Audiovisual Materials with a Social Justice Focus for Professors ...

Audiovisual Materials with a Social Justice Focus for Professors Teaching Courses
in Educational Leadership and Teacher Preparation
Monica Pini
Universidad Nacional de General San Martin

Audiovisual Materials with a Social Justice Focus for Professors Teaching Courses
in Educational Leadership and Teacher Preparation
Abstract:
Monica Pini
Universidad Nacional de General San Martin
This project developed academic audiovisual materials using Power Point in order
to increase the scarce availability of such resources to support arguments related to social
justice in the preparation of leaders and teachers in education. The materials document
social injustices in different aspects of social life that impact education and are available
to programs for administrators and teachers.

Audiovisual Materials with a Social Justice Focus for Professors Teaching Courses
in Educational Leadership and Teacher Preparation
Introduction
Monica Pini
Universidad Nacional de General San Martin
The purpose of this project was to develop academic audiovisual materials using
Power Point in order to increase the scarce availability of such resources to support
arguments and ideas related to social justice in courses in politics and administration of
education. The materials document social injustices in different aspects of social life that
impact education and are available to programs for administrators and teachers. One of
the objectives of this project was to disseminate the materials to professors in different
universities at no cost.
Often professors need to present data in class that challenges prejudices that their
students acquire through the mainstream media. In postmodern societies it is usual that
people learn more from media than inside schools and colleges. Most students are seldom
exposed to data that describes social inequalities and the impact of these inequalities on
the welfare of children and families. The materials, besides trying to inform about
injustices, want to be an invitation to explore more these issues in class, to fill the
informative gaps at universities, schools, and mass media, producing new material for
and with the students, and over all, to reflect together about the relationship between
social practices and school practices.
The visual materials, supported by “Power Point” software, cover the following
topics:
Social Inequalities and Children
Social Inequalities in Schools
Social Inequalities associated with Race and Ethnicity
Privatization of American public schools (Part I and II)
Corporatization of American Public Schools
In what follows, I provide the background of the topics, the description of the
materials, and some general suggestions to use them with students. According to a
democratic pedagogy, my suggestions focus on active, reflective, critical, and cooperative
learning activities, creating an environment that encourages and facilitates studentstudent
and student-faculty interaction and showing respect for students’ differences. The
idea is to use, modify, adapt and take these suggested activities as models to create more
examples which can be shared with other colleagues.

Blaming Schools
In most federal documents and official discourses we find that education is both
the origin and the solution of most social problems. At the same time, numerous reports
affirm that one of the reasons for public school failure is the poor quality of teachers and
curricula (Apple, 2000). These assertions are part of a rhetoric that has served to diminish
the role of teachers and public schools in order to mask real problems and to benefit the
interests of a few. Public schools are immersed in the environment where they work and
in the serious situations that the students they serve live in. Teachers and administrators
know that, but they need to have more information and more tools to analyze and reflect
about it. Unfortunately, schools tend to reproduce unjust conditions unless critical
analysis and collective initiatives for change are put in place.
Thinking that improved education will aid in the solution of social problems is
very common, and it is true that education could help a lot. But to lay the whole
responsibility on education instead of on the whole society –beyond being a rhetoric
resource—could be a dangerous challenge. The trap is that if the education goals
pertaining to these problems are not achieved (which surely happen if no other consistent
strategies are adopted) people can blame public schools for not “fixing” a myriad of
social problems, in spite of the given support. According to Liston and Zeigner (1997)
educational interventions cannot, by themselves, solve problems of inequity at schools.
Are American public schools truly delivering substandard or inferior education?
There is no one answer. With few exceptions, it is better to be a student in a suburban
school. If one looks at the situation of schools in urban and poor neighborhoods, drop out
rates and the gap between White middle-class and minority students’ achievement is
substantial. According to Berliner and Biddle (1996), the “manufactured crisis” in
education is masking the root problem: inequality. Furthermore, this inequality is in part
accepted “collateral damage” that results from the market economy, a dynamic in which
poor children are not deemed worthy of a superior education (Saltman, 2000). However,
the academic achievement gap between White and Black students is also evident in
suburban schools, reflecting the historical and chronic discrimination against minorities
(Spring, 2001; Tyack & Cuban, 1995).
Jonathan Kozol’s (1991) well-known book, Savage Inequalities, is a heartbreaking
chronicle of poor, mostly Black and Hispanic children schooled in inner or
isolated cities. In spite of the book’s popularity, it became an icon—respected but
neglected—rather than a resource for parents and educators to reflect on and to change
the devastating conditions Kozol chronicles. He shows that behind “pedagogic” solutions
offered by local districts for urban schools there is often a reluctance to avoid recognizing
injustice, inequality or segregation as sources of educational problems (p. 51). According
to Giroux (2000), these inequalities particularly affect minority youth: “Latino and Black
youth bear the burden of an adult society that either views them as disposable and as a
threat to middle-class life, or reifies them through a commercial logic in search of a new
market niche” (p. 14).

On the other hand and in spite of enormous class, gender, race, and sexual
orientation disparities in schools, the struggles of the Civil Rights movement have
generated a gradual increase of educational opportunities for minority children in
comparison to earlier decades (Tyack, 1974; Spring, 2001). The growth in school
enrollment along with increasing economic polarization between rich and poor makes
one wonder if the ultimate political goal of the privatizing movement is to stop the slow
but constant trend to democratize the American public school system. For many
conservative Americans there are too many Hispanic, Black, Asian, and lower-class
people being educated at public expense. The world-class society they envision will not
need so many well-educated people who have raised expectations and are able and
willing to exercise their civil rights.
There are more common issues at school related to social justice which we need
to think about. Believing that education results could be represented by standards that can
be measured by tests, for example, constitutes, from this perspective, a reductionist view,
coming in part from a culture of efficiency and competitiveness. This view does not take
into account that neither exact measurement nor quantification can reflect complex social
or individual processes such as learning, including social conditions of learners. The
results of such tests reflect a limited scope of learned knowledge, including the skills
needed to respond to that particular form of testing. These limitations make measuring
results just in relation to standards a discriminating practice.
The issue of school choice has become one of the hottest controversies in
American education, because it calls into question some of the central premises of the
educational system. These questions include: who should have access to education; what
are the goals of education; what is the role of the state; and what is the validity of
democratic values such as freedom and equality, the separation of state and church,
democratic participation, and how an intangible good like education is best distributed.
If one’s ideals and hopes for education are closer to John Dewey’s and Paulo Freire’s
than to Milton Friedman’s or E. D. Hirsh’s, then one would agree that improving schools
means creating classrooms for equity and social justice through educational practices that
are grounded in students’ lives. One would hope for practices that are anti-racist,
participatory, activist, hopeful, joyful, kind, and visionary (Engel, 2000). This notion of
education is strongly linked to public education’s role in teaching civic values.
Political Background
Even though poverty and injustice were not new, the neoconservative era
contributed to increase them. The Reagan presidency meant “a significant shift in the
discourse on social engineering, as state remedy for social problems lost ground to
market-based remedies” (Labaree, 1997, p. 137). The Reagan administration’s ideology
claimed that government bureaucracy was ineffective, inefficient in managing social
services, and that the private sector was better able to play that role. In 1983, the
publishing of Nation at Risk signaled the beginning of a powerful attack against public

schools and started the campaign in favor of a market-model, in which free choice and
competition appear as the primary values in education.
Apple (1996) asserts that, even though neoconservatives 1 emphasize traditional
values, and neoliberals market ones, both of them have joined together to make schools
responsible for the majority of social problems. According to this author, “powerful
groups within government and the economy, and within ‘authoritarian populist’ social
movements, have been able to redefine –often in very retrogressive ways—the terms of
the debate in education, social welfare, and other areas of the common good”. This
alliance “combines business with the new right and with neoconservative intellectuals”
(p. 27-28). The main proposals of this “power bloc” include the implementation of school
choice programs such as vouchers or tax credits, the movement to raise standards, the
attack on public schools for not promoting traditional Western values, and the inclusion
of business needs into the goals of education.
It seems evident that education is a nationally sensitive topic, or perhaps it is the
topic selected by the two main political parties in order to generate unity before a
perceived “serious” situation. The “crisis of American education,” or, better, the crisis of
the American public school system, that is being agitated by alarmist discourses
(especially since the publication of Nation at Risk in 1983), is a common place, as is the
seeking of solutions that are expressed in diverse reform proposals and tense
controversies. Popkewitz (1997) expressed the catastrophic-patriotic tone of this and
similar documents directed primarily to the “common citizen” eloquently: “Instead of
analysis, these reports offer exhortations and prophecies. Their language protests for the
loss of grace of the nation and promotes the rectitude of action as means through which
redemption becomes possible” (p. 166). It is not necessary to clarify that the tool for this
redemption is the school. That is why schools are in the center of such intense struggles.
Other scholars, as Berliner and Biddle (1995), affirm that the “manufactured
crisis” is not an accidental event, but rather “it appeared within a specific historical
context and was led by identifiable critics whose political goals could be furthered by
scapegoating educators” (p. 4). For his part, Lind (quoted by Spring, 1997), wondered
whether this “war” against public schools is not a smoke screen from the Republican
Right to hide the economic crisis and the growing economic inequalities. From a similar
position, Liston and Zeigner (1997) argue that "the so agitated American schools’ crisis
is, actually, the reflect of the whole society general crisis” (p. 21).
At the same time, we find the moralizing push of the religious right, who claim
that “the solution to public problems was teaching of morality and Western cultural
values” (Spring, 1997, p. 5). From their perspective, the liberal (political and cultural)
elite and federal bureaucracy are the main dissolvent factors that promote national secular
and desegregationist policies that do not promote community initiatives. Within this
view, pornography and drug abuse go together with sex education and secular humanism.
The proposal to include prayer in public schools, for example, is one of the ways the
1 Neoconservatism refers to the connection between neoliberalism and the religious right.

eligious right seeks to resist this decadence. These ideas also have strong economic
support from corporations and foundations which promote certain political candidates.

Description of the Materials and Suggestions for their Use in Class
Social Inequalities and Children
This visual material is about children in poverty reporting some data about the
state of America’s children in 2000. The data is related to average family income and to
the lack of child safety net policies in the United States.
Suggested Exercises
Have the students:
1. Search in Internet different or missing data about the topic and analyze them in groups.
2. Search and compare the same kind of data among states and school districts.
3. Look for related news, make a portfolio, and analyze if and how frequently the texts
relation child’s poverty with family income or social policies.
4. Find groups and associations at state or community level that fight against child
poverty and summarize their principles and activities.

Social Inequalities in Schools
This material includes the characterization of most schools for minority students.
Accepted discrimination in different forms, especially the poor quality of schools for
poor and minority children, and inadequate school funding. The use of their influences by
upper-class parents and ignoring research about classroom size are factors that contribute
to consolidate inequalities.
Suggested Exercises
1. Ask the students to explain the relationship between school finance and the equal
protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Have students work together in small groups to analyze the following assertion and
think how it is related to discrimination in school: "Educators have learned a lesson from
business and industry: a key to success is defining clear, high standards of performance
and a system that measures results in relation to those standards" (U. S. Department of
Education, 1996, p. 8).
3. From their experience as students, have them discuss the gender, racial and ethnic
composition of their elementary and secondary school faculty and administrators. Has the
pattern that emerges from their experience changed compared to the current school
pattern?

Social Inequalities Associated with Race and Ethnicity
Most of the information in this material shows how these social inequalities are
present at school. Since the comparison between educational attainment of White, Black,
and Hispanic Kindergartners, the information shows key facts about American children
and schooling, such as the resegregation of school districts related to the expenses per
student comparing different American cities. A graphic of bars comparing the median
income by sex and race complete the material.
Suggested Exercises
Have the students:
1. Look for demographic and financial data of schooling by race and ethnicity in selected
states.
2. Contact a particular academic department on campus and inquiry into the number of
women and minorities who hold faculty positions in that department. The students may
also consider inquiring into the gender and race of the head of the department, the top
administrators in the college to which the department belongs, at the university or
college, the department staff, and graduate and undergraduate registered students.
3. Ask students from other classes for their own experience about institutional racism and
sexism and discuss their stories in class.

Privatization of American Public Schools
The material starts characterizing the education industry. Asking for the validity
of values of public education is a way of contrasting to the positions that support school
choice. I give different school choice positions, pros and cons, proposals, and place them
in the context of the privatizing trend, showing market forces and opponents’ arguments.
In the second part I characterize two competing conceptions of education and society at
the root of the struggle for public schools and explore the background and current
expansion of the privatizing trend, describing its consequences for democracy.
Suggested Exercises
An important part of the work of presenting this material is the development of
the American historic-political context within which these strategies and policies have
their origins and, fundamentally, an examination of the forces that intervene in the
struggle for the control of public schools by attempting to control public opinion. Within
this framework, it is important to reflect on the logic of these policies and the connections
that might be made with some other school “reforms” that have been proposed and/or
implemented.
In its fourth annual report on trends in schoolhouse commercialism, the
Commercialism in Education Research Unit (CERU) at Arizona State University
determined that commercializing activity in and around schools has grown nearly 500
percent since 1990. CERU studied media coverage of eight categories of
commercializing activities in the popular press, advertising and marketing press, the
business press and education press.
Have the students:
1. Synthesize, present and discuss in class the last studies made by the CERU.
2. Look for cartoons about school reform and privatization and analyze them to
understand what position they support related to public schools.
3. Look for parental school choice, vouchers and charter schools news. Classify the
information according to the arguments expressed related to public schools and discuss
them in class.
4. Summarize and discuss the arguments of the main unions about school choice and
privatization.

Corporatization of American Public Schools
The material shows how some private for-profit companies manage public schools,
particularly charter schools. I analyze text excerpts from the web pages of some of the
leading corporations, federal reports and statistics, state laws and reports, and academic
research on charter schools. Conditions that favor Education Management Organizations
(EMO) in some states are enumerated and connected to the effects on democratic values.
Suggested Exercises
Have the students:
1. Make an overview of the “education industry” from the perspective of the industry
(Business Week, Forbes, Newsweek, The Education Industry Report, etc.) and compare
to an educational perspective.
2. Place in a map the distribution of schools managed by Education management
organizations (EMOs) and their head offices throughout the states.
3. Analyze the charter school law in their state and explore the factors that could difficult
or facilitate EMO’s operations in public schools.

Selected Resources
A better balance: Standards, tests, and the tools to succeed. (2001, January)
Special edition of Education Week.
Anderson, S. and Cavanagh, J. (2000). Field guide to the global economy. New
York; Institute for Policy Studies.
Annie E. Casey Foundation (2001). Kids count data book: State Profiles of child
well-being. Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Children’s Defense Fund (2000). The state of America’s children: Yearbook
2000. Boston: Beacon Press.
Derber, C. (1998). Corporation Nation. New York; St. Martins Griffen.
Frey, W.H., Abresch, B. and Yeasting, J. (2001). America by the numbers: A
field guide to the U.S. population. New York: The New Press.
Hajime Shinagawa, L. and Jang, M. (1998). Atlas of American diversity. Walnut
Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Press.
Rose, S. (2000). Social Stratification in the United States. New York: The New
Tokman, V. and O’Donnell, G. (2001). Poverty and inequality in Latin America:
Issues and new challenges. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
United for a Fair Economy (1997). Born on third base: The sources of wealth of
the Forbes 400.

Press.
References
Apple, Michael (1996). Cultural politics and education. NY: Teachers College
Berliner, D. & Biddle, B. (1995). The manufactured crisis: Miths, fraud, and the
attack on America’s public schools. NY: Longman.
Engel, M. (2000). The struggle for control of public education. Market ideology
vs. democratic values. Philadelphia: Temple University.
Giroux, H. A. (2000). Stealing innocence. NY: Palgrave.
Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities. Children in America's schools. NY: Harper
Perennial.
Labaree, D. (1997). How to succeed in school without really learning: The
credentials race in American education. London & New Haven: Yale University Press.
Liston, D. y Zeichner, K. (1997). Formación del profesorado y condiciones
sociales de la escolarización (segunda edición). Madrid: Ediciones Morata, Paideia.
Popkewitz, T. (1997). Sociología política de las reformas educativas (segunda
edición). Madrid: Ediciones Morata, Paideia.
Saltman, K. J. (2000). Collateral damage.Corporatizing public schools--A threat
to democracy. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc.
Spring, J. (2001). The American School: 1642-2000 (5 th ed.). New York, NY: Mc
Graw Hill.
Tyack, D. B. (1974). The one best system: A history of American Urban
Education. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press.
Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia. A century of public
school reform. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University
Press.
U.S. Department of Education (1996, April 30). Goals 2000: Increasing student
achievement through state and local initiatives. Office of Educational research and
Improvement. Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)