Reclaiming Our Children, Reclaiming Our Schools by Shyman Eric;

Author:Shyman, Eric;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated

Chapter 9

Power without Dominance

Governing Schools through Participatory Decision Making

The progression toward a more socially relevant, successful, and citizen-producing school system has been shown to be most effective and successful when implemented as part of a movement toward comprehensive social change. That is, identifying school systems as the main culprit for social and cultural degeneration of any type and, therefore, addressing such social problems only through schooling and school reform is not only a mistake, but also an experiment that is invariably bound for failure. The most likely course of effective reform is by targeting the greater social problems contemporaneously with the way in which those problems function within the school system itself, allowing for both greater social reform as well as educational reform.

In the United States, there is an ever-growing disparity between the “common” population (based largely on both economic class and race) and representation in government. That is, though the putatively democratic practice of “electing” officials is maintained, one’s very ability to become an elected official (i.e., be financially stable and politically connected enough to maintain the finances for a continuous campaign) is based almost entirely on economic means and social connection, aspects of social mobility which are largely interdependent in American society. Complicating factors such as delegates and the antiquated system of the Electoral College also remain threats to direct representation and truly democratic processes.

As such, true representation of the greater population is decreasing exponentially. Furthermore, because of this disparity, the government’s accountability to the common person is minimized, if not entirely negated. The popular vote is almost entirely ineffectual (as shown in Gore v. Bush 2000), and the corporate lobby seems to, for all intents and purposes, facilitate the general viability of successful political campaigns and, by extension, the happenings of government. Therefore, candidates feel little obligation toward their constituents, but rather to their donors, who are to ensure that their political longevity is maintained and mobilized across the political system. According to Narayan:

From the perspectives of poor people worldwide, there is a crisis in governance. While the range of institutions that play important roles in poor people’s lives is vast, poor people are excluded from participation in governance. State institutions are often neither responsive nor accountable to the poor [creating] little recourse to injustice, criminality, abuse and corruption by institutions, even though they still express their willingness to partner with them under fairer rules.1

The general result of such apathy and a feeling of malaise toward government and governance practices is the absence of participation and, ultimately, a complacence with a system that is designed to maintain oppression and promote collusion.2 Maintenance of this trend is toxic, if not entirely fatal, to the practice of true democracy in terms of “governance by the people and for the people.” In order to counter this widespread deleterious trend, a vast surge in participatory governance must be demanded and instituted by the common people (both poor and “middle class”) in the United States as a reactive resistance. According to Gaventa,

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