Teaching about School Closure
I have included two practitioner-oriented articles on the topic of school closure: “Clear-cutting our schools,” an editorial from the social justice education magazine Rethinking Schools and “Keep stories of resistance at the forefront,” an article from the non-profit organization Teaching for Change. While “Clear-cutting our schools” offers a broad overview of urban school closure in America and the neoliberal ideology that sustains these practices, “Keep stories of resistance at the forefront” considers the K-12 classroom microcosm and the possibilities to emphasize voice, community, activism, and relevant curriculum. I would like to broaden the idea of the classroom and consider how all people in communities affected by school closure can learn and teach about school closure in formal and informal settings.
- Focus on the resistance and activism, not the closures themselves.
Teaching for Change advisor Enid Lee offers that class discussion with young people should emphasize current activism to this injustice: “It’s the piece of the headlines in the news that can get missed, because the headline is, ’49 Schools are Closed,’ and it’s terrible. Which it is. And they mostly affect African-American communities. Equally important is what the African-American communities and others are doing about it.”4 A high school senior in New Orleans named Terrell Major testified “that the NOLA school closures were part of a larger strategy to ‘get rid of our culture in our city, get rid of our heritage and strip us of our morality.’ “1 Lee suggests the use of social media and video platforms including YouTube to hear voices that would typically be silenced, such as the voice of Asean Johnson, a nine-year-old student in a Chicago school slated for closure.
- Acknowledge systems of oppression and the increasing privatization of all public institutions.
Most activist work against school closure acknowledges the systemic forces at work in school closure decisions – it is not simply that the school is deemed inefficient, failing, or underenrolled. School closure is influenced by the power of private foundations, “the expansion of charter and other nonpublic schooling options,” racist targeting of low-income Black communities, and the intention to dominate teachers and teachers unions, among other forces.1 Effective activism against school closure simultaneously addresses the school closures themselves as well as the weakened voice and influence of the community in the decisions surrounding education and other social services.
- Stay up to date on developments and decisions about local and national school closure.
Engaged citizens are aware of the happenings in their communities and are invested in the outcomes and effects on community members. Engaging curriculum is relevant to students’ lived experiences, is timely, is provocative, and can compel individuals to action. Lee says that by allow[ing] “for an evolving curriculum; an up-to-date, up-to-the-minute, hot-off-the-press evolving curriculum that we need to just take advantage of every day,”4 educators and students remain curious, engaged, and invested in the happenings of their community. Curriculum focused on current public education decisions creates an opening for students and learners to hear the experiences of activists in their community firsthand, to consider the role and power of voice originating in the affected communities, to see their teachers model activist work inside and outside of the classroom, and to engage in their own activist work originating from their lived experiences.
1. Editors of Rethinking Schools (2013). “Clear-cutting our schools.” Rethinking Schools, 28 (1). Retrieved from http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/28_01/edit281.shtml
4. Wen, S. (2013). “Keep stories of resistance at the forefront: Enid Lee on talking with students about school closings.” Teaching for Change. 2013, May 24. Retrieved from http://www.teachingforchange.org/resistance-and-collaboration-enid-lee-on-chicago-school-closings