S1-E5: Cutting School, Listening to Communities (Noliwe Rooks)

The Radical Bureaucrat

The Radical Bureaucrat: Noliwe Rooks At the beginning of her most recent book, Dr. Noliwe Rooks shares a conversation she had over and over with her white, affluent students at Princeton. They called education “the civil rights issue of our time,” and seemed eager and committed to eradicating educational inequity. Rooks quickly noticed that for all their enthusiasm, few of her students had actually visited the underserved schools and neighborhoods they wanted to help or talked to the parents, students, and educators there. When Rooks brought up this type of engagement, they seemed dismissive of the idea that it was even necessary. In today’s conversation, Dr. Rooks shares how these repetitive conversations reflect broad rhetoric in the education reform movement and historical patterns in the racialized history of education in the U.S. She shares the concept of "segrenomics," economic and business models that require segregation to produce profits. She describes the great lengths that formerly-enslaved people in the rural south took to build schools in their communities, why white philanthropists took all the credit, and how similar patterns echo in today’s education politics. Rooks explores all the reasons why, if we ever hope to serve our most marginalized communities as bureaucrats, we need to engage meaningfully and continuously with community members who’ve been organizing, teaching, and fighting for education resources for decades. Further reading: · Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education by Noliwe M. Rooks. 2017. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34196066-cutting-school · Comparative and International Education Society https://www.cies.us/ Referenced in this episode: · Waiting for “Superman,” David Guggenheim, 2010. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/ · Dangerous Minds, John N. Smith, 1995. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112792/ · Stand and Deliver, Ramón Menéndez, 1988. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094027/ · Race to the Top: 2009 U.S. Department of Education initiative that awarded grants to education reform initiatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_Top · EduColor Collective: http://www.educolor.org/about/ · Teach for America: https://www.teachforamerica.org/ Show notes by Hannah E. Brown; “Aquarela” do Brasil by Ary Barroso, Performed by Peter Markowski, Luke Maurer, and Abram Guerra; Thanks to Chris Martinie for logo and all of you for your love and support.