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Finding Common Ground: Reasonable Compromise, Gray Areas, and Telling It Slant

Editorial: Tara Star Johnson

T he arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. This maxim, used liberally in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s writing and

speeches, came to mind when Michelle Zoss presented sj Miller and me with her first sketch of the concept map that now graces the cover of this journal. MLK’s presence is still palpable where Michelle abides in Atlanta, and even though she wasn’t consciously thinking of him when she designed the map, my reader-response interpretation envisions him guiding her pen in the arc that connects Assessment to Social Justice. The arc is adorned with three verb phrases to suggest the action sj and l feel will be necessary to effect a just environment for English teacher education: having a voice in policy, combating1 neoliberalism, and speaking truth to power. I’d like to tender my thoughts on this interrelated trinity in this editorial in a manner that I hope is consistent with MLK’s teachings.

Before I begin, a little background that I found edifying on the maxim: The metaphor is attributed to Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker (1853), whose published sermons include the following passage from “Of Justice and the Conscience”:

Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive tri-umph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will trem-ble. (pp. 84–85)

Parker was prophetic; America did indeed tremble with cannon fire not 10 years later. Though the plight of English teachers and teacher educators

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who feel voiceless and powerless in our current neoliberal context doesn’t compare to the issues of Parker’s day, I cling to his confidence that things refuse to be mismanaged long. However, nearly 15 years of mismanagement—if I (somewhat arbitrarily) mark NCLB’s passage as the rising action of the high-stakes testing and accountability era that has been the blight of many students’ and teachers’ educational experience—is a long time. It’s a lifetime for young people who have grown up in the era and thus, like caged birds, sing “of things unknown/but longed for still” (Angelou, 1983). I wonder, then, what might precipitate America’s trembling over the issues that matter to readers of English Education, and how we might best ready ourselves for the battle? Is it possible—and if so, desirable—to eschew warfare altogether through civil compromise, perhaps by identifying common ground with people who could be something other than the enemy after all?

The 2015 AERA Annual Meeting in Chicago provided editorial fodder for sj and my inaugural issue, and the feeding continues for this one. I was drawn to a panel of august personages whose session was titled “Justice Requires Informed Action: Fighting Anti-intellectualism with Educational Research” (Alexander, 2015). Typically I just quietly absorb the wisdom of such charismatic speakers, maybe because there’s still a little of the star-struck graduate student in me, or maybe because my synapses are frustrat-ingly slow when it comes to distilling and articulating my thoughts into artful sound bites. But I caught myself with a furrowed brow a couple of times during the session, which I’ll attempt to convey in what follows (the italics coincide with the furrows). Bear in mind that I’m relying on jotted notes for the content, except quoted material, which I captured verbatim. But first, a quick definition of neoliberalism from the Collins English Diction-ary for readers who haven’t had the benefit of an enlightening conversation with Jory Brass, whom I consider to be our field’s expert on such matters (see Brass, 2014): A modern politico-economic theory favouring free trade, privatization, minimal government intervention in business, reduced public expenditures on social services, etc. Though it’s beyond my scope to explain its seemingly oxymoronic appellation, the global rise of neoliberal ideas, policies, and practices is commonly attributed to the Thatcher–Reagan era.

During the Q & A part of the session, W. James Popham made a snarky comment about the proliferation of SIGs (“Why do they care about those things?”) as he underscored his belief that AERA needs to prioritize a few key educational issues because the organization’s balkanization has weak-ened the potential for collective action. But who decides what gets priority? I just attended a session about the mass extinction of indigenous languages (Darder, 2015); would he think that’s an issue that matters? Zeus Leonardo

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appeared to agree with Popham, noting that hegemony needs the consent of the marginalized to function (e.g., immigrant parents choosing not to teach children their native language because they believe it is bad or might disadvantage them), but counterhegemonies require grouping. He went on to say, “Everyone has to give up something. By giving up something, we end up with more,” with the caveat that it’s not fair to ask people who’ve histori-cally had to give up a lot—their language, their culture, and their freedom, if not their very lives—to disproportionately deplete their cultural and mon-etary capital when more privileged others are replete with resources. But then something didn’t resonate: He said we shouldn’t appeal to neoliberals’ every-man-for-himself/what’s-in-it-for-me mentality by convincing them that they will personally benefit from giving up something for the good of society. For example (mine, not his), investing in education that benefits all young people (i.e., poor and urban kids, not just their kids) will improve the work force (resulting in a deeper, and better-prepared, pool from which to draw their employees) and reduce crime associated with poverty and joblessness (resulting in increased community safety as well as reducing costs to the state for the criminal justice system). Leonardo said we should instead make the case that it’s neoliberals’ moral obligation to give up something. But what’s wrong with framing an argument in language that makes sense to them? And what if they don’t share our moral values? What if their notion of “the right thing to do” doesn’t include helping Others?

I was too intimidated to speak my mind during the session, but these thoughts have had an opportunity to percolate for a few months now. Part of the brew has been Daniel Willingham’s (2010) essay in which he advises instructors of social justice education classes to “consider the possibility that there is a moral basis to student resistance.” Though social justice educators are wont to believe students resist engaging with the material because they’re privileged brats who prefer to stay in their blameless bubbles (Willingham says this much more elegantly than I), Willingham makes a compelling case that such students may be operating under different moral precepts than the two that predominate a socially just worldview: Others should be treated fairly and Others should not come to harm. Conservative American students and students from countries whose cultures value ingroup loyalty, bodily purity, and respect for authority more than the typical American liberal are then met with a moral conundrum when asked to pit fairness to the outgroup against respect for their parents or community leaders who espouse different ideals. It’s not fair of the instructor, then, to expect that students will always already choose the fairness precept over that of ingroup loyalty or respect for authority. I have argued elsewhere (Johnson, 2010) that relationship is

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key to building bridges with such students; I find myself a lot less frustrated when I take a page from bell hooks’s (2001) book by loving them instead of trying to bend them to my will. My classroom is less contentious when I encourage students to identify when moral precepts might be in conflict as they become teachers and support their efforts to reconcile perspectives that appear to be incompatible.

I realize that it is one thing for teacher educators to build bridges with resistant students and quite another to find common ground with policymakers who aren’t beholden to us for grades or favors. But I think the same principles might apply: We should not expect them to adjust their moral precepts to be in accordance with ours, and we should focus on build-ing relationships with them. Similar to when the tide in sentiment among conservatives about same-sex marriage shifted after a few right-wing politi-cians began making public proclamations in support of their LGBTQ family members,2 I think we might find that some folks on the Right aren’t the enemy we’ve made them out to be if we dig dermatologically deeper than skin-level assumptions and rhetoric. An example: Bill O’Reilly could be the poster boy for pompous asses on Fox News, but I almost sort of liked him when he was a guest on The Daily Show because he let the ass-mask slip in his repartee with Jon Stewart; they appear to have a mutual, albeit grudging, regard founded on the relationship they’ve chosen to cultivate. Another person I was surprised to like is Derek Redelman, who was an Indiana Chamber of Commerce representative when we met during the spectacle of our state’s withdrawal from the Common Core State Standards. A good conversation over lunch was enough to see that we agreed on many educational matters, despite our different political and epistemological perspectives.

I realize it’s one thing to begin building alliances with reasonable Republicans and quite another to influence policy at high levels. But now I’m going to tread in territory that will probably unleash some vitriol by sug-gesting that we shouldn’t foreclose the possibility of engaging with those who have been deemed unreasonable or who may appear to be out of reach. One such person is Mitch Daniels Jr., Indiana’s erstwhile governor and current president of Purdue University. Though his championing of certain educa-tion reform initiatives places him squarely within a neoliberal mindset and thus philosophically if not actually at odds with the College of Education, Daniels’s (2015) commencement speech contained admonishments that didn’t sound neoliberal at all:

Social scientists have begun to document the extent to which our new knowledge elite congregates together, cozily insulated at work and at home from much contact with those less academically prepared. It’s a

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dangerous development. As one scholar summarized it, “It’s not a prob-lem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of college pro-fessors. It is a problem if college professors, or producers of network news programs, or CEOs of great corporations, or presidential advisers, cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers.” Starting today, life will invite you to separate—professionally, so-cially, residentially, and attitudinally—from those without your educa-tional equipment. Please don’t. . . . Somewhere there’s a softball league, an adult education class, a church on the other side of town, where you can make the human connections that keep a society healthy. For your own sake as much as theirs, seek out, and connect with those who are making their way through life without the same equipment you’ve ac-quired. It’s not just a right thing to do; one could say, it’s your duty.

Though my doctoral hoodee rolled his eyes and said “He probably didn’t write it” during the ceremony when I turned to him with brows raised in ap-proval, I think it’s unfair to dismiss the sentiment as inauthentic. The speech sounded like him; at the very least he signed off on it, and he’s not known for pandering to folks who disagree with him. This is the same person whose office has responded immediately and sensitively to the two requests I have submitted to his presidential email address over the course of the last year. He is reachable, and I suspect more reasonable than many give him credit for.

I am mindful, however, of the risks associated with getting a seat at the table. I could get too comfortable with the Master’s Tools, which Audre Lorde (1984) exhorts cannot be used to dismantle the master’s house. If I were to obtain a seat with the purpose of examining or working against the system from within in ethnographic or espionage-like fashion and sub-sequently went native, it would seem like a betrayal of my values or those whom I originally intended to serve by my infiltration. Better, then, to get a seat with the genuine intention of working collaboratively with others at the table. I think this might be what Polly Williams, the “mother of school choice,” may have had in mind when she broke rank with her political party and the NAACP by partnering with Republican legislators to pass the nation’s first voucher program in Wisconsin (Tabachnick, 2015). Rachel Tabachnick claims Williams was used as a token to garner support from Black voters and that her vision for vouchers was ultimately distorted, arguing that her story “serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of partnering with school choice donors, politicians, and think tanks” and likening her legislative ac-tion to Pandora’s Box: “once she opened the door for her right-wing allies, it could not be closed.” I wonder, though, if others who had stood to gain by the voucher legislation in its initial iteration had dared to break rank with her rather than toe their party line, whether there might have been

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a critical mass of people in a position to safeguard her vision, ensuring the poorest students had access to a good education? And whether, imperfect though it may be, the voucher law does serve some students in need, which is better than none?

I might be predisposed to find common ground with antipathetic people, having suckled at the teat of reasonable Republicans during my formative years.3 But I’ve more recently been learning from the master of middle ground: my partner, Troy Bell. People in my professional circles have visibly recoiled when he lets it be known he has worked for Michelle Rhee’s nonprofit organization; their posture changes as they recalculate (to use Meghan Barnes’s term in her article in this issue) whether he might be one of Them despite his association with me. But he’s not; he just possesses the Kent Williamson–like capacity to engage productively with oppositional others and then form alliances to carry out work that advances their inter-secting interests. As Ken Lindblom and Patricia Dunn say of Kent in this issue’s Dedication, “He could engage effectively in passionate discussion, and he could diffuse unproductive, heated dialogue with a creative third way.” Randy Bomer similarly notes Kent understood there “really could be no sanctuary in inwardness; the only safety for our profession would be through engagement with people who did not already think like us.” I hope Emily Kirkpatrick, the new executive director at the helm of NCTE, will ap-proximate Kent’s ability to navigate the politically complex and ethically4 charged decisions of our day and then inspire people to get on board. But (I owe this axiomatic extension to Troy) it’s not only important to get people on the boat; they also need to be rowing in synch. Then, if they discover they’re headed in the wrong direction, it’s easier to course-correct.

Although I respect the intellect of those who disagree with the direction NCTE has taken, my recent conversations with CEE members about NCTE policy often ends (or begins) with the same refrain: “It’s complicated.” Take the Common Core State Standards, for example. In my study of Indiana’s withdrawal from the CCSS, I’ve discovered that many teachers whom I respect and admire didn’t hate them—in fact, they were the impetus for much-needed dialogue and curricular revision among some English depart-ments. It feels elitist and patronizing, then, for me to dismiss their positive experiences as the result of hegemony or false consciousness. Teach For America (speaking of Michelle Rhee) is another thorny example; despite all the reasons for teacher educators in traditional licensure programs to fulmi-nate against the organization, TFA’s steady supply of students is keeping some colleges of education who have entered into partnerships with TFA solvent.

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Even though I think I’m pretty good at finding the gray in issues that appear to be black and white, sometimes I still fail. Troy and I were having a conversation about teacher assessment the other day, and I thought I was be-ing reasonable in calling value-added formulas “highly problematic” (Duh!). He pointed out, though, that such a characterization shuts down dialogue with teacher assessment reform advocates. Saying instead that they “need improvement” changes the tenor, opening the door for a conversation about what fair and valid teacher assessment could look like (see Hinchey, 2010; Smagorinsky, 2014) and how we might approximate if not achieve it. Some might see that as too much of a concession, preferring to hold out for the baby and bathwater of all things assessment to be thrown out, but I’m not so sure that’s a reasonable position to take. Situating ourselves within the gray area between speaking truth to power and ensuring it doesn’t fall on deaf ears will be vital to finding common ground. Emily Dickinson’s (1989) savvy suggestion to “Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant” (pp. 178–179) helps me think about how this balancing act might be accomplished; it is purpose-fully and strategically conciliatory, which gives me a sense of agency within the gray area’s contested space.

Regardless of where readers might locate themselves on the grayscale of teacher assessment, the topic does handily bring me full circle to the moral arc introducing this editorial and forward to pieces in this issue: Parker (1853) wrote, “I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.” George Hillocks Jr.’s posthumous essay as well as Sarah Levine and Malayna Bernstein’s in-vited companion piece5 contain typologies for texts that systematically and effectively classify without sacrificing attention to moral and philosophical issues, but the main character in Chris Miller’s Provocateur Piece struggles with the notion of quantifying the incalculable. These different perspec-tives on assessment work together in this issue of English Education; surely teacher educators and policymakers can do the same with respect to the larger educational issues of our time.

Notes1. I hesitated over the word combating because (1) the bellicose connotation isn’t

consistent with my approach to resolving differences (or, consequently, the thesis of this editorial); and (2) I think the pearls of wisdom I once heard from the incompa-rable Erica McWilliam (2004) might apply to neoliberalism: It is a condition to be lived with, not a problem to be solved. However, I think we do have a fight on our hands to improve the educational conditions in which we live, and we ought to do more than wring our hands in despair about it.

2. I’m not implying cause and effect here; I suspect it’s a mutually constitutive, chicken-and-egg situation.

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3. I can’t help myself with the dairy imagery! I do think it’s safe to say most Michi-gan farmers, as small business owners, identify as Republican, though they may not all be as reasonable as my family.

4. Even though I took a course in ethics in graduate school, I still have a hard time distinguishing between morals and ethics, perhaps because many people use the terms interchangeably. I’m aware of and apologize for the irony of my asking Peter Sma-gorinsky to clarify Hillocks’s use of the term moral in his piece in this issue without offering my own definitions in this editorial.

5. After Peter gave sj and me the honor of publishing George’s final essay in English Education, we decided to invite Sarah and Malayna to write a companion piece from their perspective as Hillocksian descendants and early-career academics in order to illuminate George’s work for a new generation of English educators.

ReferencesAlexander, P. A. (Chair). (2015, April). Fighting anti-intellectualism with educa-

tional research. Invited speaker session conducted at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Chicago.

Angelou, M. (1983). Caged bird. Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178948

Brass, J. (2014). English, literacy, and neoliberal policies: Mapping a contested moment. English Teaching Practice and Critique, 13(1), 112–133.

Daniels, M. E., Jr. (2015, May 15). President Daniels to graduates: Use your know- ledge, skills to lift those around you. Retrieved from http://www.purdue.edu/ newsroom/releases/2015/Q2/president-daniels-to-graduates-use-your-knowledge,-skills-to-lift-those-around-you.html

Darder, A. (2015, April). Culture, language, and the politics of forgetting: Beyond re-strictive language policies in education. Presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Chicago.

Dickinson, E. (1989). Tell all the truth but tell it slant. In G. McMichael (Ed.), Anthology of American Literature Volume II: Realism to the Present (pp. 178–179). New York: Macmillan.

Hinchey, P. H. (2010). Getting teacher assessment right: What policymakers can learn from research. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/getting-teacher-assessment-right

hooks, b. (2001). All about love: New visions. New York: William Morrow.

Johnson, T. S. (2010). Practice what you preach: A personal and pedagogical social justice policy. In sj Miller & D. Kirkland (Eds.), Change matters: Critical essays on moving social justice research from theory to policy (pp. 33–40). New York: Peter Lang.

Lorde, A. (1984). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

McWilliam, E. (2004, April). Practitioner research: Towards the next generation. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA.

Parker, T. (1853). Of justice and the conscience. Ten sermons of religion (pp. 84–85). Boston: Crosby, Nichols and Co.

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Smagorinsky, P. (2014). Authentic teacher evaluation: A two-tiered proposal for formative and summative assessment. English Education, 46(2), 165–185.

Tabachnick, R. (2015). Opening Pandora’s Box: The rise & fall of the Right’s school voucher pioneer. Retrieved from http://www.politicalresearch.org/2015/01/29/opening-pandoras-box-the-rise-fall-of-the-rights-school-voucher-pioneer/#sthash .E9RkcRtj.fRwqT0we.dpuf

Willingham, D. T. (2010, April 27). What do students have against social justice education? Teachers College Record. Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org

NCTE Promising Researcher Award Competition in Recognition of Bernard O’Donnell

The 2016 Promising Researcher Award Competition is open to individuals who have completed dissertations, theses, or initial, independent studies after their dissertations between December 1, 2013, and January 31, 2016. Studies entered into competi-tion should be related to the teaching of English or the language arts (e.g., language development, literature, composition, teacher education/professional development, linguistics, etc.), and should have employed a recognized research approach (e.g., historical, ethnographic, interpretive, experimental, etc.). In recognition of the fact that the field has changed in recent years, the Committee on Research invites entries from a variety of scholarly perspectives.

Candidates must submit two (2) copies of a manuscript based on their research. Manuscripts should be written in format, style, and length appropriate for submission to a research journal such as Research in the Teaching of English, College Composi-tion and Communication, Curriculum Inquiry, Teaching and Teacher Education, or Anthropology and Education Quarterly. Manuscripts normally range between 25 and 50 double-spaced pages.

Manuscripts can be sent to NCTE, Promising Researcher Award Competition, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1010, Attention: Kelly Searsmith, or can be emailed to secondary@ncte.org. Manuscripts must be received on or before March

1, 2016. For more information, please visit http://www.ncte.org/second/awards/pra.

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