Agency 101

In Haitian parents’ understanding, the goal of schooling is to instruct as well as to provide an éducation, the French word referring to providing children not only with reading, writing, and counting abilities, but also with moral guidance, a sense of civic duty, and interpersonal skills (Doucet, 2011).

Americans often purport to hold a very different view of education than the one Doucet highlights in her explanation of Haitian parents’ understandings. We are often inundated with fears of Sharia Law being taught in our classrooms right after evolution, climate change and sex education. Let alone a critical American history. These issues are often silenced in large and small ways across our public curriculum. A lack of discussion does not disappear these critical issues. Instead, its silence indicates complicity in the status quo.

I read Doucet’s case study of “bridging, agency and resistance to bridging” (2011) as a parallel to the fears expressed through media outrage by (oftentimes) conservative families who view the definition of education much more finitely than the full-bodied French definition. In a Venn diagram of the positions often ascribed to conservatives as well as those highlighted by a few members of this case study, I might discover ideas of autonomy and fear of some forms of socialization in the intersecting circles. This is interesting to me because both of these pieces are integral to the larger field of education and are often the strongest in the family unit although they may dissipate during a child’s time at school. (i.e. Using “bad” language, smoking, gossiping, everyday behavior with friends, in addition to “forbidden” content.) The cultural demands of education in America are vast — I am left wondering how agency (which appeared across this week’s readings) exists differently for children when they are under the care of a school than when they are under the care of their guardians. While both groups have certain expectations for behavior, conversations and practices, I wonder how deeply a school should (and can) invest in the beliefs of a student. Should the school work to actively and/or passively reproduce the dominant culture (which is only one form of culture itself)? In what ways might this be entirely beneficial and in what ways might it be damaging?