Paul Orlowski
University of Saskatchewan
Network
Latest external collaboration on country level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots.
Publication
Featured researches published by Paul Orlowski.
New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry | 2012
Paul Orlowski
This chapter asks why it is that so many students enter high school without any class consciousness and graduate without any either. Yet, whether one defines social class in terms of social status or in more strictly Marxian terms, there can be no denying its existence in Canadian and American societies. Much of this chapter is based on the analysis of two data sources: the evolving formal British Columbia Social Studies Curriculum and interview transcripts with veteran high school social studies teachers. It includes a discussion of how political ideology has influenced the curriculum developers and the teachers. It demonstrates how omission as a hegemonic strategy is used to further entrench corporate interests in the United States and Canada. For example, topics such as taxes and the social welfare state had virtually disappeared from the British Columbia Social Studies Curriculum in the 1980s – could this be a factor in the recent rise of the tax cut discourse in both countries? Apples (Ideology and Curriculum, New York: Routledge-Falmer, 2004) contention of how power and ideology is embedded in the formal curriculum is made clear here. There appears to be a conscious attempt on the part of the curriculum developers to destabilize the hegemonic middle-class norm from recent versions of the curriculum. This has coincided with more focus on the individual. The attitudes of almost all of the teachers mirror this emphasis on the classless society. A taxonomy of social class in education developed by Ontario educators helped guide the discourse analysis of the formal curriculum and the teacher interview transcripts (see Curtis et al., Stacking the Deck: The Streaming of Working-Class Kids in Ontario Schools, Toronto: Our Schools Our Selves Educational Foundation, 1992). This chapter makes the case that all students, regardless of class background, should be given the opportunity to understand economic issues that affect their past, present, and future lives. End-of-chapter questions address this philosophy for social studies education.
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
This chapter provides the necessary grounding in political ideology and its influence on the ways people perceive and act in the social world. Every political ideology has three aspects: a critique of society, a vision of the best society, and agency to get closer to attaining that vision. This chapter makes a case for the relevance of three political ideologies that arose out of modernity, namely, liberalism, conservatism, and socialism. It explains the evolution of all three ideologies, in particular the ways in which the critical left has reformed the economic theories of socialism into social democracy, an ideology that shares the same social values as liberalism in terms of minority rights and anti-capital punishment. Social democratic governments accept capitalism, but support legislation to help economically oppressed groups. This chapter deconstructs ubiquitous use of political terms such as right wing and left wing by replacing them with a more sophisticated taxonomy that includes specific ideological positions on both economic and social issues. For example, this economic/social distinction explains why some Americans call the Democratic Party left wing, while others consider it to be as supportive of the corporate agenda as the Republican Party. Both views are correct: on social issues, the Democrats are mostly progressive or left wing, while on economic issues they are clearly beholden to the right wing agenda of the major corporations. The chapter includes questions that will help the reader develop a deep understanding of these ideologies and their positions on important social, economic, and political issues in the United States and Canada.
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
This chapter was written after the worst financial crisis in Western nations since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Media reports pointed to the deregulation of the American financial industry that first occurred in the 1980s as a major factor for the crisis. The response by the American government was to give over
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
1.4 trillion of tax dollars to the financial institutions of Wall Street. Given the general lack of class consciousness among the American citizenry (see Chapters 6 and 8), it is not surprising that the federal government determined that the best strategy to deal with the crisis was to give massive amounts of public monies to the very corporations that caused the crisis in the first place. This chapter outlines the major economic debates that occurred in Western nations, especially between the liberal John Maynard Keynes, the social democrat Karl Polanyi, and the nouveau laissez-faire economic theories of Friedrich Von Hayek. Unfortunately, the major economic theory guiding American economic policy since the 1980s was further developed by a disciple of Von Hayek, Milton Friedman. The main premise of this theory is that government should not intervene in the economy of the nation unless it is to protect private wealth or engage its military to support American interests in other countries. The economic rationale underlying this philosophy is called neoliberalism, and its basic tenets are deregulation, privatization of the commons, and union-busting. Neoliberalism is currently the biggest force to overturn the hard won victories that helped build the social welfare state in Western nations that occurred from the 1930s to the 1970s. Neoliberalism promotes the notion of the self-interested individual, a person who does not feel it is the responsibility of the state to help citizens in need. In this way, neoliberalism undermines democratic initiatives around the globe. This chapter also asks whether globalization is a contemporary version of the colonial project of the past. Neoliberalism has had a profound and deleterious effect on the public education systems of the United States and Canada. The chapter includes the strategies used by neoliberal politicians and journalists to undermine public education. The chapter ends on a hopeful note, however, as it points out that the neoliberal project is breaking down on the domestic front and internationally.
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
This chapter is the concluding chapter for the entire book. As such, it is really a summary of my major argument throughout the book that the public schools of Canada and the United States need to be protected from powerful neoliberal forces. It makes the case that social studies and history teachers need to possess a deep understanding of political ideology, as well as how the corporate media act as a hegemonic device in the service of the economic elites. This is necessary in order for both countries to develop an informed and active citizenry that can fight against social injustice and grotesque economic greed. This concluding chapter summarizes the major points of each of the chapters. It outlines the call for more critical multicultural education, not less of it as with recent Arizona legislation. It summarizes the call for social class to become part of the enacted curriculum. Otherwise, we get situations in which working-class people clamor for more tax cuts, even for the extremely wealthy. This chapter makes a final set of points demonstrating why teachers need to focus on strengthening our waning democracies. The chapter ends by asking the rhetorical question: Should the schools be used to maintain the status quo or to challenge it?
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
This chapter focuses on concerns with democracy throughout the history of the United States up until the present. In fact, there is evidence to demonstrate that there are waning democracies in both the United States and Canada. The chapter includes a brief discussion of the taxonomy of the Good Citizen developed by Westheimer and Kahne (American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269, 2004): the socially responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and the justice-oriented citizen. This taxonomy has been mapped onto the three political ideologies emphasized in the book, namely, conservatism, liberalism, and the critical left that emanated out of democratic socialism. The second part of this chapter moves away from theoretical considerations and toward the practical aspects of teaching for a stronger democracy in both the United States and Canada. It includes descriptions of pedagogy I have developed and used to teach for political consciousness. This approach has three main components. First, students must understand political ideology. Second, they must be made to realize that corporate media have corporate interests. Third, they should comprehend the inherent benefits for citizens in a strong democracy, and be aware of the flaws in our democratic systems. The final section of this chapter describes pedagogy I have found to be successful in social studies methods courses. This strategy incorporates all three components mentioned about, and also utilizes ideological reframing techniques developed by Lakoff (Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004). In order to use the schools to strengthen democracy, this chapter makes the argument that critical media literacy needs to become part of the enacted curriculum, if not the formal curriculum, so that we have a citizenry able to deconstruct the spin used to gain support for the corporate agenda.
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
This chapter continues to develop the theoretical considerations that first appeared in Chapters 2 and 3, but it is focused on the school itself. It first addresses the longstanding question of what is the purpose of schooling. Should the school be used mainly to provide the necessary labor requirements for our capitalist system? Should the school be used to help each individual student realize their own potential? Or should it be used in the way that American philosopher of education John Dewey envisioned it, namely, to develop critically thinking citizens who are able to address serious societal issues in a sophisticated manner? The important issue of a culturally relevant curriculum is connected to these debates, as is its corollary, a common core curriculum. This chapter makes the argument that American and Canadian societies have changed too drastically to revert back to using a monocultural, Eurocentric curriculum that some conservative educators are calling for. It briefly discusses the early challenges over control of the school curriculum in both the American and Canadian contexts. The reader gains some understanding over the ideological struggles over the curriculum itself that have taken place for over a century, struggles that get to the heart of the purpose of schooling. Apples Ideology & Curriculum (2004) provides the analytical method used to determine how power can be embedded in the formal curriculum. In analyzing the evolution of the British Columbia Social Studies Curriculum, for example, readers can see how topics such as the trade union movement disappeared to make way for a focus on the individual. The question arises about the influence this curricular change in emphasis has had on progressive social movements being organized to resist the dismantling of the social welfare state. Chapter 4 ends with a discussion of the enacted curriculum. This is what a passionate and knowledgeable educator can do with students who bring their own interests and meaningful experiences into the classroom. The reader is introduced to examples of race–class intersections in the history of the United States and Canada. Hegemonic discourses figure prominently in these examples.
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
This chapter builds on the previous chapter on ideology by explaining concepts such as discourse and hegemony from a poststructuralist perspective. Concerns around the power of discourse and hegemony are discussed in accessible ways that demonstrate how certain ideologies gain prominence, while others are dismissed. Discourse is always connected with desire and power. In this chapter, both discourse and power are explained in Foucauldian terms. Power is, therefore, conceived of as a set of social relations built seamlessly into daily relations and practices. In effect, this kind of almost invisible power acts as a social regulator in racial, class, and gender relations. Critical discourse analysis is effective in illuminating the ways in which social power is embedded in representation of text, such as in the school curriculum. Sometimes discourses come together to form discursive formations that are particularly powerful in affecting social relations. The chapter outlines the anti-liberal rhetoric in the discursive formation that helped propel George W. Bush into the White House for two terms. Hegemony refers to the ideal representation of the interests of the privileged groups as universal interests, which are then accepted by the masses as the natural order rather than as a demonstration of the construction of power along lines of race, class, and gender. Sometimes discourses arise that are counterhegemonic in that they attempt to destabilize the status quo in some way. This chapter examines the concepts of hegemony and counterhegemony mostly from a theoretical perspective that also makes a distinction between a false consciousness and a more accurate political consciousness. It explains how an individual’s social location and experiences influence their values and perceptions of others. The chapter also introduces the notion of reframing social and economic issues from various ideological perspectives.
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
This chapter begins with a personal narrative of becoming slowly conscious of issues of race and discrimination in Canada. The formal curriculum is identified as a hegemonic device in creating myopia around, for example, institutionalized and systemic oppression of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. The various racial discourses used during the nation-building periods of the United States and Canada, the post–World War II period, and today are explained in ways that teachers can use in the classroom. These racial discourses are connected to conservatism, liberalism, and the critical left. The analysis of the formal social studies curriculum is based on Frankenbergs (White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993) taxonomy of racial discourses and Apples (2004) Ideology & Curriculum. These discourses are also apparent in the attitudes of White teachers toward racial minorities. The chapter also discusses the various forms of multiculturalism outlined by Kincheloe and Steinberg (Changing multiculturalism, Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1997) and links them to political ideology, as well. Readers will understand that the conservative critique of multicultural education emphasizes that it waters down the western canon, while the position of many in the critical left is that liberal pluralist forms of multicultural education do not do enough to combat racism. The chapter demonstrates how the popular color-blind discourse supports the myth of meritocracy. The color-blind and the cultural-deficit discourses have greatly influenced the thinking of many teachers. Readers will develop a comprehension of how racial and cultural power structures are maintained within liberal power-blind conceptions of multicultural education. Exercises will focus on both personal and theoretical reflections on these concepts and research findings.
Archive | 2012
Paul Orlowski
Canada often presents itself to the world and to its own citizens as a nation based on liberal discourses of fairness and tolerance. Yet, do these discourses accurately depict Canadian sociocultural relations? This question is asked in an examination of how Aboriginal peoples are represented and considered in high schools today. This chapter is focused on how certain liberal discourses, namely, the color-blind and cultural-deficit discourses, are entrenched within the minds of veteran social studies teachers and implications for Aboriginal students. It is based on a study of interviews with these veteran teachers. The participating teachers were asked two questions: First, why do you think that the BC high school graduation rate for Aboriginal students is about half of what it is for non-Aboriginal students? Second, do you or would you consider supplementing the curriculum with culturally relevant pedagogy? To answer the first question, most of the teachers relied on variations of the cultural-deficit discourse. These same teachers did not want to supplement the curriculum with culturally relevant pedagogy. As one teacher put it, “That would be spoiling them.” Their preference was to continue teaching the Eurocentric color-blind curriculum they had used for years. One progressive teacher suggested he would alter the curriculum to reflect an Aboriginal perspective to the mainstream historical narrative but he did not know enough himself in order to properly do so. Indeed, in terms of Aboriginal representation, the formal curriculum seems to have progressed further than most teachers have. Readers can reflect upon whether teachers in other regions of North America are similarly influenced by these liberal discourses in their attitudes toward Black and Hispanic students. This study indicates that there is much work to be done in teacher education programs in deconstructing the hegemony entrenched in liberal discourses.