A Burkean Analysis
Act:
Just off the bridge that crosses
I-25, Clear Channel’s electrical billboard cycles through 4 (?) advertisements
in span of thirty seconds (?). Visible
from I-25 north bound it is visible to over 1.5
million cars per day.
Scene:
As parts of the country still struggle to recover from the Great Recession,
many scholars are noticing a downward
trend in the number of births. As
indicated by this trend birth rates begin declining in 2008. The billboard has a number of telling
details: a young white girl and a
motto: “Not what to think/How to think”
that suggests a very specific audience.
Agent:
Eleven years after the Great Recession, exclusive private schools are
advertising to keep their enrollment constant.
At around 20,000 dollars per year, Sandia is out of reach for many
students and professes that
·
Developing essential skills and intellectual
potential through challenging academics;
·
Cultivating a socially responsible environment
of innovation and creativity; and
·
Engaging as a vibrant community for the
betterment of society.”
Agency:
Though this is not an exact figure, but the rough range of an electronic
billboard is from 3000 to 7000 dollars per month.
Purpose:
On its surface the purpose of the advertisement is pretty
straightforward. That purpose could be
actualized with an increase in enrollment, but I think the messaging is a
little bit more nuanced and speaking to the concerns of a certain population
and ideology.
First, the
picture of the little white girl suggests that they are marketing to white parents. In these times with the Bechdel Test ,
representation is an important consideration.
If their purpose was to increase enrollment from underserved people than
having a person of color be the face of your campaign might be a more effective
choice (New
Mexico is a minority-majority state), but since they also include, “Not
what to think/How to think” as the catch phrase they are targeting a specific
demographic.
The idea that
schools are teaching students “what to think” is not new. In fact, many conservatives
argue that schools are involved in an ongoing campaign of indoctrinating
students with a liberal bias. So parsing
out the difference between what to think
versus how to think speaks directly
to conservatives.
In essence Sandia
Prep is saying that education can be done from an ideologically neutral
perspective. While there are certainly
subjects that strive to be ideologically neutral, it rarely is that
simple. Education, by its nature,
changes people. Indeed, one of the
arguments for a public education states, “To
educate is to prepare and train someone in the necessary skills to have the
ability to participate in society as a full citizen.” While Sandia’s mission
statement supports that argument, can education ever be ideologically neutral?
Take the following
examples: 1) a biology teacher teaching
Evolution as the prevailing theory for the complexity of life we see today and
2) a biology teacher arguing that all life was created by a higher power. The first would clearly be something that
modern science supports and a competent teacher would also teach the scientific
method as a way to continually test that hypothesis. At no point would the teacher expect their
students to take their assertions on faith.
Yet, if a biology teacher were to teach that all life was created by a higher
power, that’s exactly what they would be asking, they would, in essence, be indoctrinating
their students. If creation were to be
taught in a science class, people arguably could say that it doesn’t belong and
is not appropriate. Arguably, it could
be seen as mere indoctrination since it can’t be proved using the scientific
method. Now I’m not saying that teaching
that life was created is beyond the scope of what a school should teach, but I
do think it wouldn’t be appropriate to teach it in a science class. The rigor of science depends upon adhering to
the scientific method, stating provable hypothesis, etc.
Likewise, since
the vast majority of scientists agree that climate change has been caused by
humans, it would be irresponsible to teach students that climate change does
not exist. Yes, there are questions of
the validity and reliability of the conclusions, and yes the system is very
complex and it may not be possible to control for every variable, but teaching students
what are our best understood facts and how we arrived at them is indeed a worthy
project and a worthy education.
But in both cases
neither viewpoint seems ideologically neutral.
For a certain belief system, teaching Evolution or Anthropogenic Climate
Change can be seen as ideological, as teaching students what to think. There is
certainly room in both subjects for people to question the science but to
suggest that the science is ideological and serves no other purpose than to
indoctrinate students is, at best, dishonest.
And
that is just the science curriculum. In
the humanities the questions become even thornier. Yes, we can teach the traditional story of
the founding of America, but would it be irresponsible to not teach about the
Spanish exploration and conquest of Mexico as also contributing to our
understanding of the history of America, especially in New Mexico? Should the French-Indian war be a part of
understanding of how America was settled?
And wouldn’t those areas of understanding leave a student to conclude
that maybe America is not the “shining city on the hill”. That our history is, at best, complicated and
paints a more nuanced and troubling view.
Wouldn’t ignoring the facts and events of history of all Americans be
another type of indoctrination?
What
I’m arguing is that the message of the billboard is designed to appeal to a
conservative, white consumer base. Statistically,
whites are the main subset that could probably afford the tuition of Sandia
Prep. Likewise, whites make up the
majority of people who support the Republican Party, the conservative
party. And while they may level the
charge that education as currently structured is indoctrinating students, I’d
argue that the students are drawing their own conclusions. If they are more critical of American history
or capitalism or how democracy works or Christianity, it is not because they
were indoctrinated by the liberal left but that they resisted the indoctrination
of the conservative right. And to
suggest that a school could teach a student “how to think” without engaging in
some form of indoctrination is dishonest.
As stated above, education is about creating students to engage in
society and increasingly we are becoming a more diverse and varied
society. And unless we are preparing
students for interacting and respecting other viewpoints then we, as educators,
are not doing our jobs.
September
23, 2019
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