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This review has been accessed times since January 14, 2005

Parker, W. C. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. New York: Teachers College Press

191pp.
$25.95 (paperback) $54.00 (hardcover)     ISBN 0-8077-4272-4

Reviewed by Kristen L. Buras
University of Wisconsin, Madison

January 14, 2005

In Teaching Democracy, Walter Parker (2003) theorizes democratic citizenship and pedagogy. He attempts to reappropriate the word idiot, originally "a term of reproach in ancient Greece reserved for persons who paid no attention to public affairs and engaged only in self interested or private pursuits" (p. xv). Hoping that his book will facilitate the struggle against present-day idiocy, Parker goes on to explore what counts as enlightened and engaged citizenship and what can be done—outside and inside of educational institutions—to promote it.

Unfortunately, Parker's (2003) theory of political enlightenment and engagement constitutes a classed, raced, and gendered discourse on citizenship which fails to critically incorporate the diversity he wants to argue is central to collective life. Tensely related to his theory are a number of concrete pedagogic proposals, largely rooted in the deliberative tradition, for promoting democratic citizenship. Yet his effort to make the case that diversity represents a deliberative asset is weakened by insufficient attention to the ways unequal power shapes dialogue and how teachers might specifically address associated dilemmas.

In this review, I plan to examine these issues by closely analyzing Parker's text, often in relation to alternative views and evidence. Ultimately, I argue that the shortcomings of this book challenge each of us to examine the forms of knowledge and agency privileged and marginalized in our own "democratic" visions and educational practices and to perpetually consider the "constitutive outside," meaning those domains excluded or rendered unthinkable by particular cultural constructions and epistemologies (Butler, 1993).

The Idiot and the Citizen

Parker (2003) opens Teaching Democracy by defining the idiot and citizen in opposition to one another. In addition to describing the idiot as one who is "self-centered," Parker also explains that such a person "does not know that self-sufficiency is entirely dependent on the community" (pp. 2-3). Instead, "idiots are idiotic precisely because they are indifferent to the conditions and contexts of their own freedom" (italics in original; p. 4). In contrast, the citizen assumes a more public identity and appreciates Martin Luther King's proclamation that: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality" (p. 8). While Parker's construction of idiots and citizens may at first appear to shed light on the tensions between radical individualism and the common good, the class, raced, and gendered dimensions of his conceptualization soon surface.

Providing an illustration of self-centered idiocy, Parker (2003) references a study done by Edward Banfield in 1958 entitled The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Parker reports:

Banfield found in southern Italy an impoverished village that fairly could be described as . . . idiotic. There were virtually no associations. There was no organized action in the face of striking . . . local problems, and these were felt problems. Locals complained bitterly about them but did nothing. There was no hospital, no newspaper, only five grades of school, no charities or welfare programs, no agricultural organizations. . . . The only "association," so to speak, was the nuclear family. (p. 5)

He continues, "Banfield concluded that the villagers' inability to improve their common life was best explained by their . . . unwillingness to conjoin—to associate and act outside their families" (p. 6). This type of idiocy, Parker explains, was termed "amoral familism" and its logic was "maximize the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family" (Banfield in Parker, p. 6).

Labeled as "backward" by Banfield and as "idiotic" by Parker (2003)—idiotic being a term Parker formally wishes to reappropriate in a historically Greek sense (meaning self-interested or private) while indirectly getting purchase out of its contemporary usage (mentally deficient or foolish)—the poor are depicted as fully responsible for their life circumstances. Rather than partly contextualizing this mode of operation as a response to either historical circumstances (e.g., relations between the urban north and rural south in Italy) or the immediate, daily struggle to survive poverty, members of this Italian community are chastised for the self and familial absorption that prevented them from collectively mobilizing for improvement like "citizens" would do. "To lead a non-idiotic life," Parker declares, "is to lead the unavoidably connected and engaged life of the citizen." "Citizens," he continues, have an "obligation to create a public realm" (italics added; p. 11). Parker warns:

The continual tug from the warm nests of family and ethnic group of origin can cause any of us to lose sight of the public square altogether. The tug is often strong for the new immigrant. . . . for members of cultural minorities who after generations still face oppression. . . . strongest, perhaps, for members of the cultural majority—middle-class Whites in the United States—whose ethnic nest has become broadly and deeply institutionalized.

Despite this, he concludes, "Going back to the public square again and again . . . this is the public work of the public citizen" (italics added; p. 12).

Parker's (2003) opening discussion of idiocy and citizenship reveals early on the classed, raced, and gendered nature of his theory. In his use and discussion of Banfield's work, Parker does not question the assumptions that influenced this social scientist's interpretations nearly fifty years ago. It is worth noting here that Banfield is considered by neoconservatives to be a "victim" of leftist politics in the 1960s and 70s, along with Daniel Patrick Moynihan who issued a widely known report that characterized "the Negro family" as pathological, and Richard Herrnstein who more recently co-authored The Bell Curve, a racist tome on genetics and intelligence (see Gerson, 1997).

Equally disturbing, there is little acknowledgment by Parker of the fact that access to specific kinds of economic, cultural, and social capital (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986)—all closely tied to class and other positions of privilege and subordination—shape the propensity to mobilize like the public citizen he idealizes. This, combined with Parker's references to the "unavoidably engaged" citizen with "obligations" to participate in the public sphere "again and again," constitutes a discourse that latently assumes access to particular resources and ironically casts those without such access as second class, second class citizens. In a similar fashion, while each ethnic group may have its own reasons for "losing sight of the public square," all are equally culpable—oppressed and privileged alike.

Perhaps a counter-illustration might serve to clarify my critique. In the late 1980s, Fratney Street School in a racially integrated, working class neighborhood in Milwaukee was scheduled for demolition. Viewing the site as an ideal place for "an educational program that capitalized on the unique features of the neighborhood," an area parent reported: "We started to dream about a school that would provide the highest quality education to all of our children, black, white, and Hispanic." As a result, community activists called for the Milwaukee School Board to instead support the establishment of La Escuela Fratney, "a whole language, two-way bilingual, multicultural, site-based-managed school" (Peterson, 1995, p. 60). From the beginning, Fratney was "committed to governance of the school by the teachers and parents" (p. 73).

At the same time, "middle-class white parents clashed with single mothers of African American or Latino heritage." Based on specific assumptions about family, there was:

the tendency of some middle-class parents to judge a parent's commitment to the school by the number of meetings the parent was willing to attend. These parents became "meeting happy," wanting to schedule frequent meetings at which they worked long hours. The logistics and expense of child care were not even an issue in their lives.

To militate against this problem, the school sought to ensure that work was "done in smaller subcommittees at times and places convenient to [such] parents." One parent group "meets monthly for breakfast immediately after the school day begins, a time that is convenient for many single mothers who drop off their children (as long as other siblings are welcomed to attend)" (Peterson, 1995, p. 75). To support greater involvement, the school also created paid positions for Mexican American and African American parents to work part-time as parent organizers. In sum, this example reveals both the activism that relatively poor communities often demonstrate despite the absence of specific resources, while also acknowledging how particular forms of class and race privilege enable some citizens to more easily sustain "engagement" than others (see also Ball, 2003; Gandin & Apple, 2003; Lynch & Lodge, 2002).

The struggles encountered by many single mothers in relation to their involvement at La Escuela Fratney also render problematic Parker's (2003) own critique of amoral familism. From a gendered perspective, caring for one's family does not necessarily represent an example of myopic withdrawal to a "warm nest" away from the public sphere. Constructing engagement and disengagement around simplified notions of private and public ignores the fact that issues regarded as private often represent public concerns (see Fraser, 1997). Assessments of political engagement cannot be divorced from the feminization of poverty and the many issues confronted by women as they perform the paid and unpaid labor pertinent to the welfare of family. Oddly enough, Parker references Nancy Fraser's (1997) discussion of the false boundaries often drawn between privacy and publicity when he later discusses the complexities of determining what qualifies as a public issue worthy of analysis in classrooms (pp. 113-114). Yet he overlooks this feminist critique when discussing amoral familism as a form of idiocy. On one too many occasions, he issues unqualified statements such as "Idiocy means not paying attention to the public household" (p. 8) or "The public's problems are wider than the family's" (p. 39).

Democratic Enlightenment

These issues continue to haunt Parker's (2003) theory as he moves on to discuss the defining characteristics of the citizen. He writes, "A principal attribute of the non-idiotic life, the life of the citizen, might be called enlightened political engagement" (p. 33). Democratic enlightenment "refers to the moral-cognitive knowledge" that shapes political engagement (p. 34). Relevant here are the forms of knowledge that signify enlightenment and how these position particular groups as either enlightened or unenlightened (e.g., see Apple, 1993). Parker specifies: "Included are literacy, knowledge of the ideals of democratic living, knowing which government officials to contact about different issues, the commitment to freedom and justice, the disposition to be tolerant of religious and other cultural differences" (p. 34). Connecting democratic enlightenment with literacy or contacting officials begins to look like a class construction and is confirmed as one when Parker declares:

Social class membership locates one in a web of circumstances . . . closely linked with citizenship knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes. The most disadvantaged citizens socially and economically (in the United States, women, African Americans, and the poor) are also "the least informed, and thus least equipped to use the political system to redress their grievances" (Delli, Carpini & Keeter quoted in Parker). Affluent citizens, by contrast, are much more likely to know officials and the rules of the game, and they use both to their advantage. (p. 35)

There is no denying Parker's insight that dominant groups mobilize various kinds of capital to their advantage, yet it is dangerous to assume that the use of these resources is a sign of enlightened citizenship. Dominant groups, whether defined by affluence or educational level, are surely informed in particular ways, but these understandings need not comprise the only politically relevant or most central understandings. For Parker, they largely do.

In fact, Parker (2003) emphasizes that political scientists have found "again and again that years of schooling is the chief predictive variable of citizenship knowledge" (p. 41). He elaborates on this by discussing survey data (Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry in Parker). Examining the "consistent relationship between school attendance" and "citizenship outcomes," researchers measured democratic enlightenment by responses to prompts such as "Identify a constitutional guarantee dealing with the Fifth Amendment," "Distinguish between democracy and dictatorship," and "Give the meaning of 'civil liberties'" (p. 43). While the knowledge to respond to these questions is undoubtedly important, these are highly specific formulations. Is it appropriate to conclude that those unable to respond were politically uninformed? What about other domains of politically relevant knowledge? For example, might understanding how police power is often brutally exercised in poor communities be important? Parker's constrained definition of enlightenment and his positioning of groups such as the poor as the "least informed" have been and need to be challenged (Freire, 1993; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Michie, 1999; Shor, 1992). Doing so does not require romanticizing the perspectives of these groups (e.g., see Roediger, 1991) or denying the power associated with particular forms of knowledge (Delpit, 1995), but it does mean expanding what counts as political insight.

Democratic Engagement

In much the same way, Parker (2003) adopts a relatively narrow view of political engagement, "the action or participatory domain of citizenship." Indicators of engagement are "political behaviors from voting or contacting public officials to deliberating public problems, campaigning, and engaging in civil disobedience, boycotts, strikes, rebellions, and other forms of direct action" (p. 33). Again, the survey referenced by Parker measured political engagement by assessing, for example, "knowledge of current political leaders," "participation in difficult political activities," and "frequency of voting" (p. 42). When political agency is primarily defined in relation to behaviors associated with electoral or "organized" politics, however, other significant—everyday—forms of action do not count as engagement. To appreciate this point, it is helpful to consider the research of historian Robin D. G. Kelley on African American working class resistance in the Jim Crow South. Kelley (1993) insists that "daily, unorganized, evasive, seemingly spontaneous actions form an important yet neglected part of African-American political history" (p. 76). Building on the insights of political anthropologist James C. Scott and other scholars of subaltern culture and history, Kelley agrees that "despite appearances of consent, oppressed groups challenged those in power by constructing a 'hidden transcript,' a dissident political culture that manifests itself in daily conversations, folklore, jokes, songs, and other cultural practices" (p. 77). He explains:

I use the concept of infrapolitics to describe the daily confrontations, evasive actions, and stifled thoughts that often inform organized political movements. . . . By traditional definition the question of what is political hinges on whether or not groups are involved in elections, political parties, grassroots social movements. . . . By shifting our focus to what motivated disenfranchised black working people to struggle and what strategies they developed, we may discover that their participation in "mainstream" politics—including their battle for the franchise—grew out of the very circumstances, experiences, and memories that impelled many to steal from an employer, to join a mutual benefit association, or to spit in a bus driver's face. In other words, those actions all reflect . . . larger political struggles. (pp. 77-78)

It is precisely the infrapolitical that gets excluded from Parker's discussion of engagement, thus compromising what might have been a fuller examination of political agency.

Although Parker (2003) does include the caveat that the "characteristics of enlightened political engagement" covered by the research on which he heavily relies "do not capture the full range of desired citizenship outcomes," the issue of that which was effectively discounted as political knowledge and action is too significant to be dismissed. In this case, the question of who qualifies as a citizen is at stake—a question deeply tied to the diversity Parker seeks to incorporate into his theory of democratic citizenship, but paradoxically ignores in his construction of enlightenment and engagement.

Teaching Democratic Citizenship Outside of Schools

After building his theory, Parker (2003) develops a program for what can be done both outside and inside schools to promote the kind of enlightened political engagement that he conceives as central to citizenship. Aside from reducing urban poverty, which he correlates with idiocy, another non-school recommendation that Parker makes pertains to participation in "voluntary associations." These civic spaces, he stresses, are not only "relatively safe places for their members; they are relatively free spaces of unrepressed . . . criticism of mainstream society. The democratic potential of voluntary associations exerting themselves on mainstream norms and values cannot be underestimated" (p. 39). While I agree that participation in voluntary associations is important, Parker's portrayal of such associations is problematic.

First, Parker's (2003) portrayal of associations as safe spaces is naive to the degree that it only marginally references the possibility that these publics may embody unequal relations of power. It is true that the development of parallel associations or institutions by oppressed groups has historically offered a higher degree of safety (Glaude, 2000). But voluntary associations are understood by Parker to be relatively free of internal class, race, and gender tensions. Yet even civil rights organizations of the 1960s—to provide an example—were sometimes founded on a counterhegemonic racial politics and simultaneously plagued by gender tensions. Within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), women began to talk "about the unequal ways in which they were treated by male staffers." Activist Julian Bond recalls attending a retreat and "hear[ing], through a thin wall, a group of SNCC women discussing the possibility of a 'sex strike' to call attention to their grievances" (Powledge, 1991, p. 602). In fact, concerns about white leadership within organizations such as SNCC also generated racial tensions. More attention, I contend, should have been given by Parker to the internal dynamics of voluntary associations, especially regarding the complex and often contradictory nature of those dynamics.

Second, Parker's (2003) view of voluntary associations as mechanisms for the critique of mainstream politics prohibits him from developing a more complex discussion of both their democratic and antidemocratic possibilities. Although Parker does briefly note that "voluntary organizations can be bad for democracy as well as good," pointing toward the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi groups as examples, he pays insufficient attention to less extreme voluntary associations affiliated with antidemocratic agendas. Organizations to protect "the family" or "common culture," for instance, often adopt popular language while advocating exclusionary practices and policies (see Apple, 2001; Buras, 1999). As such, it is necessary that any democratic program that seeks to support a multiplicity of associations "provide a basis for distinguishing democratic from antidemocratic . . . claims" (Fraser, 1997, p. 182). In this regard, I believe Parker's discussion of voluntary associations would have been strengthened by greater nuance. He is not unaware of power inequities and antidemocratic efforts, but he consistently gives these short shrift while disproportionately highlighting the positive outcomes of political participation.

Inside Schools

These issues are also evident when Parker elaborates on various in-school initiatives to promote enlightened political engagement. In part, Parker makes a significant contribution by elaborating on the merits of the deliberative tradition for teaching democracy. A welcomed corrective to neoconservative claims that diversity contributes to political dissolution (Hirsch, 1996, 1992, 1987; Schlesinger, 1992), Parker argues that diversity is a deliberative asset. "A plurality of social perspectives is a social good . . . not a problem to be overcome," he writes (italics in original, p. 95). Parker initially acknowledges, "We are positioned in already-structured fields of social class, race, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, first and second language," something which gives each of us a "unique social perspective" (pp. 95-96). Multiple perspectives, Parker points out, help to "enlarge each participant's knowledge . . . beyond one's own social position and experience" (p. 98). Furthermore, "the number of alternative understandings of a problem we can entertain in attempting to resolve it" depends on the existence of diverse viewpoints (Melissa Williams in Parker, p. 98). Perhaps most important, Parker contends that a range of views "increases the likelihood that dominant norms and beliefs are subjected to observation and critique" (p. 99).

After making the case that diversity is a democratic asset, Parker, to his credit, elaborates at length on a number of concrete models for organizing public policy deliberation in high school classrooms as well as models for educating teachers to lead both seminars and deliberations. Rather than rhetorically calling for teaching democracy, he takes on the difficult task of recommending and detailing specific pedagogic interventions. Speaking to the concrete realities faced by teachers, Parker (2003) writes, "It is not wise to recommend things that cannot be done. That . . . is not being serious" (p. 103). But Parker is serious, and this is why he spends the latter part of the book methodically detailing several democratic educational approaches.

Parker (2003) first addresses some of the difficulties associated with listening across difference. "Each individual in a deliberation needs to listen," he writes. "The greatest difficulty here often arises for discussants who, relative to other discussants, were thrown into privileged social positions" (p. 88). In thinking about this difficulty, Parker references the work of Uma Narayan who emphasizes that "insiders and outsiders may often have very different understandings of what is involved in a situation or issue" (Narayan in Parker, p. 89). Parker further elaborates:

By "insiders" Narayan refers to members of historically oppressed groups (e.g., the poor, gays and lesbians, women, people of color); "outsiders" are non-members. Non-members do not share the oppression. People are insiders and outsiders in relation to specific forms of oppression. (p. 89)

Considering how individuals are differently positioned, Parker questions, "Can an in-between be created across the gulf that separates outsider and insider, privileged and oppressed?" (p. 91) Even more specifically, "Are there strategies that might consciously be enacted to take us—any one of us, but outsiders especially—farther than 'good will' can take us and, therefore, make genuine deliberation, complete with contention and disagreement, more achievable?" (p. 92)

Again citing Narayan, Parker (2003) calls for epistemic privilege, methodological humility, and methodological caution, each a strategy that "aims for honest and open deliberation across difference" and "to surpass denial, invalidation, and alternating monologues" (p. 92). In short, epistemic privilege "means that insiders have better knowledge about the nature of their oppression than outsiders." Though granting epistemic privilege "does not absolve an outsider from critical listening and responding," it does require "the outsider to exert effort to absorb the details of the insider's understanding." Similarly, methodological humility demands that an outsider "realize that . . . [his] understanding is probably incomplete," while methodological caution necessitates that one "engage carefully so that [she is] not . . . dismissing the validity of the insider's point of view" (p. 93).

Oddly, Parker does not appear to recognize the tense relationship between his theory of enlightened political engagement and his advocacy of epistemic privilege, humility, and caution as pedagogic tools for classroom dialogue. It is essential to recall that Parker earlier advanced the argument that oppressed groups are generally the "least informed" regarding core political knowledge. Despite the theory of Parker-the-political-scientist, Parker-the-democratic-educator wishes to center the viewpoints of oppressed groups and calls upon those formerly positioned as enlightened to be humble and cautious while asking that they accord epistemic privilege to those formerly designated as unenlightened. In this regard, there is a significant disconnect between Parker's theory of democratic citizenship and the educational strategies that he recommends.

Parker's (2003) discussion of the importance of recognizing diverse forms of knowledge in schools thus represents an advance. And in proposing epistemic privilege, humility, and caution as useful strategies to facilitate listening across difference, he offers teachers a place to begin—a welcomed corrective to progressive but ill-defined calls for incorporating diverse views into classroom discourse. However, Parker does not adequately complicate the pedagogic interventions he recommends for promoting enlightened political engagement, especially with regard to dialogue under conditions of unequal power.

Allow me to provide an illustration. Parker (2003) details a promising approach for preparing preservice teachers to plan and lead seminars—discussions which seek to "enlarge understanding of the ideas, issues, and values in or prompted by [a] text" (p. 131). He suggests that preservice teachers both participate in an initial demonstrative seminar as well as plan and lead their own microseminars during the semester. Parker spends quite a bit of time reflecting on his own effort to "select powerful texts that deal centrally with problems and principles of democracy in a diverse society" and he includes references to pieces by Alexis de Tocqueville, Toni Morrison, Jane Addams, and others (p. 136).

Parker (2003) stresses that preparing to lead a seminar involves a number of decisions, including: "How will power differences among students be addressed? . . . How will the seminar purpose be stated and communicated? What norms will be posted (or proposed or elicited from the group)? What question will open the seminar?" (p. 138) He chooses to emphasize the importance of preservice teachers "preparing a poster" that states the seminar's purpose as well as the norms that guide it, such as "Don't raise hands," "Address one another, not the discussion leader," and "Use the text to support opinions" (p. 138). Regarding the relationship of these norms to unequal power and difference, however, Parker states only that "during the debriefing that follows the seminar, the teacher can ask students if they believe there was unequal expression or any domination during the discussion, share his or her observations, and forthrightly address problems" (p. 139).

Specifically how might teachers "forthrightly address problems" related to unequal relations of power that shape the way in which a seminar unfolds? On this question, Parker is relatively quiet and decidedly less directive. Clearly there is no simple approach that will enable teachers and students to justly negotiate an unequal terrain, but deeper exploration and more illustrations were warranted—particularly when Parker's goal is to assist educators in understanding the place of diversity in democratic classrooms. As Fraser (1997) reminds us:

Unequally empowered social groups tend to develop unequally valued cultural styles. The result is the development of powerful informal pressures that marginalize the contributions of members of subordinated groups . . . in official public spheres. . . . One task for critical theorists is to render visible the ways in which societal inequality infects formally inclusive existing public spheres and taints discursive interaction within them. (pp. 79-80)

Levinson (2003) articulates an associated concern about dialogue—one related more to argumentative content than mode of cultural expression—when calling attention to the fact that a "minority group may put forth arguments within a political debate that rest on premises about the world that are generally accepted by . . . this group [due to their experiences], but are rejected as bizarre or crazy by the majority" (p. 28). Problems associated with challenging privileged students to open their minds to unfamiliar perspectives that violate deeply held worldviews are only compounded by the complexities associated with inviting members of oppressed groups to share their views in classrooms often experienced as alienating and symbolically violent. Significant here is Bernstein's (1977) argument that weakly framed pedagogies (e.g., those that allow students' life experiences into the classroom) are potentially democratizing at the same time that they "encourage more of the pupil . . . to be made public," thus ensuring that "more of the pupil is available for control" (p. 109).

Those who have attempted to invite discussion of controversial issues among diverse groups of students know the difficult and even volatile dynamics that can arise (Hess, 2002; Hess & Posselt, 2002; Simon, 2001). As a former social studies teacher who attempted to organize her eleventh grade United States history course around multiple and competing historical perspectives, I experienced firsthand the genuine dilemmas and endless challenges of such a pedagogy (see also Levine, Lowe, Peterson, & Tenorio, 1995). What does a teacher do when relatively privileged students resist consideration of alternative perspectives or articulate opposition in nativist, racist, or homophobic terms? How might a teacher respond when an "outsider" delegitimizes the narratives shared by "insiders?" How, specifically, can a teacher structure the educational experience so that epistemic privileging is more likely? I suspect Parker could have detailed his own struggles with the more difficult aspects of teaching democracy within a context of unequal power relations. I wish that he had as educators would have benefited from a more complicated and textured discussion of dilemmas that arise.

What Teaching Democracy Might Teach Us

Parker's earnest effort to more clearly define the knowledge and actions that characterize the enlightened, engaged citizen invites reflection. It is important that we ask: Who is this citizen? In answering this question, it becomes clear that the "citizen" conceptualized in the first half of the book (e.g., the voter who can speak on the 5th Amendment) is not necessarily the "citizen" who is taught and teaches democracy in the second half of the book (e.g., the "insider" who shares viewpoints on oppression). Such "insiders," I would argue, are the constitutive outside—those whose enlightenment and engagement are beyond the pale of Parker's political science. That a scholar dedicated to furthering the democratic project can falter in recognizing the partiality of his view should serve to remind all of us that we are capable of uncritically embracing selective constructions of knowledge. What is important is that we continuously question what has been privileged and what has been rendered peripheral within a given epistemology, and the implications of this for building a more or less democratic order.

Researching the "tough fronts" sometimes assumed by low income, African American and Latino American males in urban settings, L. Janelle Dance (2002) examines the lives of those who are "hardcore," "hardcore wannabes," and "hardcore enough." Though these young men all maintain a "gangsterlike" comportment, she reveals how their association with urban street culture ranges from "illicit" activities to the adoption of particular "modes of dress, language, and claims of ruthlessness" for purposes of peer respect, safe passage, and fashion. Despite vilification as the "criminalblackman" (Katheryn Russell in Dance), Dance reveals how each commands particular knowledge of the streets—knowledge that many school teachers lack. In short, these young men understand in deeply lived ways the stresses and struggles of living in depressed neighborhoods and the popular but racist imaginary imposed on them. That these alleged "thugs" might meaningfully occupy the position of student, or possess insights crucial to democratic citizenship, is something generally eschewed by school authorities—though the critiques of these youth carry powerful messages about the state of education and nation. One such young person explains:

At school they tell us to bring black history books, and we never use them. We don't do any work in black history [in school]. . . . They only talk about two or three black women, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth . . . and Rosa Parks. . . . They [at school] act like they didn't know anything about any black people. (p. 123)

Many teachers like the ones described above likely fit the description of the enlightened citizen heralded by Parker—meaning that they can detail the Bill of Rights and vote in elections. But there are other kinds of citizens who speak and act from the margins. They, too, can enlighten us and teach us more than a thing or two about the precarious foundation of the "democracy" in which we live.

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Schlesinger, A. (1992). The disuniting of America: Reflections on a multicultural society. New York: W. W. Norton.

Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Simon, K. G. (2001). Moral questions in the classroom: How to get kids to think deeply about real life and their schoolwork. New Haven: Yale University Press.

About the Reviewer

Kristen L. Buras is a doctoral candidate and Wisconsin-Spencer Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is interested in the cultural politics of curriculum and reform. Her research on the Core Knowledge Movement has been published in Harvard Educational Review (1999) and will also appear in a book she is co-editing with Michael Apple entitled The Subaltern Speak: Curriculum, Power, and Educational Struggle (forthcoming, RoutledgeFalmer).

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