Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

64 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
opinion, in his chapter on Judith Butler in Brown, Collinson, and Wilkinson’s book Blackwells
Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers (1996), Butler’s theorizations of
performative identity are indispensable to postmodern feminism. McNay agreed in his article
“Subject, Psyche & Agency: The Work of Judith Butler” in volume 16 of the journal Theory,
Culture & Society, when he stated that Butler has “pushed feminist theory into new terrain” (1999,
p. 175). Whereas Dollimore (1996) stated in his article “Bisexuality, Heterosexuality, and Wishful
Theory” in volume 10 of the journal Textual Practice, that Butler is brilliant; he also found her to
be “hopelessly wrong” (pp. 533–535). Whatever opinion you may have of Judith Butler I am sure
you have not seen or heard the last of her. As Butler states herself in Contingency, Hegemony,
Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, which she coauthored with Laclau and Zizek,
she has not “fallen asleep on the job” (2000, p. 269). She will continue to discuss the “politics of
discomfort,” as Salih has so eloquently stated in her book Judith Butler (2002, p. 151).
BUTLER APPLIED TO EDUCATION
In our schools today we have curriculums that are dictated by standardized tests, thanks to No
Child Left Behind (NCLB), which I’m sure Butler would agree should be renamed All Children
Left Behind. Testing, now more than ever in our history determines the educational purpose for
each child and school. Everything revolves around the test!
From studies we know that certain “types” of students do poorly on standardized tests namely
any child who is the “other,” which is based on a concept by Michel Foucault in his best-selling
book The History of Sexuality; which includes anyone who is not an upper/middle class, white
male. Many children learn one thing from this constant testing—they are stupid, they are not
as good as the other children, and they will not amount to anything in life. We then label these
students as “special needs,” which Butler would disagree with altogether. Putting anything into a
tight, neat category is an injustice, according to Butler, but that is what our current system does
to children whether they do well or do poorly on the tests. This is not just an injustice for those
who don’t do well; it is also for those who do well. They are being set up for failure right from
the start, they might not be able to live up to the expectation that others have of them from their
tests scores. This “artificial unity,” as Butler (1999) has deemed it in her infamous book Gender
Trouble, is a result of standardized testing. Students are grouped into categories dependent upon
how well they did on their tests. In this group the only thing that they have in common is their
test score range, which makes it an “artificial” group.
And whose knowledge has been deemed the “official knowledge” as to put children into
these “artificial” groups? Butler knows that the “knowledge” on the standardized tests and the
“knowledge” that is being deemed important in class is not the “others” knowledge, but instead
an elitist knowledge. It is a Eurocentric, patriarchal knowledge that has been deemed important
and “best.” The tests that every student must take are nothing more than an attempt to brainwash
and perpetuate white supremacy. The “others” or outsiders as some may call them are expected
to conform, or they will be banished from the elitist system. Isn’t it ironic that the public school
system that Horace Mann and Henry Barnard, and later John Dewey, set out to create with their
idea of the universal schooling for all, a system where ALL students could receive an education
and be valued, has turned full circle into what they were trying to get away from in the beginning.
If lawmakers had it their way, every child who is not the “norm” (aka a white, upper/middle
class male) would not be allowed to attend public school. Instead of honoring each individual, as
Butler would have, we have instead honored who we deem worthy. So it then becomes a case of
those who do poorly on the tests are obviously unworthy.
Butler believes that there is no “right” and “wrong,” there are no binary oppositions, instead
everything is fluid because things change with the social. In other words the micro changes