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“The Walking Wounded”: Youth, Public Education, and the Turn to Precarious Pedagogy

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10714413.2011.620858

1556-3022

Jennifer Fisher,

Critical Race Theory in Education

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I would like to extend my sincerest thanks and appreciation to Dr. Henry A. Giroux, Dr. Susan Searls Giroux, and Dr. David L. Clark whose critical interventions, pedagogy, and mentoring contours each and every page of this article. I say limited because the scope of Goodman's account is reduced to an analysis on the emasculating properties of capitalism, the decline of "man's work," and loss of meaningful experience as it effects predominantly white, middle class, male youth socialized to the new conditions and realities of modern American society. Dr. Akua Benjamin, a consultant on the Road to Health report, coined the description of Toronto's youth as "the walking wounded" (2008, 4). In the context of the report, Dr. Benjamin claimed that "the walking wounded" conveyed a state of being in which "hope and pride … [had] been replaced by alienation and radicalization" in the lives of young people, many of which had been pushed out of school into the hallways, street, or worse, the criminal justice system. Controversial because according to Moya Lloyd (2000), Butler "confessed to 'worrying about the turn to ethics' on the grounds that 'ethics displaces from politics'" preferring to focus on the uses of power in her critical analysis (92). And yet, since the events of 9/11, Butler's work can be characterized as a "curious foray" into ethics and the cultural politics of precarity and vulnerability—two areas of interest her work has continued to return to and struggle over. For more information, see Lloyd. M. (2008). Towards a Cultural Politics of Vulnerability: Precarious Lives and Ungrievable Deaths. In T. Carver and S. A. Chambers (Eds.), Judith Butler's Precarious Politics: Critical Encounters (92–105). New York, NY: Routledge. Ariés argued that images of childhood disappeared during this period because of high infant mortality rates. Children were not venerated to the same degree as the Enlightenment period because of the frequency in which they die; it was an all-too-common fact of life that many children would not survive past a young age. According to a new report by the Conference Board of Canada, the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is widening. For more information, please see Dobby, C. (2011, July 13). Rich-poor gap still widening. Available online at: http://business.financialpost.com/2011/07/13/rich-poor-gap-still-widening/. According to a new poll by CIBC, 72% of Canadians are in debt with "four in 10 say[ing] their current debt level is an obstacle to reaching future financial goals." For more information, please see The Canadian Press. (2011, August 8). CIBC poll finds 72 per cent of Canadians are in debt. CTV News. Available online at: http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110808/cibc-debt-study-110808/20110808/?hub=WinnipegHome. According to Campaign 2000's national 2010 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada: 1989–2010 Campaign 2000 . ( 2010 ). 2010 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada: 1989–2010. http://www.campaign2000.ca/reportcards.html (accessed August 1, 2011). [Google Scholar], "1 in 3 low-income children has a parent who works full-time throughout the year and almost 400,000 adult full-time workers earn less than $10 per hour" suggesting that work—particularly poorly paid service sector jobs and contract based employment—is not an assured route out of poverty for the large majority of Canadian families (1). For more information, please see Campaign 2000. (2010 Campaign 2000 . ( 2010 ). 2010 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada: 1989–2010. http://www.campaign2000.ca/reportcards.html (accessed August 1, 2011). [Google Scholar]). 2010 National Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada: 1989–2010. Available online at: http://www.campaign2000.ca/reportcards.html. For an excellent synopsis on how undesirable populations rendered "suspect" have become redefined through the logic of disposability and containment in Bauman's work, please see: Bauman, Z. (1995). Making and Unmaking of Strangers. Thesis Eleven, 43, 1–16. After two trials in the four years following Manners' death, the two suspects accused of first-degree murder were found to be not guilty by a Superior Court jury on May 19, 2011. According the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC), the most major changes initiated under the Safe Schools Act included matters of authority in the suspension and expulsion of students, Section 23 of the Education Act. Where previously the authority to suspend a student was limited to principals and the authority to expel a student was limited to school boards at their discretion, under the Safe Schools Act, teachers now had the power to either suspend students for one day or refer the matter to the principal. For more information, please see Ontario Human Rights Commission. (2008 Ontario Human Rights Commission . ( 2008 ). The Ontario Safe Schools Act: School Discipline and Discrimination. http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/resources/discussion_consultation/SafeSchoolsConsultRepENG (accessed June 14, 2011). [Google Scholar]). The Ontario Safe Schools Act: School Discipline and Discrimination. Available online at: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/resources/discussion_consultation/SafeSchoolsConsultRepENG. The question of just how "productive" these changes to the Safe Schools Act have been are certainly debatable. According to an investigation conducted by The Toronto Star in June 2009, the amendments made to the Safe Schools Act have been replaced by a series of questionable and problematic practices in Toronto's schools. Although zero-tolerance practices have formally ended, according to Sandro Contenta and Jim Rankin, students are now finding themselves placed in lengthy and drawn out suspensions, are facing expulsion requirements set by principals that many find too high to meet in order to return to school, and more dramatically, many students are being informally "excluded" from school—a category that, under the Education Act, allows principals to exclude students they believe to be a danger to others from the school. Not a suspension or form of expulsion, exclusion allows principals to remove students from schools in the interests of public safety even though these numbers are not officially reported to the Ontario Ministry of Education—all of which suggests that the "walking wounded" has taken on new contours. Young people are not only excluded from schools but also are disappeared from the public record. For more information, please see Contena, S. and Rankin, J. (2009 Contena , S. and Rankin , J. ( 2009 ). Suspended Sentences: Forging a School-to-Prison Pipeline? The Toronto Star. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/646629 (accessed June 6, 2009). [Google Scholar], June 6). Suspended Sentences: Forging a School-to-Prison Pipeline? The Toronto Star. Retrieved November 8, 2009 Ontario Ministry of Education . ( 2009 ). Keeping Our Kids Safe at School: Reporting and Responding to Incidents. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/safeschools/reportingResponding.html (accessed June 12, 2011). [Google Scholar], from http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/646629. It is important to quickly note here that the Road to Health report has not escaped some important and sharp criticisms from scholars and activists in Toronto, particularly around issues of security. Although the central thrust of the Road to Health did focus predominantly on the need for more social resources in schools, and rejected the use of metal detectors and SRO programs, the report is not without its own contradictions and "strangeness" as Toronto-based youth activist Johan Boyden suggested. Even though the Falconer report rightly stressed that security practices like metal detectors would involve massive expenditures and detract from the role of schools as "safe havens that facilitate a sense of community and promote learning," the panel did oddly support and recommend the use of more cost-effective "sniffer" police dogs (Toronto District School Board, 2008 Toronto District School Board . ( 2008 ). The Road to Health: A Final Report on School Safety: Executive Summary. http://www.schoolsafetypanel.com/finalReport.html (accessed November 15, 2009). [Google Scholar], 9). For Boyden, Falconers inability to fully move away from securitizing procedures that continue to structure youth as suspect by default, neglected "the need for a sharp break with the current direction: to establish a new funding formula and give billions more to schools; to create good, well-paying jobs, and affordable housing; to enforce equity in hiring and change racist immigration laws; and for community control over policing which could end [or drastically reduce forms of] racial profiling." For more information, please see Boyden, J. (2008, February 1–15). Falconer Misses Roots of School Violence. People's Voice. Retrieved from http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint11/03_FALCONER_MISSES_ROOTS_OF_SCHOOL_VIOLENCE.html. According to Annette Fuentes, the first police officer assigned to a school in the United States occurred in Flint, Michigan in 1953. It was not until the 1990s, however, with its new, heightened fear of youth as "super-predators" that school resource officer programs became implemented into American public schools at a rapid rate, only to grow in popularity after the school shooting at Columbine high school. At present, 68% of elementary and secondary schools in the United States have SRO programs. For more information on this history, please see Fuentes, A. (2011 Fuentes , A. ( 2011 ). Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse . New York , NY : Verso . [Google Scholar]). Policing the Schools, Arresting Development. Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Become a Jailhouse (pp. 155–178). New York, NY: Verso. Here, Fuentes cites a rather famous study conducted in 1999 by Matthew Mayer and Peter Leone whose research on school violence found that securitizing strategies were responsible for creating, rather than reducing, a "higher level of disorder'" in schools. According to Campbell, this statistic has received little attention in public discussions of school safety in Toronto because "[o]fficials blamed this increase in violence in SRO schools on two major incidents in two different schools, and then conveniently choose to exclude these two incidents from the data set because it 'skewed' the results." For more information on social and cultural theories of reproduction in schooling, please see Giroux, H. A. (2001). Reproduction, Resistance, & Accommodation in the Schooling Process. In Bergin and Garvey (Eds.), Theory and Resistance in Education: Towards a Pedagogy for the Opposition (rev.; pp. 72–111). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Reflecting on his time spent as a high school teacher in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto in Life in Schools, McLaren (2003 McLaren , P. ( 2003 ). Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education () , 4th ed . Boston , MA : Pearson Education Inc. [Google Scholar]) found that "the major drama of resistance in schools" grew out of student efforts to include their "street corner cultures" within the classroom. For McLaren, these complaints indexed how schools are infused with forms of social and cultural capital that many poor minority students are not only excluded from but also have difficulty identifying with. McLaren's work importantly reminds us what poor and minority students risk in conforming to our "version of the 'good student'," and how such actions place young people in a precarious "double-bind situation. If they are to remain in school and desire to be successful, they are forced to forfeit their own cultural capital, street-corner knowledge, and dignity … Yet, if they leave school, they … come up against a social order decidedly antagonistic to their aspirations" (231). Here, Fuentes noted a U.S. study conducted in 2000 that found teachers were sending minority students to the principal's office more frequently for less serious and more subjective behavioral reasons. Many teachers in the study were found to feel threatened—especially when those teachers came from a different socio-economic background then their students. In the two Toronto high schools surveyed within the Road to Health report, C.W. Jefferys and Westview, both schools found a significant amount of teachers felt intimidated and afraid of their students and the surrounding neighborhood. For more information, please see The Toronto District School Board. (2008 Toronto District School Board . ( 2008 ). The Road to Health: A Final Report on School Safety: Executive Summary. http://www.schoolsafetypanel.com/finalReport.html (accessed November 15, 2009). [Google Scholar]). The Road to Health: A Final Report on School Safety. Available online at: http://www.schoolsafetypanel.com/finalReport.html.