity about what mommy or teacher “won’t let me see” is often more damaging than seeing it, especially when ensuing discussions can impart your values about the behaviors that were viewed. 

      Adolescents of both sexes need independence and responsibility.  Possibilities are arranging their own transportation, handling their own money (including checking and savings accounts), seeing that certain household chores are done, and seeing that they get themselves home by a certain time. In the classroom some teachers draw up contracts with students that describe the rights and the responsibilities of both parties. Let them fight some of their own battles with peers, parents, siblings or teachers. From this they can learn how to handle both failure and success.

      Fathers can be as active with their teenaged daughters as they are with their sons. Likewise, mothers can spend quality time with their sons as well as with their daughters. Both—and this includes parents who are divorced from each other—can involve all of their children in discussions about events in the children’s lives. Careful listening is one of the most effective ways to send the message that Dad and Mom and Teacher care. Parents and teachers sometimes hide the reality of sexism, but children often acquire better coping skills when adults discuss their own frustrations. Often parents’ or teachers’ ‘protective’ behavior ends up limiting the girls and boys it is intended to protect. In short, let's not just tell the truth. Let's explain it.

      Sex educators in the schools often have difficulty following this advice. Telling the truth, much less explaining it, is discouraged. Whatley (1991) found that the response of the school to sexuality is to cover anatomy, physiology, pregnancy, childbirth, and sexually transmitted diseases—in a word, reproduction—and avoid masturbation, homosexuality, and eroticism.

      Many of the undercurrents of sexism that characterize our schools emerge in racist guise as well. A movie titled Stand and Deliver tells of Latino high school students from a Los Angeles barrio who mastered calculus. McLaren (1990) makes the point that it was a good story to tell, but it missed its opportunity for social criticism. It, as with all such movies, proved again that Hollywood is about show business, not show art. Two important messages are included in the movie.  The first, the inspiring story of a teacher overcoming odds, receives the attention it deserves. The second, that these achievers were accused of cheating because they were from the barrio, is only lightly addressed.

      The ruling class submits the notion that there is one Reality; yet clearly the reality of the oppressed is different from that of the oppressor. In times of stability, the reality of the oppressed is suppressed through a number of means (Jaggar, 1983). It may be overtly suppressed by denying the oppressed a voice.  This can be accomplished by the use of a ‘correct’ form of speech that is learned by the ruling class. Those who know only colloquial forms can be identified as ‘other’. The religion of the ruling class is presented as Truth; the religions of the oppressed dismissed as charming superstitions or despised as insidious heathenism. The ruling class defines a body of cultural knowledge which it claims as its own.   Knowledge of this body is another requirement for membership. Those whose cultural production supports the prevailing ideology receive awards and become cultural heroes. The media disseminates to the people the criteria of their heroic status. Those whose cultural production subverts the status quo are controlled through ridicule, or denial of employment, research funding, or tenure. If such means fail, the ruling class moves to the Right and employs censorship or persecution. 

      Only in times of political instability do subversive ideas reach an audience, and even then only if the disenfranchised do not divide against themselves. Prejudice is by no means unique to the dominant/dominated axis. Many members of minority groups feel prejudice toward members of other minorities. This divisiveness plays into the hands of the dominant group by preventing the collective minorities from presenting a united front of resistance.

      We in education applaud the teaching of critical thinking skills—but for what? Skills do not speak for themselves. They will serve some agenda, whether of the Nazi SS or Mother Theresa. Enter critical pedagogy—critical theory as applied to education. It deals with the ‘why’, not just the ‘how’, that which causes students to challenge their values, their parents’ values, their teachers’ values, and their society’s values. Racial hatred, for example, is ugly whether it is on the part of oneself, Dad and Mom, or the US Congress.

      Critical pedagogy is needed for every subject. As postmodern artists explore the relationship between visual and verbal language by combining image and text, educators apply critical theory to reading as well as art. Shannon (in Jongsma, 1991) states the case for critical pedagogy in the teaching of reading:

Because [oppressive] conditions are rooted in the social relations of the past, they often seem the result of natural developments...and the inequality of...benefit appears...appropriate, and “just the way things are.” 

However a critical view of reality challenges the injustices...of the status quo by asking the question “Why are things the way they are?”

This seemingly innocent question is both a weapon and a tool. As a weapon, it invites analyses of everyday events in which inequality is encoded....  As a tool, it makes change seem possible.... 

Like all other forms of literacy, critical literacy is political.  It asks you to consider the politics of the authors you read and to decide whose side you are on when you write. 

Critical literacy education pushes the definition of literacy beyond the traditional decoding or encoding of words in order to...[foster] activism toward equal participation for all the decisions that...control our lives.

Luke (in Jongsma, 1991) extends the point:

Even in children’s earliest encounters with books and reading, literacy is tied to values.... Literacy teaching, then, is not neutral; it may work for children’s...interests or it may counter them....

      Commonly used skill-based and even some child-centered approaches may dis-empower readers; in such cases, the kinds of literacy taught (fill in the blanks, skill/drill without meaningful contexts or applications, copying exercises off the blackboard) may have little connection with social and cultural power. Basal-style lessons and even many writing conference sessions are based on unequal power/knowledge relationships in the classroom. Further, many of the basal texts currently in use retain narrow, one-dimensional portrayals of race, gender, and culture (Luke, 1988)....

      [M]ethods that ask children to draw, talk, and write about significant events in their lives...can provide challenges for children to debate...their insights about the world. [A]n approach to beginning reading and writing can center on...themes such as...problems faced by children in their...community, ranging from...issues like environment to...matters like gender or race relationships with friends or feelings about school.

In Australia, there is broad agreement about the need for socially critical approaches to teaching, and for those texts and approaches which will articulate working-class, migrant, and aboriginal experience....

      First steps for making students active critics of cultural discourses and texts might include:  (1) encouraging children at the earliest stages to contest, debate, and argue with texts; (2) comparing texts which [present] differing versions of the same events...; (3) altering traditional classroom talk which puts texts...beyond criticism...; and (4) analyzing print and media texts of popular culture.

      As society moves toward a community- rather than family-based model, we in the teaching profession become not only teachers, but to a degree have become the quasi-parents of our students. Our tasks extend far beyond teaching the power of literacy, verbal or visual. As some parents acquiesce responsibility, teachers become society’s first line of defense. Too many mandates and too little pay aside, collectively we must give more than we do. What do some members of the teaching profession do about this? When children behave in ways that do not conform, they take them out into the hall and, armed with boards, bend them over and hit them. And many parents spank, spank, spank. A widely embraced school of thought claims that this is good teaching and parenting. I recall my belief as a young teacher that there was a place for the paddle in education. Hitting had been part of my childhood, and my undergraduate teacher preparation failed to persuade me of its harm. As I acquired experience I saw the error of this practice, but to this day I regret the trauma my paddle caused my first students. Spanking is child abuse. Those who possess alternate abilities from birth, illness, or accidents point out that an abled society considers its allowances for the alternately abled ( designated parking spaces, wheelchair ramps, sign language interpreters, special needs classes and so forth) as kindnesses rather than rights (Carpenter, 1992). Too many embrace the view that society is ‘atomistic’, composed of separate and unrelated entities—truncated humanity. Carpenter undermines categories of humanity:

[Some believe] that those human beings who exhibit less self-sufficiency are inferior. If, however, we view all people as inherently worthy, interdependent, irrevocably linked by their membership in the human family, then the atomistic categories of independent versus dependent, of abled versus disabled, and therefore of superior versus inferior, dissolve.

      The concept of ‘rugged individualism’ that so efficiently enabled Europeans to imperialize the Americas reveals its colors today by its intolerance of those who are not self-sufficient. According to the ideology of individualism, to be worthy is to be a member of abled society. The fact that species, including ours, survive due to interdependence is ignored. The abled often are oblivious to the many on whom we depend for daily survival in a complex world. Carpenter (1992) rejects the notion that the world "is some sort of moral gymnasium constructed to tone our spiritual muscles.” As we acquire more sophisticated attitudes toward those whose abilities are affected illness or accident, let us the more so acquire similar attitudes toward corporal punishment, a preventable disability inflicted on our children.

      Baptiste (1992) defines three levels of multicultural education that occur in public schools. Level I, the Product level, ‘adds on’ to the established curriculum such things as workshops, courses, and ritual observations of such holidays as Cinco de Mayo, the Chinese New Year, and Black History Month. Level II, the Product/Process level, involves the networking of courses to reflect multicultural awareness, and selecting classroom textbooks that reflect demographic pluralism.  In the third level, the Product/Process/Philosophy level, products and processes are viewed as logical ends rather than means. At this level, all decisions are made in terms of their cultural import. The results of such decisions inevitably shape processes and products.

      By sixth grade, African American children trail their White counterparts by more than two years in all three Rs. The SAT scores of African American and Latino students average more than fifty points less than those of Whites. Twelve percent of White children, fourteen percent of Black children, and 33 percent of Latino children drop out of school.  Looking at only urban school systems, the Latino numbers are worse. The range stretches from 23% in San Antonio to a staggering 80% in New York City. The dropout rate of Native Americans in some places is, appallingly, even higher (National Art Education Association, 1991). Cuban (1989) states, “The future of urban schools is the primary issue facing the nation’s educational system.” Slavin, Karweit, and Madden (1989) add:

The US economy no longer has large numbers of jobs for workers lacking basic skills.... Allowing large numbers of disadvantaged students to leave school with minimal skills ensures them a life [sic] of dependence—the consequences of which are disastrous to the...well-being of our nation.

      The best point they make is that this effort to keep the underclass in its place not only punishes the underclass but backfires in the face of the ruling class.   

      Results of school integration are mixed. It resulted in an influx into Black schools of inexperienced White female teachers who could not understand the needs of their students. Many of the strongest Black teachers, meanwhile, migrated to suburban White schools. Nevertheless, according to the United States Census Bureau (1992b), high school graduation rates among Blacks have doubled over the past two decades, significantly narrowing the racial gap in educational attainment. Asian Americans graduate from college at higher rates than the rest of the population. Nearly 37 percent of Asians aged 25 and older held a bachelor’s degree in 1990, compared to 22 percent of Whites, 11 percent of Blacks and 9 percent of Latinos. However, Blacks continue to score below other groups in mathematics, writing, science and other proficiency tests, and they are less likely to enroll in advanced science and math courses.  

      If we tolerate the oppression of social groups in our schools, if we do not let our children—Red, Yellow, Black, or White—be what they are, how dare we expect them to go beyond that to contribute to society? The Black male (often singled out by teachers as the most problematic student) learns at an early age that for him the American dream is an American lie. Hard work and determination do not bring success to the Black male. The Black male child observes the rewards received by those around him as his own efforts are punished or ignored. When the Black male child learns that he is hated by his society, when he learns that his good behavior is ignored or punished as much as is his bad behavior, the intelligent conclusion for him is to behave any way he wants. So many young Black males do. Society’s response is to place more Black youth into prison than college. Despite this, and to the considerable credit of Black communities, college attendance by African Americans is rising steadily. 

      For Latinos aged 25 and above, just under half have completed high school, up only slightly from 44 percent in 1980. At the same time, a substantial portion of the Asian American adult population has less than a ninth grade education: nearly 13 percent, compared to 10 percent for the nation as a whole.

      Those who read the education field's professional literature know that the gloomy research of the 1960s and ‘70s, which concluded that students’ backgrounds (e.g., parents’ educational or income levels) determined their school performance, was refuted in the 1980s and ‘90s. Soder and Andrews (1985) looked at urban school populations comprised of low-income minority groups. They found that some of these schools got the job done and some did not. They make this thunderclap of a statement:

“By identifying schools that were effective regardless of family income or ethnic status, the Effective Schools research...attributed differences in children’s performance to the schools themselves. (italics added)”

      The problems challenging education today are remediable, serious as some of them are. Education scholars have done their job. The professional literature of the field is swelled with data documenting what works in the schools and what does not, and more is being added all the time. Seldom, however, does this wisdom penetrate the popular media. Since many teachers and administrators do not read professional literature, even in their own field, educational powerbrokers often make decisions based on what they ‘read in the paper’ or ‘hear on the news’. One shudders. 

      A close examination of how the power politics of prejudice are played out in the American school reveals a wealth of information. The National Art Education Association (1991) reviewed nearly 100 studies that examined a host of topics on urban minority education. Outcomes that were measured included students’ achievement, attitudes, self-concepts, employment, grades, IQ scores, absenteeism, detention rates, grades, English proficiency, behavior, racial attitudes and relations, and drop out rates, as well as relations between home and school. This comprehensive review separated characteristics of schools that are successful in educating urban minority students from those of schools that are unsuccessful. Note that these are not band-aid prescriptions, but characteristics found at the heart and soul of the school, characteristics that color every event that occurs inside the building. Primary sources are listed after each item.

HARMFUL PRACTICES

We know much about educational practices that benefit inner city minority youngsters. Researchers have also made important discoveries about practices which are ineffective if not harmful to these students, such as academic tracking, retention in grades without accompanying support, excessive use of pullout programs, and indiscriminate assignment to special education programs.

Tracking

Three significant facts: 1) Black, Latino, and low income students are over-represented in low ability groups and nonacademic tracks; 2) research indicates that tracking does not produce greater learning gains than those obtained from heterogeneous grouping structures; 3) research shows that assignment to long term low ability groups and tracks is often harmful to students. Taken together, these facts describe a grave situation, one which has led some writers to pronounce long term ability grouping—and particularly secondary level academic tracking—as an elitist practice.  These writers acknowledge that proponents of tracking are not usually practicing conscious discrimination, but that the effects are nevertheless discriminatory.

      Ability grouping is said to benefit the ‘gifted and talented’ but not average and low achievers (Rogers, 1992). This generalization preserves elitism by diverting education from its democratic mission. Of course tracking top students is good for them, given the enriched educational experience that ‘gifted and talented’ programs can buy. Place average and low achievers in such environments and watch their achievement rise as well. The pretty myth that ‘gifted and talented’ programs benefit society because they address the needs of a special population masks the ugly truth that White, middle class children are overrepresented in them. This makes them the counterpoint of ‘special education’ programs for slow learners in which minorities and the poor are overrepresented.  What is good for ‘gifted and talented’ students is good for all, and what is bad for ‘special education’ students is bad for all.

      Volumes have been written about the harmful effects of academic tracking on those assigned to low tracks. Ironically, low track placements, which are supposed to ‘help’ slower learners by offering ‘more appropriate’ materials, instruction, and pacing than those used with higher track students, frequently make learning an unproductive and unpleasant experience. Research shows that, compared with students in higher tracks, those in lower ability groups:

Receive less clear explanations of learning activities and materials,

Experience less interactive teaching,

Are given content that is less academically oriented,

Experience more teachers and student interruptions in their classes and more dead time,

Have more ‘in class homework’, reducing the amount of time for teachers to teach,

Have fewer learning activities,

Have more and longer periods of seatwork,

Are often taught by less experienced, less capable teachers,

Experience less teacher enthusiasm and encouragement,

Experience lower levels of student-student cooperation,

Once tracked, have access to fewer academic courses in high school,

Have poorer attitudes about themselves as learners and lower educational aspirations (Brookover, 1981; Knapp, Turnbull, and Shields, 1990; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; Murphy and Hallinger, 1989; Oakes, 1985, 1986a, 1986b; Oakes et al., 1990; Pine and Hilliard, 1990; Schneider, 1989; Slavin, 1990). 

Slavin (1990) writes that decisions about whether or not to ability group must be made on bases other than likely effects on achievement. Given the antidemocratic, anti-egalitiarian nature of ability grouping, the burden of proof should be on those who would group rather than those who favor heterogeneous grouping, and in the absence of evidence that grouping is beneficial, it is hard to justify continuation of the practice.

Grade repeating without adequate support

African American and Latino students are retained more often than other students, again with the hope that repeating a grade will help them to catch up and achieve at higher levels in the future. Retention has sometimes been shown to be beneficial when “instructional arrangements...ensure that appropriate help is provided for retained students” (Levine and Lezotte, 1990). Unfortunately, retention is often not accompanied by assistance targeted to the specific learning needs of retained students. This kind of retention-without-support ironically ends up creating the kinds of negative outcomes that retention is intended to prevent. Generally, when retained and non-retained students with the same levels of academic performance are compared, retained students:

Have lower levels of achievement at subsequent grade levels,

Have poorer attitudes toward school and toward themselves as learners,

Are more likely to drop out of school (with the likelihood of dropping out nearing 100 percent for students who repeat two grades).

Alternatives to retention which have been found in effective schools include promotion with high-quality remedial assistance and transition classrooms that allow for flexible grade reassignments (Frymier, 1989; Levine and Lezotte, 1990; Lomotey, 1989; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; Shepard and Smith, 1990; Sizemore, Brossard, and Harrigan, 1983).  In addition, Shepard and Smith (1990) point out that the annual cost to districts of retaining the 2.4 million students who are held back each year is nearly $10 billion.

Excessive use of pullouts

Slavin, Karweit, and Madden (1989) and the School Improvement Program (1990) reveal that remedial programs are often operated on a pullout basis, and that assignment to these pullout programs 1) stigmatizes participants and 2) causes discontinuity in these students’ school experiences. Pullout instruction, researchers advise, should be short term and coordinated with basic instruction.

Excessive assignment to special education classes

Minority students are over-represented in special education classes, and since these placements are not reviewed for appropriateness as often as would be desirable, these students often remain in these classes long after they cease to be suitable for the students’ needs.  Inappropriate long-term assignments to special education classes are both damaging to the students involved and extremely expensive.  McPartland and Slavin (1990) point out that “...special education placement is often a dramatic onetime response to low achievement that has major continuing consequences on how educational resources are allocated.”

HELPFUL PRACTICES

How can we move forward on what is arguably the most critical challenge of our time—the building of an effective school system?  The NAEA study also uncovered effective educational practices.  They include:

Strong administrative leadership and support of teachers

Administrators in effective schools are involved in shaping the curriculum. They not only support their faculties’ efforts toward instructional improvement but they provide the resources necessary to make such improvement possible  (Andrews, Soder, and Jacoby, 1986; Armor et al., 1976; Brookover, 1981; Brookover and Lezotte, 1979; Edmonds, 1977, 1979a, 1979b; Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; High and Achilles, 1984; Jackson, Logsdon, and Taylor, 1983; Levine and Lezotte, 1990; Sizemore, Brossard, and Harrigan, 1983; Valverde, 1988; Venesky and Winfield, 1979; Weber, 1971).

Teachers’ confidence in their ability

Teachers who are successful in urban minority schools accept responsibility for student learning. They do not perceive learning problems as products of students’ personal backgrounds, but rather as indications that adaptations need to be made in instructional approaches. Such teachers believe in their ability to reach every student (Alderman, 1990; Armor, et al., 1976; Brookover, 1981; Brookover and Lezotte, 1979; Cuban, 1989; Edmonds, 1977, 1979a, 1979b; Jackson, Logsdon, and Taylor, 1983; Knapp, Turnbull, and Shields, 1990; Levine and Lezotte, 1990).

Students’ awareness of high expectations

Related to their belief in themselves is successful teachers’ conviction that every student can learn—a simple-sounding theory that does not always translate into practice. Equally important, these teachers communicate their expectations to students through support and encouragement, and by holding them responsible for in-class participation, completing assignments, etc. Since some students interpret grades as either luck or innate ability, these teachers emphasize to students the relationship between personal effort and outcomes  (Armor et al., 1976; Brookover, 1981; Brookover and Lezotte, 1979; Carta and Greenwood, 1988; Cotton, 1989; Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; Jackson, Logsdon, and Taylor, 1983; Johnson and Johnson, 1988; Lomotey, 1989; Murphy, 1988; Pollard, 1980; School Improvement Program, 1990; Sizemore, Brossard, and Harrigan, 1983; Weber, 1971; Alderman, 1990).

Safe, orderly campus environments

Effective inner city schools have environments that are orderly and subject to routine, but not rigid.  Research literature underscores the need for both rules and flexibility.  Natirello, McDill, and Pallas (1990) point out that hard-and-fast rules work in settings where few unusual circumstances occur, whereas the diversity of inner city schools requires flexible responses, especially regarding nonserious infractions (Armor, et al., 1976: Druian and Butler, 1987; Freiberg, Prokosch, and Treister, 1989; Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; Jackson, Logsdon, and Taylor, 1983; Knapp, Turnbull, and Shields, 1990; Levine and Lezotte, 1990; Weber 1971).

Adaptability to differing student needs

Effective teachers of urban minority students are aware of differences in learning styles—both personal and cultural—and respond with appropriate teaching styles.  (Cuban, 1989; Edmonds, 1977, 1979a, 1979b; Freiberg, Prokosch, and Treister, 1989; Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; Knapp, Turnbull, and Shields, 1990; Levine and Lozotte, 1990; Lomotey, 1989; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; Natriello, McDill, and Pallas, 1990; Oakes, 1986b; School Improvement Program, 1990; Venezky and Winfield, 1979; Waxman, 1989).

Incentives, reinforcement, and rewards for desired behavior

Reinforcements—verbal, symbolic, and tangible; internal and external—help to sustain students’ interest, as do other incentives, such as games and group-oriented competitions.  Studies do not show that teachers or schools which use punishment as their management strategy of first resort are successful (Brookover, 1981; Carta and Greenwood, 1988; DeVries, Edwards, and Slavin, 1978; Gooden, Lane, and Levine, 1989; Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; Johnson and Johnson, 1988; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; Rogers, Miller, and Hennigan, 1981; School Improvement Program, 1990; Sharan, 1980; Slavin, 1979).

Close monitoring of student performance followed by feedback

Close monitoring of student performance enables teachers to adapt instruction appropriately.  Equally important, students are informed about their performance and about steps that will be taken to remediate problems (Carta and Greenwood, 1988; Edmonds, 1977, 1979a, 1979b; Emihovich and Miller, 1988; Garcia, 1989; Gooden, Lane, and Levine, 1989; Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; Jackson, Logsdon, and Taylor, 1983; Levine and Lezotte, 1990; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; School Improvement Program, 1990; Sizemore, Brossard, and Harrigan, 1983; Weber, 1971).

Faculty development programs focused on school improvement and chosen with faculty input

The faculty development programs of effective urban schools differ from those of ineffective urban schools in two key ways: their programs focus on school improvement, and teachers have input as to program content (Armor et al., 1976; Gooden, Lane, and Levine, 1989; Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; Jackson, Logsdon, and Taylor, 1983; School Improvement Program, 1990; Valverde, 1988).

Support of school goals with school resources

Decisions about the allocation of time, personnel, money, and materials are made on the basis of which activities are most likely to further the school’s priority goals. In effective urban schools, this usually means allocating resources to those programs which bolster students’ strengths in reading, mathematics, and language arts (Edmonds, 1977, 1979a, 1979b; Gursky, 1990; Jackson, Logsdon, and Taylor, 1983; Levine and Stark, 1982).

Parental involvement

Research demonstrates that parent involvement in instruction, in classroom as well as extracurricular activities, and in school governance is related to both student learning and positive student attitudes. Research also shows that such involvement is especially beneficial for minority children, who may otherwise feel torn by differences between the values found in their homes and those found in the school (Cotton and Wikelund, 1989; Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; Gursky, 1990; Levine and Stark, 1982; Lomotey, 1989; Murphy, 1988; Pollard, 1989; School Improvement Program, 1990; Sizemore, Brossard, and Harrigan, 1983; Walberg, Bole, and Waxman, 1980).

Communication among faculty teaching the same students

Many minority children in urban schools participate in remedial, special education, or other categorized programs.  Researchers have noted that, in high-achieving schools, the efforts of different program personnel are coordinated to provide a coherent learning experience for participating children (Griswold, Cotton, and Hansen, 1986; Levine and Stark, 1982; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; Venezky and Winfield, 1979).

Use of cooperative learning

While students in general often benefit from cooperative learning, urban minority students almost invariably do.  Researchers note that cooperation is more in keeping with the cultural values of many African American and Latino students than is individual competition.  In addition to the achievement experienced by many students, cooperative learning also enhances students’ self-esteem, sense of self sufficiency as learners, cross-racial and -ethnic friendships, incidence of helping behavior, and empathy for others (Brookover, 1981; Conwell, Piel, and Cobb, 1988; Cuban, 1989; DeVries, Edwards, and Slavin, 1978; Freiberg, Prokosch, and Treister, 1989; Knapp, Turnbull, and Shields, 1990; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; Oakes, 1986b; Rogers, Miller, and Hennigan, 1981; School Improvement Program, 1990; Sharan, 1980; Slavin, 1979; Slavin, Karweit, and Madden, 1989).

Computer-assisted instruction

While not a substitute for teacher-based instruction, computer-assisted instruction which reinforces traditional instruction appeals to inner city children and enhances their learning (Emihovich and Miller, 1988; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; School Improvement Program, 1990; Slavin, Karweit, and Madden, 1989).

Instruction to reduce test-induced stress

The comparatively poor test performance of urban minority students is sometimes the result of failure to understand testing formats and/or anxiety about taking tests. Research supports instruction in test-taking skills as well as exercises to reduce students’ anxiety about test performance (Brookover, 1981; Conwell, Piel, and Cobb, 1988; Cuban, 1989; DeVries, Edwards, and Slavin, 1978; Freiberg, Prokosch, and Treister, 1989; Knapp, Turnbull, and Shields, 1990; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; Oakes, 1986b; Rogers, Miller, and Hennigan, 1981; School Improvement Program, 1990; Sharan, 1980; Slavin, 1979; Slavin, Karweit, and Madden, 1989).

Peer- and cross-aged tutoring

Research has established the effectiveness of peer and cross-aged tutoring.  They are inexpensive ways to build the reading and mathematics skills of disadvantaged children, thereby reducing the need for later remediation (Carta and Greenwood, 1988; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; School Improvement Program, 1990; Slavin, Karweit, and Madden, 1989).

Early childhood education

Research has demonstrated that inner city children benefit from Head Start and other forms of preschool programming, not only in terms of their later school achievement, but also in attitudes, graduation rates, and other outcomes.  Other studies show that, when students from Head Start programs do not continue to receive enriched programming, the benefits of Head Start wear off by third or fourth grade (Clayton, 1989; Cotton and Conklin, 1989; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; School Improvement Program, 1990).

Dividing large schools into small units and fostering relationships between students and personnel 

At the secondary level in particular, inner city students often feel alienated. This alienation at times is the result of attending huge, impersonal schools which offer few relationships with staff members. New research has established that inner city middle and high school students benefit when their schools are divided into smaller units, such as school-within-school programs. Such programs allow students and staff to work together for longer periods of time than do traditional structures. In successful programs of this kind, teachers are frequently selected on the basis of willingness and demonstrated ability to work with at-risk students (Cuban, 1989; McPartland and Slavin, 1989; School Improvement Program, 1990; Gooden, Lane, and Levine, 1989; Murphy, 1988).

Coordinating community resources

Inner city students often have health or nutrition needs, personal or familial drug or alcohol problems, family abuse or neglect, etc., that must be addressed for teaching and learning to proceed successfully. Some inner city programs coordinate social services and other community resources to meet students’ needs and have produced promising outcomes (Cuban, 1989; Gursky, 1990; McPartland and Slavin, 1989).

Multicultural programming

Do minority students benefit from multicultural programming? Research done in this area suggests that it improves student attitudes as well as achievement.  Advocates note that, to be meaningful, multicultural programs need to go beyond brief, one-shot activities highlighting the exotic foods and colorful clothing of an ethnic group. Instead, they point out that multicultural activities need to be fully integrated into the core curriculum and that, when they are, they can be powerful means to promoting cross-cultural understanding and respect. Valverde (1988) states, “Developing a multicultural climate is important because of the attitudinal impact it has on students.  Principals need to realize that attending to the cultural aspect of human beings is not trivial but central to holding minority students in school and to promoting learning.” (Levine and Lezotte, 1990; Lomotey, 1989; Sizemore, Brossard, and Harrigan, 1983; Valverde, 1988; Pine and Hilliard, 1990).

Increasing the percentage of minority teachers

There is current concern that, although the percentage of minority group students is increasing, the percentage of minority teachers is decreasing.  Over the next decade the percentage of minority teachers is expected to drop from 12 to 5 percent (Pine and Hilliard, 1990) while, as noted earlier, the minority student population will increase to 33 percent.  Some efforts to attract minority group members to the teaching profession are already underway, and more should be undertaken, since the limited research in this area indicated that higher percentages of minority teachers in schools are beneficial to minority students.  One stops well short of claiming that a minority student cannot learn unless taught by a minority teacher, but the data indicates that benefits accrue in the minority school that has many minority teachers.  It is well known, for example, that African American and Latino students are over-represented in remedial programs, special education programs, low ability groups and tracks, and vocational programs, as well as being over-represented in the pool of students who repeat grades and those who are given disciplinary referrals, suspensions, and expulsions.  And conversely, these students are underrepresented in academic tracks and in programs for gifted and talented students (Bates, 1990; Lomotey, 1989; Murphy and Hallinger, 1989; Oakes, 1985, 1986a).

      It is significant that as the percentage of minority teachers increases, the over- and under-representations of minority students have been found to decrease.  That is, with more minority teachers, the representation of minority students in the various programs and disciplinary categories begins to be closer to their percentage in the overall school population  (Lomotey, 1989; Corcoran, Walker, and White, 1988; Farrell, 1990; Pine and Hilliard, 1990; Serwatka, Deering, and Stoddard, 1989).

Activities to reduce racial and ethnic prejudice

If the practices cited above are implemented in urban schools, both minority and non-minority students can be expected to benefit, since research demonstrates that their effectiveness is global.  The same is true of programs and activities undertaken to reduce racial and ethnic prejudice.  I have already noted, for example, that cooperative learning activities can promote racial and ethnic harmony, and multicultural activities foster mutual understanding and respect.  Other approaches (cf. Gabelko, 1988; Lomotey, 1989; Pate, 1988) which have been shown to foster positive racial and ethnic relations include:

Film and videotape dramatizations of the harm caused by prejudice and the benefits of diversity.  Such presentations have been found to engage viewers’ feelings and enable them to see issues from different points of view.

Cognitive approaches, such as teaching students the limitations of reason as a sole way of knowing. These methods help students see the illogic and shallowness of prejudicial thinking.

      Counter-stereotyping activities, such as focusing on Jewish athletes, Latino scientists, and African American playwrights. These activities help students to appreciate the diversity within racial and ethnic groups and reinforce the fact that ‘they’ are not all alike.

      Activities which enhance self-esteem. These activities have many benefits, including the research-supported finding that people with higher self esteem have lower levels of racial and ethnic prejudice.

      Pate (1989) warns that not all anti-prejudicial approaches are equally effective, and that some can even be counterproductive.  Direct antiprejudicial lessons and some forms of human relations training must be handled with care, since people often resist being told what to believe.

Language minority students

Whereas sex and race are intrinsic means for identifying groups, language is a learned means with which to accomplish the same task.  In this country many Latino students are non-English-speaking (NES) or limited-English-proficient (LEP), as are many Southeast Asian and other immigrant student populations.  No review of effective schooling practices for urban minority youth would be adequate without a discussion of how to meet these students’ needs.  Controversy surrounds bilingual education. There is deep social division about its merit.  Research suggests that instruction of NES and LEP students should include:

Further research to identify effective teaching means,

An academic core as strong as that received by other students,

Initial assessment of English proficiency followed by periodic assessment thereafter,

For NES students, English-as-a-second-language instruction, and core classes in the native language, or instruction from a native-language tutor,

For LEP students, a combination of native language instruction and instruction in English, and

The recruitment of volunteer tutors for English instruction (Ascher, 1985; ASCD Panel, 1987; Garcia, 1988; So, 1987).

      This review summarizes the findings of a large and complex body of literature on educating urban minority students, particularly African Americans and Latinos. Experienced teachers will note congruence between their observations and those cited in this review.  Differences, insofar as they exist, fall along socioeconomic lines: middle class children, with the advantages conferred by their home backgrounds, can probably be expected to do well in school, even if some attributes of effective schooling are absent from their schools. For urban minority children, the presence of these attributes is more critical, since they provide the kinds of support that may not be present elsewhere in these students’ lives. 

      Grumet (1988) compares teaching to art—”If we think of teaching as an art, then we have a responsibility to be the critic as well as the artist.”  She likens the school curriculum to an artist’s painting or a composer’s score in that the painting presents virtual, not actual, space; the score exists in virtual, not actual, time; and the curriculum provides virtual, not actual, experience. She continues:

It will always be easier to think of music and painting as art forms than it will be to think of teaching as an art form.  This distinction is lodged in...our tendency to isolate it from our existential worlds, an honorific isolation that has attenuated the power...of art in our everyday lives....  Because the class will never be as separate from the buzzing confusion as the painting or the symphony, the relation of its virtual sense to its actuality will never be easy to assess.

I respond with a converse model. The messy closeness of education and life is a virtue. The ‘honorific’ status of art is its death knell. Such “honorific isolation” is a Western casualty of art. Separating art from life weakens it. Separating it completely kills it.

Artists at times refer to negative and positive space within their images.  Positive space is that area covered by the ‘figure’ in an art image. If the painting is a portrait, for example, the area covered by the sitter is positive space. The area of the ‘background’ is negative space. The untutored viewer, unaware of the importance of the negative space, focuses on the positive space; yet, the line which defines the outer edge of the positive space just as surely defines the inner edge of the background. Pagano (1990) refers to the “hidden curriculum” and the “unintentional teaching outcomes” that are part of the educational process. The truths and lies of a culture are found within these pedagogical negative spaces, shaping the ways students think as effectively as the negative space of a portrait shapes the outline of the sitter.

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