The SCRC is interested in building partnerships and collaborations with those in the educational community. If one look at the current discussion about public education, and how to “fix” our schools (e.g., we need more standards, we need more evaluations, testing is damaging education, the teacher needs to have a greater role), one quickly realizes that these are simply technical or practical solutions being proposed by various interest groups.
By and large, these “solutions” or “fixes” emanate from an ideology where education is viewed as a process of making humans into better workers. The underlying assumption is that our schools’ principle mission is to create an “educated” workforce and every “reform” should be judged against this overarching outcome. To view the goal and purpose of public education in this way, only allows space for a narrow set of parameters to discuss the educational process and its critical role as a public institution in our democracy.
In this section, we hope to provide a dialogue process that engages educational activists and institutions who are interested in using participatory methods to inform the current national discourse around education.
