Texts and Contexts

Texts and Contexts: The State and Gender in Educational Policy
Author(s): Michael W. Apple

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 349-359
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto
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Dialogue
Texts and Contexts: The State
and Gender in Educational
Policy
MICHAEL W. APPLE
The
University of
Wisconsin
Madison,
WI
INTRODUCTION
In
my
mind the
way
to show
respect
for someone's work is to take it
seriously,
as
worthy
of
interrogation
and of
agreement
and
disagree-
ment. I know that this
may
not be fashionable. Certain elements within
the
"progressive"
research
community(ies)
in education treat
any
critical
discussion of their work as treason. Their actions are reminiscent of a
bumper
sticker
recently popular among
the
religious Right:
"God said
it. I believe it. That settles it." If our work is to serve more than rhetorical
and
hortatory purposes (though
this is one
important thing
that our lan-
guage
should sometimes
do,
of
course),
it also should be mulled
over,
read
carefully, subjected
to
multiple interpretations,
and
yes,
criticized
when it's not as
good
as it could be. How else are we
collectively
to teach
each other.
Of
course,
there is a fine line between
engaging
in collective conver-
sation in
print
and the
point scoring
and masculinist
styles
that dominate
academic
discussions,
even
(especially?)
those on the Left. We must
always
be careful of the sectarian
symbolic
violence that has a
long
his-
tory
here. This is embodied in the well-known
joke
told
among
an earlier
generation
of leftists. It takes the form of the
following question:
How
many
leftists does it take to
go fishing?
The answer is
cute,
but still tell-
ing:
One hundred-one to hold the
pole
and
ninety-nine
to
argue
about
the correct line.
There is another reason both to
engage
in serious discussion over
someone's work and to do so in a manner that neither
reproduces god-
talk nor sectarianism. That reason is more
personal. Any
author is a real
human
being.
She or he is a
complex assemblage
of
gendered,
sexed,
raced,
and classed
elements,
who
(whatever
her or his
contradictions)
is
?
1994
by
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Curriculum
Inquiry
24:3
(1994)
Published
by
Blackwell
Publishers, 238 Main
Street,
Cambridge,
MA
02142, USA,
and 108
Cowley
Road, Oxford
OX4
1JF,
UK.
350 MICHAEL W. APPLE
trying
to
figure
out
(one
would
hope)
how to
organize
and
reorganize
education so that it makes a difference. As
such,
an author is
struggling
just
like
you
and me to understand a
complex
world. Such efforts,
when
done in
good
faith,
are
worthy
of
respect.
We have much to learn
from
each other.
In the case of this
particular
author and this
particular respondent,
such
"personal"
reasons are
important.
I have followed
Shirley Grundy's
work for more than a decade and have a
good
deal of
respect
for it.
Her
book,
Curriculum: Product or Praxis
(1987)
is a
powerful
reminder of
why
we must
always
think the
political
whenever we think the educational.
Thus,
I
approach
this
interchange
with
Shirley
not with the aim of show-
ing
where someone is
right
or
wrong,
but as
part
of a
continuing
dia-
logue
with someone who continues to teach me and
many
others about
issues of considerable
importance
in educational criticism.
There is much with which I
agree
in "Which
Way
Toward the Year
2000?"
However,
to start a conversation that I
hope
will be
three-way,
not
only
between
Shirley
and
Michael,
but
among Shirley,
Michael, and
you
the
reader,
I shall
spend
most of
my
time
reflecting
on what the
essay
does and doesn't do.
READING POLICY DOCUMENTS
Shirley
is correct in her
recognition
that
policy
documents are not
ephemera. They
have real effects.
They
do make a difference
symboli-
cally
and
materially, especially
in a time when
powerful
conservative
movements are
engaged
in a concerted effort to
change
our ideas about
what education is for and how it should be carried out
(Apple
1993).
They provide
the outlines of the discourse that
powerful groups
within
the state wish us to use to debate where our schools should
go
and what
they
should do in the future. Such documents are
usually compromises,
both
among powerful groups
and between such
groups
and social move-
ments from below who are
pressuring governments
to be
responsive
to
their needs. Without such a
process
of
compromise, governments
can
quickly
lose their
legitimacy (Apple
1985;
Apple
1993). Thus,
most
pol-
icy
documents are a bit
confusing
at times.
They
are not
always
consis-
tent statements that
support
one
specific
set of
beliefs,
but are often mix-
tures of various elements from the
positions
of sometimes even
partly
opposing groups.
The task of those in dominance in the state and the
economy
is to move the overall orientation of the
policy
onto the terrain
that favors them.
Take the famous
(or infamous)
document A Nation at Risk in the
United States. It was
clearly
written to favor a vision of education that
was seen as one more
"weapon"
in
international
competition,
in the
industrial
project,
in
identifying
talent
and
raising standards, and in
"toughening"
schools.
Yet, it could not articulate a
policy
that called for
doing
this
by paying
more attention to
gifted
students who
might sup-
TEXTS AND CONTEXTS 351
posedly
contribute to a new
generation
of scientists, mathematicians,
technical
experts,
and so on.
Rather,
it had to strike a
democratizing
note. It had to call for a focus on the
"average"
student. Not to do
so
would have lost it an immense amount of
support given
the
populist
impulses
that remain
important
in education in the United States.
Shirley's "reading"
of the discourse of two
policy
documents is subtle
and
insightful
and
provides
a model for some
aspects
of our
readings
of
similar documents in the future.
Yet,
like the
example
of A Nation at Risk
that I
gave
above,
an
understanding
of what
any policy
does
requires
a
very
close
reading
of its context. I want to make a few
points
about this.
I shall then ask whether a Habermasian
approach
is sufficient to
engage
not
only
in these
comparisons
but in an
analysis
of what
Shirley rightly
takes as a crucial constituent of state
policy-gender.
When we read what
might
be called the discourse of the
state,
one of
the most
significant things
we should focus on is the
relationship
between what
Stephen
Ball and Richard Bowe have called the
policy
text
and
policy
context. As
they point
out,
the
reading
of
policy
texts is not
unconstrained.
They
do not
develop
in a
vacuum,
and a
variety
of exi-
gencies impinge
on the
processes
of
interpretation.
Thus,
when we think
about how
policies
"work" we need to have two interrelated concerns.
One is to
explore
the actual
engagement
of
departments
with the
policy
texts and
the other to
explore
the
engagement
with and
responses
to the constraints and
possibilities arising
within the
changing
contexts within which
departments oper-
ate. It is our contention that it is in the
micro-political processes
of the schools
that we
begin
to see not
only
the limitations and
possibilities
state
policy places
on schools
but,
equally,
the limits and
possibilities practitioners place
on the
capacity
of the state to reach into the
daily
lives of
people.
(Ball
and Bowe
1992,
101)
These are
important
issues. In order to take
Shirley's analysis
to its
logical
conclusion,
we need to examine how and
by
whom texts are
pro-
duced,
what the
compromises
were that went into
forming
them,
and
just
as
crucially
the
micropolitics
of their
reception.
"Which
Way
toward
the Year 2000?" takes us
part
of the
way,
but I am a bit hesitant about its
tendency
to decontextualize the text itself. A
key question
is one that
Shirley
herself raises at the end of her article. Are there
"progressive"
elements in these
documents?
It is
exactly
the
right question
to ask.
But,
we
may
not be able to answer it without
being
more
specific
about the
contexts of each
policy's production
and
reception.
It is
always necessary
to
pay
close attention to what
might
be called
"national
filters"
through
which
ideological
movements have to
pass
before
they
become influential on educational
systems.
Ideas and ideol-
ogies,
of whatever
political provenance,
are mediated and transformed
by existing
structures and ideas
(Dale 1992, 5).
Institutions and dis-
courses cannot be
separated
from their
historical roots.
Thus, even
though
there
may
be a
strong impetus
toward
change
in
many
societies
and these movements
may
be
generated from similar
pressures (rightist
ideological
and economic
power,
for
instance),
different societies do
not
all react in the same
ways
(Dale 1992,
6).
We
simply
cannot know either the roots of these
policies
or their
sup-
posedly
conservative or
emancipatory possibilities
unless we more
fully
understand the social context of their
generation
and
reception.
This
is
an
important point,
since
Shirley
is
comparing
Australia and
Canada.
They
are not the same
nation,
nor are
they homogeneous internally.
In
order to understand these
policy
documents and determine what
they
are meant to do and what their
possible
social effects
might
be,
we
would
need a nuanced
understanding
of each
site,
of each so-called filter.
Oth-
erwise we
may
be
comparing apples
(no
pun
intended)
and
oranges.
Because of
this,
the next
stage
of an
analysis
that would want to
take
seriously Shirley's points
about the effects of these
policies
would
need
to
engage
in both considerable historical work and an
analysis
of
the various social movements
"represented"
in the
compromises
each
national filter has
generated.
This means that our
analyses
must be more
conjunctural. Rightist
dis-
course in the United
States,
for
example,
was not
only
about
"efficiency
and effectiveness." It
was,
and
is,
deeply grounded
in cultural discourses
surrounding populist
concerns over
religion, family,
and race as well as
neoconservative discourses about cultural
hierarchies, standards,
the
"Western"
tradition,
and "real
knowledge" (Apple
1993;
Hunter
1988).
The
language generated
out of the state
may
sound more than a little
similar to that found in documents
produced
in,
say, England,
Australia,
New
Zealand,
and Canada
(Lingard, Knight,
and Porter
1993). However,
what these words
actually signify,
and what the
policies imply,
can
only
be
fully
understood if we
engage
in detailed
analysis
of-in this case-
how
rightist
movements are similar and
yet very
different in each of
these nations. The relative
power
of
religious
fundamentalism,
racist
populism,
and antistatist movements
may
be
very
different in each of
these
nations,
for
example.
For this
very
reason,
what texts mean and
whether there are indeed
"emancipatory"
elements in them that deserve
support
cannot be determined in a vacuum.
Thus,
even with the
insight-
ful
analysis
of each of these documents
provided
in "Which
Way
toward
the Year
2000?"
the
question
embodied in its title
may
not be
fully
answerable under the terms in which it is couched. Habermas
may
be
helpful
here,
but
perhaps
he is too
general
to
provide
tools
adequate
to
the task. This
very
use of Habermas
by Shirley-and
what he enables us
to do and what he
ignores-is
something
to which I want to turn.
THE ABSENT
PRESENCE OF GENDER
One of the aims of "Which
Way
toward the Year 2000?" is the illumina-
tion of the ways differential power is "represented" in state discourse. As
Shirley clearly indicates, one set of
power relations that
underpins and
is
produced by
such
policies
is
gender.
I am
strongly supportive
of her
position
here,
but I think we must
go considerably
further than
is
allowed
by
the
conceptual
framework on the state that she
employs.
Let
us take as an
example Shirley's insightful suggestion
that the absence
of
gender
in the documents is a crucial
point.
How would we think
about
that?
It is indeed crucial to locate the "silences"-the absent
presences-in
texts of this
sort,
and
Shirley
is
perceptive
in her discussion of this.
How-
ever,
there are an
infinity
of absences in texts. What
logic
enables
the
reader to focus on this
specific
one and not all of the others?
This, of
course,
raises a
thorny
issue that has stood at the center of sociocultural
analysis
for decades-the
problem
of the
logic
of nonevents.
Taking
this
issue
seriously
is more than a little
consequential
for
any reading
of
pol-
icy
documents
(or
any
social texts for that
matter).
How does one
justify
a
particular
focus not
only
on
specific
elements in the
text,
but not in it?
I do not wish to
imply anything necessarily negative
about
Shirley's
reading,
for I think that this is a constitutive dilemma of all critical anal-
yses.
For
instance,
take an earlier
reading
that I did in
Ideology
and Cur-
riculum
(Apple [1979] 1990).
In the
chapter
called "The Hidden Curric-
ulum and the Nature of
Conflict,"
I
argued
that it was the
very
absence
of conflict in social studies and science curricula that was the most
pow-
erful
ideological
statement in curricula about the nature of our
society.
Clearly,
then,
for me it was the silences that were the most
important.
Yet,
many
other discursive constructions were both there and
yet
not
there.
Why
the tension between consensus and conflict? Unless we can
justify
the reasons behind the
production
of our own discourse about
texts such as
these,
we run the risk of
acting
like those
positivist psy-
chologists
who seem to
delight
in
doing
their research on
"samples
of
convenience."
Do not misconstrue
my points
here. I am not
asking
for a set of deter-
minate decision rules for
choosing
x rather than
y.
As
Shirley argues, any
form of discourse
analysis
is a form of critical hermeneutics.
Yet,
critical
hermeneutics has its
disciplined,
reflexive elements. Not
every reading
is
justified.
Some
presences
and absences
may
be "better" than others.
For
me,
my analysis
was
grounded
in a set of
conceptual
tools
generated
largely
from neomarxist
theory
that focused on conflicts and contradic-
tions in culture and the
economy.
It
may
have been a bit
reductive,
but
it did allow for a consistent and
usually
self-reflexive and critical
reading.
This has
major implications
for
Shirley's
discussion of
gender
in
policy
discourse. She
may
not have
gone quite
far
enough
in
constructing
a set
of
glasses
to read
gender's
absent
presence.
Let me
employ
the two
figures
she draws
upon
to illuminate what I mean here-Fraser and
Habermas.
Shirley
draws on
Nancy
Fraser for some of her
analysis,
and
rightly
so
since Fraser is one of the most
insightful analysts
of the
ways gender
hierarchies work in our theoretical and
political
constructs.
Following
Fraser, she
suggests
that the core elements of the "basic institutional
framework" that
organizes this
society
are
(1)
the
organization of social
354
MICHAEL W. APPLE
production
for
private profit
rather than for human
need;
and
(2)
a
gen-
der-based division of social labor that
separates privatized
child
rearing
from
recognized
and remunerated work.
Thus,
in
keeping
with the
fact
that Fraser works within
(and reconstructs)
the socialist-feminist
tradi-
tion,
she
(Fraser)
wants us to see the connections and
contradictions
between economic and
gender-based
structures. For this
very
reason,
Fraser is critical of Habermas's construction of the differences between
the
public
and
private spheres.
This,
she
argues, partly reproduces
the
very gender
divisions we should wish to subvert. Fraser
actually spends
a
good
deal of time
challenging
Habermas's construction of the
life-
world,
especially
his
analysis
of the
public sphere.
This has
important
implications
for
Shirley's arguments.
It
provides necessary
correctives for
the cases in which we in fact do
employ
Habermas and
challenges
the
very
use of his work in other cases.
Take as an
example Shirley's analysis
of the role of the student
as
future citizen in both EL
(Enabling
Learners)
and E&E
(Excellence
and
Equity). Drawing
on
Habermas,
Shirley perceptively
shows how "the
sys-
tem" colonizes "the lifeworld." She also
shows,
through
an
analysis
of the
tensions within and the differences between these
documents,
how
each
represents
different
emphases
on the role of education in
preparing
such
future citizens.
Yet,
as
Nancy
Fraser reminds
us,
any
critical social
theory
of
capitalist
societies needs at its core much more
gender-sensitive
categories:
Contrary
to the usual androcentric
understanding,
the relevant
concepts
of
worker, consumer,
wage [and
so
on]
are
not,
in
fact,
strictly
economic
concepts.
Rather,
they
have an
implicit gender
subtext and thus are
"gender-economic"
concepts.
Likewise,
the relevant
concept
of
citizenship
is not
strictly
a
politi-
cal
concept;
it has an
implicit gender
subtext
and, so,
rather is a
"gender-politi-
cal"
concept.
(1989, 128)
Reading
the "absent
presence"
of
gender
then
requires
that we focus on
the
very concepts
that structure the texts themselves.
Gender, hence,
peeks
out from
nearly every assumption
made
by
each of these
documents.
Thus,
it is worthwhile
remembering
that the model of what Connell
calls
"bourgeois citizenship" depends
on the "citizen"
being supported by
a
functioning patriarchal
household
(Connell 1990, 511).
One can have
a
"public sphere" only
if there is a
functioning "private sphere."
And the
usual construction of such a
private sphere
is based on a sexual division
of
physical
and emotional labor.
Perhaps
it is
Shirley's
reliance on Habermas to read these texts that
makes it difficult for us to see this more
clearly.
Her
position, though
articulate,
runs the risk of
romanticizing
the
lifeworld,
as if
anything
that
supports
it must itself be
supported given
the relentless colonization of
it by the so-called system. This may not always be the case.
What is
happening
in nations such as the United
States, Australia, and
Canada is not
only
the colonization of the sociocultural lifeworld
by
the
system,
the latter to be
protected
from the former. It is also
characterized
by patriarchal
hierarchies that extend even into the lifeworld
(Fraser
1989, 132). Thus,
the lifeworld is not this
pristine
set of relations
that
always
needs to be defended. It too is riven with differential
power
relations.
This
actually
is
recognized by
Habermas,
but not in
sufficiently gen-
dered terms. In Habermas's own discussion of colonization of the life-
world
by system,
he is
equally
interested in the
potential
for the
decolon-
ization
of the lifeworld
(Habermas 1984;
Habermas
1987).
His
major
criterion is the extent to which social movements and tendencies
"advance a
genuinely emancipatory
resolution of welfare
capitalist
crisis"
(Fraser 1989, 131).
For
him,
such decolonization must include three
things.
In Fraser's reconstruction of his
theory,
it needs
"(1)
the removal
of
system-integration
mechanisms from
symbolic reproduction spheres,
(2)
the
replacement
of
(some)
normatively
secured contexts
by
commu-
nicatively
achieved
ones,
and
(3)
the
development
of
new,
democratic
institutions
capable
of
asserting
lifeworld control over state and
(official)
economic
systems" (1989, 131).
However,
Habermas himself claims that
many
movements that seek to
defend lifeworld norms
against
the
colonizing potential
of the
system-
religious
fundamentalism is a
good example-are
not
necessarily "gen-
uinely emancipatory."
While
they oppose
the intrusion of
purposive-
rational
logics
that come from the
system, "they actively oppose
the sec-
ond element of decolonization and do not take
up
the third"
(Fraser
1989, 131).
They may
in fact be
strikingly patriarchal
and
may
have
interests that are not the most democratic to
say
the least. The
right-wing
populist
movements
surrounding
the cases of textbook
censorship
and
their antistatist
leanings may
want to
"protect"
the lifeworld from the
system,
but that lessens neither their considerable antidemocratic effects
(see
Delfattore
1992)
nor the
supposedly
Bible-based attachment to the
patriarchal family
that is so
deeply
embedded in their world view
(Hunter 1988).
Take the
larger,
relentless neoconservative attacks on the state as a case
in
point.
For the
Right,
the state is
something
of a
mindlessly expanding
system
of bureaucratic control. It needs to be
radically
restructured and
reduced so that we can "liberate"
entrepreneurialism
and redistribute
wealth to the
"producers."
Looked at
closely,
in
principle
such a
program
is based on the
unspoken assumption
that the
low-paid
or
unpaid
labor
of women will
always
somehow be there to
support family
life, welfare,
and
personal
survival. At the level of
policy
and
practice,
a
good
deal of
the
energy expended by
neoconservatives is devoted to
attempts
to make
this
postulate
come true
(Connell 1990,
512).
Now this is a
heavy
dose of social and
political argument
and I thank
you
for
your patience
in
wading through
it. But it does
point
to some-
thing
of
importance.
Even with the
(warranted)
criticism of
Habermas,
he himself does
provide standards for
judging
whether a movement or
policy
is
"emancipatory." Shirley might
have
strengthened
her
argu-
ments if she had
gone considerably
further in her
analysis
of
EL,
by
actually employing
his criteria to test out such defense of the
lifeworld
to see if it was in fact
progressive
in this
particular
case. As it stands
now,
one is left
wondering
about its status. Should we
support
it or
not?
Yet,
it is not
only
in the lifeworld that
gender
relations are
being pro-
duced and
reproduced.
The state
itself,
and hence
any
documents it
pro-
duces,
is
deeply implicated
in these relations as well.
Seeing
the state
as
fundamentally gendered
would have enabled us to
gain
even
further
insight
into how one reads absent
presences.
Gender and its
regulation
is not
just
an
afterthought
in state
policy.
Rather,
it is a constitutive
part
of it.
Nearly
all of the state's
activity
is
involved in it. One need
only
think of the
following
areas of state
pol-
icy-family, population, housing,
the
regulation
of
sexuality,
child
care,
taxation and income
redistribution,
the
military,
and what concerns us
the most
here,
education-to see the role of the state in
gender politics
(Connell 1990, 531),
even when it is not
overtly
discussed
in
official
documents.
In
fact,
these
arguments
about the central
place gender plays provide
a crucial
background
to the
ways
in which
policy
documents are
gener-
ated and function.
They
direct our attention to the fact that
patriarchy
is embedded in
procedure.
This is
significant
both
conceptually
and
empirically,
since it
"allows
us to
acknowledge
the
patriarchal
character
of the state without
falling
into a
conspiracy theory
or
making
futile
searches for Patriarch
Headquarters.
It locates sexual
policies
in the
realm of social
action,
where it
belongs, avoiding
the
speculative
reduc-
tionism that would
explain
state action as an emanation of the inner
nature of males"
(Connell 1990,
517).
In so
doing,
these
arguments open
up
the
question
of the
very
character and
dynamics
of the
state,
the
actual
machinery
of
government
as it
engages
in its
daily
life,
as a
gen-
dered
entity.
For
example,
it is
important
to remember that
bureaucracy
itself,
both
in the state and in the
economy,
is
usually
based on a
gendered hierarchy.
Its
very
basis in the rationalization and control of human
meanings
and
relations is connected-in
very complex ways-to gender politics
(Con-
nell
1990, 525).
Now we need to be
very
careful of
essentializing
here,
as if
particular
kinds of
rationality
are somehow
directly
connected to
gender.
This
said, however,
the relations are still
worthy
of considerable
thought.
If we examine one of the nations that
Shirley
focuses on-Canada-
we can see that even the
arrangement
of administrative units within the
state
bureaucracy
is itself a
gendered practice. "Departments
where
women's
interests are
represented
tend to be
peripheral.
Thus,
women's
advisory
units have
slight organizational power compared
with,
say,
eco-
nomic
policy-making
units dominated
by
men"
(Connell 1990,
517).
The
increasing power
of the tense alliance between neoliberals and neocon-
servatives in many capitalist nations has had a profound affect on such
policies. Thus, in
education, for
example,
the neoliberal
emphasis
on
economically
useful
knowledge
and on
schooling
for flexible work skills
TEXTS AND CONTEXTS
357
"needed" for the
twenty-first century
has meant that
higher
education
has been
reshaped
around those areas that are
historically
associated
with men's
paid
labor,
such as
engineering
and
technology,
business
and
management,
and the
physical
sciences. In the zero-sum
game
that
has
been constructed
by
dominant
groups,
this has meant that
resources
therefore are drained from those fields with a
higher proportion
of
women such as the
humanitaies,
social work and
education,
and so
on
(Connell 1990,
536).
All of these
points,
when stitched
together, provide
us with an increas-
ing recognition
of how
gender
is a
powerful
constitutive relation in
state
policy
and in the
daily
actions of the state
itself,
not
only
in
education
but in
nearly
all
aspects
of state
activity
and structure. It also
provides
us
with
ways
of
showing
how the most
important concepts
used in the doc-
uments issued
by
recent
governments
in all of our
nations-worker, cit-
izen,
economy,
and so
many
others-are
thoroughly
saturated with
gen-
dered
assumptions
and
meanings.
This
very recognition
enables us to
read the absent
presence
of
gender
in a more
rigorous
fashion than that
provided by
Habermas,
and it enables us to take the
insights
that
Shirley
herself has
given
us and
go
further with them.
CONCLUSION
In this
response
to
Shirley's very thoughtful
contribution,
I have directed
our attention to the need for a more nuanced
analysis
of both the state
and its
policies
as
gendered. Exactly
the same kinds of
things
must be
said about race
(Omi
and Winant
1986).
The state is
simultaneously
classed,
gendered,
and raced
(see
McCarthy
and Crichlow
1993).
While
I have chosen to focus on
gender
here because of
Shirley's
own
empha-
sis,
nearly
all of the
points
I have made about the basic
concepts
employed by governments
to convince us how to talk about education
are
packed
full with racial and class discourses as well.
(Think,
for
instance,
of how
concepts
such as "at
risk,"
"productive
citizen,"
"worker," etc.,
call forth
images
of their
opposites
that are
usually
stereo-
types
of the
poor,
of
people
of
color,
of the
"nonproductive.")
Each of
the documents
Shirley analyzes
is
produced by
the
government.
Each is
located in a
specific
and
complex configuration
of
power
relations. Gov-
ernments
(the state)
have
particular
needs
(Dale 1989);
the
politics
of
gender
relations and how it
plays
out in educational
policy
and
practice
is but one of them
(Kenway 1990).
Crises in the
economy
and in
authority
relations are often
partly
stim-
ulated
by
and themselves stimulate crisis in
patriarchal
and
racial,
to
say
nothing
of
class,
relations. We need to think
very carefully
about the
contradictory
nature of all of these relations
(and more,
as the
struggles
over
"ability"
and
sexuality
have
demonstrated). Only
then can we deter-
mine in what direction we
might be-and should
be-heading
in the
year
2000. It is to the credit of the
analysis
in "Which
Way
toward the
Year 2000?" that I have been able to stand on the author's shoulders to
raise the issues that I have here. And
nothing
I have said in this
response
is meant to indicate
anything
other than that.
Given
my
broad
agreement
with what stands behind
Shirley's analytic
agenda,
I want to
ratify
what she has
attempted
here.
Shirley gets
it
exactly right
when she asks us to examine each of these sets of
state
policies
in
light
of its
progressive potential.
If
policies
are
compromises-
often not
only
within dominant
groups
but "forced" on dominant
groups
because of the action of more
progressive
social movements-then
such
documents can be used to
open up space
for more democratic
educa-
tional
activity.
A case in
point
here is the Carl Perkins Vocational
Edu-
cation Act in the United
States,
which on the surface is not a
very
radical
document.
Yet,
in order to maintain
legitimacy,
its
sponsors
had to
include
language
that stated that students as
prospective
workers must
be
taught
about all
aspects
of an
enterprise, including
how to run and
finance it. This has
provided funding
and
legitimacy
for some
very
inter-
esting
curricular and
pedagogical
action in
support
of worker-controlled
businesses.
Here,
as
Shirley
reminds
us,
the text of the state made a dif-
ference
(Apple
1993).
Yet,
while I want to echo these concerns I have one other
worry.
This
does not
only
concern
Shirley-whom
I trust both
politically
and
person-
ally-but
the field as a whole. Often we turn to
immensely
abstract the-
ories
that,
while
they
are
very productive
in their own
ways,
also tend to
disembody
social action and distance ourselves from its
consequences.
Because of
this,
let me raise a
purposely provocative question.
Is "life-
world vs.
system"
an
adequate linguistic assemblage
to
represent
the
aggressive
attacks
by capital
on
people's
bodies and histories? It seems
too eviscerated at times. Are we in
danger
of
making
less
powerful
Fras-
er's
claim that the core elements of this
society
includes "the
organization
of social
production
for
private profit
rather than human need"?
In a time when a
powerful
conservative alliance wants to convince us
to
commodify
education and treat our schools as
simply
one more
prod-
uct to be
bought
and sold like
any
other
product,
when commercial
pro-
grams
such as Channel One in the United States ask schools to
literally
sell children as
captive
audiences to
corporate
advertisers
(Apple 1993),
and when schools in our inner cities are
literally disintegrating
before
our
very eyes
in what
Jonathan
Kozol
rightly
calls
"savage inequalities"
(1991), perhaps
we need to
reintegrate
the
(acknowledged)
brilliance of
Habermasian
analysis
back into some
anger
at the realities of what is
happening
in both
system
and lifeworld. The
year
2000 is not that far
away.
Dominant
groups
are
already crafting
schools in their own
image
and the
very
idea that
anything public
is worth
preserving
is under severe
threat.
Perhaps
it's time to act in
ways
that are a bit less "discursive"?
REFERENCES
Apple,
M. W.
[1979]
1990.
Ideology
and
curriculum.
New York:
Routledge.
Apple,
M. W. 1985. Education and
power.
New York:
Routledge.
Apple,
M. W.
1993.
Official knowledge:
Democratic education in a conservative
age.
New York:
Routledge.
Ball, S.,
and R. Bowe. 1992.
Subject departments
and the
"implementation"
of
national curriculum
policy. Journal of
Curriculum Studies 24
(2):
97-115.
Connell,
R. W. 1990. The
state,
gender,
and sexual
politics. Theory
and
Society
19
(4):
507-544.
Dale,
R. 1989. The state and education
policy. Philadelphia: Open University
Press.
Dale,
R. 1992. National
reform,
economic crisis and 'New
Right' theory. Unpub-
lished
paper presented
at the
AERA,
San
Francisco,
CA.
Delfattore,
J.
1992. What
Johnny
shouldn't read. New Haven: Yale
University
Press.
Fraser,
N. 1989.
Unruly practices. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Grundy,
S.
1987. Curriculum: Product or
praxis,
vol. 1. New York: Falmer Press.
Habermas,
J.
1984. The
theory of
communicative action. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas,
J.
1987. The
theory of
communicative
action,
vol. 2. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hunter,
A. 1988. Children in the Service
of
Conservatism. Madison:
University
of
Wisconsin Institute for
Legal
Studies.
Kenway, J.
1990. Gender and education
policy. Geelong,
Australia: Deakin Univer-
sity
Press.
Kozol,
J.
1991.
Savage inequalities.
New York: Crown.
Lingard,
B.,
J. Knight,
and P.
Porter,
eds. 1993.
Schooling reform
in hard times.
Washington,
DC: Falmer Press.
McCarthy,
C.,
and W.
Crichlow,
eds. 1993.
Race,
identity,
and
representation
in edu-
cation. New York:
Routledge.
Ministry
of Education.
N.d.
Year 2000: A
framework for learning. Enabling
learners.
Victoria,
British Columbia:
Ministry
of Education.
NSW
Ministry
of Education and Youth Affairs 1989. Excellence and
equity:
New
South Wales curriculum
reform. Sydney:
NSW
Ministry
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Affairs.
Omi, M., and H. Winant.
1986.
Racial
formation
in the United States
from
the
1960's
to the 1980's.
Georgetown,
Canada:
Routledge, Chapman
& Hall.

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Texts and Contexts: The State and Gender in Educational Policy

Author(s): Michael W. Apple

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