Where does educational activism take place online?

In preparation for the submission of my pre-proposal, I have been researching the existing public spheres for education reform in the United States, specifically online. I expected to find areas that called for action only, as in the instrumental view of social media use, which Shirky talked about in the article from my last blog post. Instead, I found spaces that attempt to disseminate information, encourage discourse, and call for community action, which seems to fit more closely with the environmental view of social media use. 

Each space that I encountered seemed to be speaking to different publics, and about different aspects of education reform. The Center for Education Reform (http://www.edreform.com/) for example, claims to make a difference by; creating connections, fact-checking, and mobilizing grassroots campaigns. While their issues cover areas that could potentially interest a broad audience, their target audience seems to be mostly parents, teachers, and high-level administrators/ decision makers. References to stakeholders on various sections of their website mention family and teachers as the most important groups involved in the issues of education reform. Perhaps this targeted audience is a result of the Center’s strong belief in testing and assessment as a means of demonstrating successful instruction. While this website has some great information, the information is very focused on their “shared” perspective. This led me to question where other groups go to find a reform group with different priorities.

For the student activists, I found Students for Education Reform (SFER) (http://www.studentsforedreform.org/), which was founded by students for students. This site has a decidedly different focus. They claim to be interested in a just social order that enables equitable education for all. While education standards are included on their list of “What we stand for,” this issue appears 4^th on the list after high expectation regardless of background, quality school choices and great teachers and leaders. This movement is housed in over 140 campuses across that nation in chapters that attract current students and recent graduates to share their stories about their experiences with public education. The great thing about the SFER webpage is that their strategy and mission are clearly laid out and easily accessible. Information is easy to find and in some cases, presented graphically, in a way that allows information to be found without reading lengthy manifestos or policy manuals. By presenting the information in this way, the webpage developers have understood that the current generation (current/recent students) respond to information that is easily accessible. 

As I move forward I want to locate other sites of activism to see how they are reaching out to their publics. In particular I will be looking at any references to a public, how their information is presented, which issues are emphasized, and the type of action they are promoting. My first action items is to look at teacher and administrator unions to uncover how they compare to these other spaces of the education reform environment.

The Environmental View of Social Media Use

This week I encountered an interesting article on the power of social media to enact political change. The author discusses two views on how social media can be used in the public sphere. The first is the instrumental view. This view suggests that social media can be utilized as an expedient public organization tool to enact swift and extreme social and political change. While the author is critical of this view, he provides examples of political movements that began this way. Protests in the Philippines, Spain and Moldova are a few of the examples provided, but for each example of success, there is an example of failure. The Occupy movement, which began in New York in 2011, is a recent example of an American-borne protest movement that attempted to utilize social media in this way, and fizzled before accomplishing any substantive reform.

The author argues instead for an environmental view of social media use. According to this view “pro-democratic regime change, follow, rather than precede, the development of a strong public sphere.” (p. 5) Social media should be used to garner communication between individuals and not simply for eliciting action. This view calls for slow political change on the basis of public dialogue, rather than swift crowd-based protest that seek to obtain immediate results. 

This article is useful for the consideration of my tracing topic, because I aim to explore the public spaces that are available to publics interested in education reform. No doubt social media will be a huge part of the online landscape. According to Shirky, it is social media, and not internet-based information storehouses, that provide the greatest opportunity for public engagement in social issues. In this article the author describes a two-step process for changing public opinion. Step one is the distribution of information by media outlets, and the second is the resulting conversation and debate among family, friends, and acquaintances (p. 6). Social media allows for a broader range of participants in the conversation step, and this, according to Shirky, is where social media’s real power rests. 

Shirky goes on to assert that the information step is less important than the resulting conversation when it comes to producing social action. This conclusion seems problematic to me given my understanding of how social movements occur. The need for information and conversation seem to be symbiotic. The populace needs the information to inform their discourse, and they need their discourse to inform which outlets they trust to provide their information. In relation to education reform, this translates to a need for the citizenry to be informed on the issues affecting education (information) and a place for conversation to occur online (social media). My exploration into the online landscape of education reform will need to encompass both the informational outlets, and the online forums for discourse.

In my opinion, the environmental view of social media use has far reaching implications that extend beyond the need to provide open access to chat rooms, blogs, or twitter feeds.  In order for these social media tools to be put to their full potential, the populace must be educated on their use. Here I am afraid that my thinking takes a cyclical turn. I am arguing that we need education reform in order to create an informed populace, but we may need a pre-existing informed populace to enact education reform.

Shirky, Clay. "The Political Power of Social Media Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change." The Council on Foreign Affairs (2011): n. pag. Web. 6 July 2013. <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media>

Can we change our mind?

I found the YouTube video (link below) of the educational activist Diane Ravitch speaking at Duke University. I originally started looking at activists because of the Simmons book. She indicated that activist organizations are a good place to begin looking at publics that surround an issue because they form in reaction to feelings of exclusion. This reminded me of the Cintron reading from the week before because he suggests that counterpublics form based on a shared feeling of exclusion by the status quo.

The video is a little lengthy, but I found that it related to our recent readings in the following areas:

The Fluidity of Publics

Diane Ravitch served in the administration of George H. W. Bush and spent many years working with conservative think tanks on education-related issues. She became a political turn-coat as the No Child Left Behind legislation was taking shape (it was implemented in 2003). At this time, with increasing emphasis being placed on testing and performance standards, Dr. Ravitch began to question the very premise of her political and educational philosophy and saw a problem with her assumption that the education system can function as part of the free market  economy. Since this time, Dr. Ravitch has joined the liberal side of the argument on education reform, armed with her new democratic rhetoric.

Did Dr. Ravitch change publics when she moved from the conservative to the liberal side of the debate? Or is she still part of the same public, since the issue of debate is still the same?

Dr. Ravitch’s experience makes me lean even more strongly toward the idea of a multiplicity of public spheres. (This is another idea that Cintron mentioned in his article). She is still active in the same debate (sphere), but she is arguing something completely different. Even as I type my preference for this idea, new questions arise. How do these public spheres develop? How do publics know where their public spheres are? I hope that our readings will shed some light on these questions over the remainder of the semester.

Topos of Democracy/ Assumptions of Justice

In making her switch from the right to the left side of the argument, Dr. Ravitch had to deeply examine where her ideas regarding education reform came from. During her conservative years, she indicates that she was operating under the assumption that schools should be able to thrive under the same market conditions as corporations. According to this view, a just society would reward the schools that thrive, and punish/ close the schools that struggle or fail.  From this assumption, she could justify the following based on cost/benefit analysis:

-          Higher performance standards through testing

-          Merit pay for teachers whose students perform well

-          School closures for underperformance

-          De-professionalization of teachers

-          Larger class sizes

It was not until she adopted a new idea of social justice, one that valued equal access to education as a cornerstone, that she began to view the list above as part of the problem, not the solution. Her new perspective transformed her opinion of the purpose of education in society. In the past, education was a means of ensuring global economic competition by producing the best and the brightest. Now, Dr. Ravitch believes that education should prepare students for the world by fostering creativity, innovation and critical thinking. With this new lens, she can no longer justify the list above. In fact, she argues that the reliance on testing is both misleading and incapable of producing the desired results.

This video has left me wondering whether Candace Rai and Ralph Cintron are pessimists or realists. They both claim that Democracy is a flawed system that will inevitable meet its expiration date, or morph into something completely unrecognizable. The fact that Dr. Ravitch went from one extreme to the other demonstrates the power that surrounds the idea of social justice. She did not compromise and develop a middle-of-the-road ideology.

Perhaps the recent increase in political polarization is in part due to our reliance on the rhetoric of democracy to frame our arguments and our resistance to changing sides. No doubt this is compounded by the social stigma of being a turn-coat. Dr. Ravitch experienced mixed emotions in response to her change of heart, from the congratulatory to scolding. If democracy is built on discourse and rhetoric, shouldn’t we applaud changes of opinion? Aren’t these changes a sign that discourse is working?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J64ANpowYo

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575109443305343962.html

Reshaping the Conversation (Part 1)

You often hear complaints about the rising cost of higher education and the crippling debt that is left in its wake. The conversation usually focuses on how this generation of students is paying significantly higher tuition rates than the previous generation. For example, the AASCU’s January 2013 policy brief reported that “since 1987, tuition and fees at public four-year universities have doubled, while state funding for higher education has decreased by one-third.” (3) While this may be shocking for many, it is often shrugged off as someone else’s problem and less important than more immediate threats to the American way of life.

In my reading for this week I encountered an article by Ferguson and Stewart that reframes the issue into one not only about equitable access to education, but a matter of global economic competition. Equality is a topoi that we frequently encounter in democratic rhetoric, but it is easily subjugated for the more immediate concerns of economic stability and national security. By reframing the discussion on student debt, the authors are appealing to a public more concerned about economic competition than they are about equality. This seems to be what Simmons and Grabill are calling for when they discuss the public’s ability to invent and perform as an avenue of participation (433). The public does not have the technical knowledge to overcome all exclusions, but a key weapon in their arsenal is the ability to reframe the conversation and ask “the right questions.” (Simmons and Grabill, 440)

The question asked of the Ferguson/ Stewart audience is not whether everyone should be able to afford education, but whether the nation can afford to deny education to the populace?

"Top 10 Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2013." American Association of State Colleges and Universities, n.d. Web. 7 Jun 2013. <http://www.aascu.org/policy/publications/policy-matters/topten2013.pdf>.

Ferguson Jr., Roger W., and Debra W. Stewart. "The student loan debt perfect storm." Politico 28 Jun 2013. <http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/the-student-loan-debt-perfect-storm-93517.html>. (Accessed 06/28/2013)

Simmons, W. Michele, and Jeffrey T. Grabill. "Toward a Civic Rhetoric for Technologically and Scientifically Complex Places: Invention, Performance, and Participation." CCC. 58.3 (2007): 419-448. Print.

Cintron... this is my rant.

Cintron really stuck with me this week. His work is very cynical, but I think it reflects the attitudes of the current time. Politics has become increasingly polarized, and so has the break-room conversation. Everyone can be a critic in today's computer-energized society, and with so much knowledge comes very little responsibility. Cintron (and Rai) point out the way in which the very ideals that our society is built upon can be used with twisted and biased intent. Each side refuses to back down insisting that they have the moral high ground based on their own own interpretation of what a just society entails.

In addition, we are coming to the end of our store of natural resources, and as the "necessities" become scarce, we are left asking how long "polite society" can continue. Cintron warns that as our resources deplete, the true nature of democracy will be laid bare. 

Ecuador's Defence of Civil Liberties

While this entry is a departure from my tracing topic, I could not pass up the opportunity to reflect on this week’s reading through this article. Mr. Snowden recently confirmed that he was the source of recent NSA leaks regarding US surveillance of civilian activity. He is “on the run” from US authorities who wish to prosecute Snowden for espionage. In his bid for escape, Snowden, like Julian Assange before him, has contacted the Ecuadoran government for asylum.

What is so interesting about this bid for asylum, is the Ecuadoran response to US criticism. In the linked article below, the foreign minister from Ecuador, Ricardo Patino rationalizes their involvement saying that “Ecuador puts its principles above its economic interests.” According to Ralph Clintron, this is not how democracy functions. Democracy protects pre-existing power structures; using appeals based in democratic topoi that often mask more self-interested pursuits. According to Clintron, democracy is essentially materialistic, and democratic virtues are often sacrificed for the sake of material resources.

In reading this news report, I must ask the question, what does Ecuador have to gain by their involvement in this conflict? Are they really concerned with the common good? Are their motives really spurred by the belief that “What is being done to Mr. Snowden and to Mr. Julian Assange – for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest – is an assault against the people?” It is interesting that on his way to Ecuador, Mr. Snowden has passed through China, Russia and reportedly will pass through Cuba, each of which has refused US requests for extradition, and yet these countries have a long and public history of restrictive state policies.

So, if civil liberty is not their reason for defending Mr. Snowden, one must ask, what power interests does their involvement reflect? As this story unfolds, the relationships between the US and the countries involved are called into question. US officials are the first to cite the affect that this incident will have on future diplomatic ventures. And this is perhaps where the truth lies. These nations may not be concerned with civil liberties, instead, they may be using this incident to react to their relationship with the US in regard to other issues that do not allow for such an abrasive stance. This incident may simply be a side plot where nations who feel restricted by US power react by exercising their power  in the only available avenue.

Lally, K., Faiola A., and  DeYoung, K. "Snowden apparently did not board Havana flight, but may leave Moscow Tuesday." Washington Post 24 June 2013, n. pag. Web. 24 Jun. 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russia-says-it-has-no-authority-to-expel-snowden/2013/06/24/325281f2-dcaf-11e2-bd83-e99e43c336ed_story.html.

Clintron, R. (2010). Democracy and Its Limitations. In Eds. John Ackerman and David Coogan. The public work of rhetoric: citizen-scholars and civic engagement. U of South Carolina Press. 98-116

Tracing the Issues Facing Institutions of Higher Education in 2013

The article cited below, which I found before completing the week 1 readings, became all the more interesting when framed with the question “what do we mean by public?” This article identifies several publics including legislators, institutional administrators, students and watchdog groups. I find myself asking whether these parties are grouped based on status, such as Habermas’ Bourgeois public, or if they are grouped based on shared ideologies, which seems to be Hauser’s argument. A group based on shared social standing would be largely static, while Hauser’s model would allow more fluidity.

Habermas’ model is easy to criticize for its simplicity on two levels. First, his discussion of the public sphere only mentions one public, the Bourgeois public. This criticism is discussed in more detail by both Hauser and Fraser. The second criticism is that (at least in contemporary society) there are publics who do not have a shared social standing. With computing technology becoming ever more accessible, we can have publics who have never met, or who have little material homogeneity. This would suggest that Hauser’s model is more applicable.

Hauser advocates a view of public that builds upon the work of Habermas, but that deviates by his addition of many fluid publics. This model seems, on the surface, to have it all, but when you try to apply this theory to actual publics, the waters muddy. If Hauser is right, and publics form based on shared values, how does discourse occur within the group? If the definition of a public is like-mindedness, then wouldn’t debate within the public cause members to leave, rather than encourage discourse?

Answering the question “what do we mean by public?” will be instrumental in understanding why these issues are considered the most important for 2013. It will also affect how messages to these groups should be interpreted. 

"Top 10 Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2013." American Association of State Colleges and Universities, n.d. Web. 7 Jun 2013. <http://www.aascu.org/policy/publications/policy-matters/topten2013.pdf>.