School Reform Through a Subversive Lens

With all the energy and angst swirling around the current issues of school reform, it must be said that fighting to simply maintain the status quo, prior to budget cuts, isn't good enough. The book Teaching As A Subversive Activity highlights the problems inherent in bureaucracy and the aversion to change which is an inherent part of that culture. If all we do, as teachers, is roll out new window dressing on the same tired old bureaucratic system, we fail our kids miserably. New textbooks that celebrate core curriculum alignment keep the top down teaching stubbornly in place. The essential questions are printed for teacher to spoon feed to student. The stop marks are scripted to guide supposed student inquiry. Shouldn't we, as teachers, have students read books and then ask them to identify the essential questions? Do we not trust that the eager young mind will formulate a running theme in paired narratives? The company line is that this so- called reform will prepare students for the 21st century, but close inspection shows that the same hierarchy exists in the classroom. It is imperative that a new breed of teacher creates a classroom culture of true student inquiry and risk taking which leads to growth. Administrators will support the subversive when the proof shows up in rising test scores, as it surely will!