Kevin D. Vinson - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Kevin D. Vinson
Dangerous Counterstories in the Corporate Academy, 2013
A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
Journal for Critical Educational Policy Studies, 2007
: "The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. W... more : "The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are concerned about questions like these: How can we teach against racism, national chauvinism and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals and still teach--or learn? Whose interests shall school serve in a society that is ever more unequal? We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what that is. We seek to build a caring inclusive community which understands that an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless." This article briefly describes the theory and practice of the Rouge Forum's last decade. In practice, the Rouge Forum's activists led mass boycotts against high-stakes standardized exams in the U.S., helped lead sanctioned and wildcat teacher and student strikes and walk-outs against the tests and military recruitment, and operated effectively inside
Contesting Neoliberal Education: Public Resistance and Collective Advance , 2009
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people... more Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves . . . (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.
Public Resistance, May 1, 2005
The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity i... more The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity in the Bush administration's reckless revival of naked imperialism in Iraq belies the fact that investigative journalism in the mainstream press died in the 1970s. The corporatization of the media that reduced reporting to regurgitating the official statements of politicians and their trained handlers, of course, began much earlier. While Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism reveals the extremes to which private and state power will go in colluding to control the public mind, many of us on the left have always been aware of the corporate media's propaganda role in advancing the interests of the state and private power.
Critical Civic Literacy, 2011
Critical issues in social studies research …, Jan 1, 2001
Progressive Perspectives, 2001
Cultural Logic, 2000
In this paper the authors pursue the evolving relationships between Foucauldian understandings of... more In this paper the authors pursue the evolving relationships between Foucauldian understandings of "surveillance" and Debordian notions of "spectacle." Using the contemporary commitment to standards-based educational reform (SBER), they address the following questions: (1) To what extent might contemporary K-12 education be understood in terms of a "blending" of surveillance and spectacle? To what benefits? (2) Within what contexts and via what mechanisms does this merging occur? (3) What are the potential practical consequences of this arrangement? and (4) How might SBER (as a case study) illuminate the fusion of surveillance and spectacle in terms of cause(s), effect(s), context(s), mechanism(s), consequence(s), critique(s), and resistance(s)?
Education as Enforcement (2nd Edition), 2011
Within the convergence of surveillance and spectacle high-stakes testing functions as a mechanism... more Within the convergence of surveillance and spectacle high-stakes testing functions as a mechanism of enforcement, proceeding as a matter both of control by images and control of images, a circularity in which power is an effect of image and image is an effect of power—image-power or power-image. Certain dominant images, established and maintained by elite educational managers, force a disciplinary and antidemocratic conformity on the part of (among others) teachers, students, and schools toward the interests of the (same) wealthy and powerful minority who sanction the contents, policies, procedures, and consequences of high-stakes testing in the first place. Those who control images produce images that control—power produces (and maintains and reinforces) images, images produce (and maintain and reinforce) power—all in their own power-laden interests. We offer the practices of dérive and détournement not as absolutes or final statements, but as quotidian and incremental praxis, a tentative set of steps toward reestablishing the place of living and authenticity as against alienation, passivity, antidemocracy, conformity, and injustice. For in the end, high-stakes testing is not the whole story but merely a piece of the bigger story, one in which we and our children are author and character, subject and object, player and played on. Perhaps this is our true test. If so, then the stakes are high indeed.
![Research paper thumbnail of A Justiça Social Exige uma Revolução do Quotidiano [book chapter]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/32287259/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Reinventar a Pedagogia Critica , 2005
O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstácu... more O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstáculos que se colocam a uma sociedade mais “justa” e o que é necessário fazer para os superar. O texto debate o significado do que vem a ser justiça social e como ela pode ser obtida no quotidiano. Para isso o texto advoga a necessidade de uma revolução do quotidiano que altere as relações de alienação e opressão promovidas pelo poder.
Education as Enforcement, 2003
Increasingly today conceptualizations of public schooling rest upon the influence of dominant and... more Increasingly today conceptualizations of public schooling rest upon the influence of dominant and dominating images rather than on more authentic understandings of the complex realities of classroom life. We create our interpretations of what is, what was, and what should be based on what is presented within the mainstream "news" media and what we see in the movies and on television. This especially holds true in the ever more powerful contemporary social/cultural/political/economic/pedagogical settings of standards-based educational reform, 1 most clearly, perhaps, within the current move toward high-stakes standardized testing, a regime in which both the cultural knowledge and the behavior of students, teachers, administrators, parents, classrooms, schools, and districts are not only (in)validated but also disciplined. Simply, the convergence of a number of phenomena related to image and high-stakes testing, including various means by which scholars might seek critical and practical insight, the mechanisms by which image and high-stakes testing both reflect and are reflected by societal circumstances, the enforcing consequences of such actualities, and the techniques by which both might be resisted define the scope of this chapter's efforts.
Contemporary Social Studies: A Reader, 2012
""Making sense of contemporary US social studies education means making sense of it within the pr... more ""Making sense of contemporary US social studies education means making sense of it within the prevailing contexts of standards-based educational reform (SBER). Although so¬cial studies has yet, generally speaking, to be as standards- and test-driven as reading, mathematics, and science, it still functions within a dominant and dominating setting characte-rized across the country by myriad content and curriculum standards documents and wide-spread high-stakes testing on the state and local levels.
In this chapter we explore social studies education and SBER from a variety of perspectives and on a variety of levels. We begin by over/reviewing the nature and meaning of SBER, defining the term, for example, and briefly introducing its recent history, particularly vis-à-vis national public school policy work and the work of those national commissions and “blue ribbon” panels that influenced its development and evolution (e.g., The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s 1983 publication A National at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform) and legislation such as the President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and President Obama’s “Race to the Top.” Second, we frame social studies education itself within the larger milieu of SBER, focusing primarily upon the curriculum standards work of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). We consider here the creation and influence of such significant documents as Charting a Course and Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Third, we introduce and explicate the continuing debate surrounding social studies education and SBER, first with respect to the widely publicized debate over National History Standards and second with respect to more recent NCLB-inspired critique. We present, of course, both the pro-SBER and anti-SBER perspectives. And fourth, we situate the present status of social studies education in terms of SBER. We conclude by considering the “big picture” of what all of this might mean for contemporary and future social studies education, particularly in terms of purpose, curriculum, instruction, teaching methodologies, assessment, teacher education, and policymaking.""
International Journal of Society, Culture and Language (formerly Iranian Journal of Society, Culture and Language), Aug 28, 2013
In this paper we set out to accomplish several goals. Primarily, we seek to re-interpret Guy Debo... more In this paper we set out to accomplish several goals. Primarily, we seek to re-interpret Guy Debord’s (1967) work The Society of the Spectacle in light of modern-day schooling, principally within North America (although we recognize the global connectivity inherent in any current discussion of formal education). In addition, we aim to utilize Debord’s conceptualizations as a series of means and mechanisms by and through which to examine (1) various threats posed against the ideals of publicly supported schools and (2) modes of resistance, particularly what we term “dangerous citizenship,” via which committed advocates might challenge the possible consequences of such threats, consequences including disciplinarity/deterrence, anti-democracy, oppression, anti-collectivity, and inauthenticity.
Reinventing Critical Pedagogy, 2006
![Research paper thumbnail of A justiça social exige uma revolução do quotidiano [journal article]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/32287263/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Curriculo sem Fronteiras: A Journal for Critical and Emancipatory Education, 2005
O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstácu... more O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstáculos que se colocam a uma sociedade mais "justa" e o que é necessário fazer para os superar. O texto debate o significado do que vem a ser justiça social e como ela pode ser obtida no quotidiano. Para isso o texto advoga a necessidade de uma revolução do quotidiano que altere as relações de alienação e opressão promovidas pelo poder.
Antiquity had been a civilization of spectacle. "To render accessible to a multitude of men fsicj... more Antiquity had been a civilization of spectacle. "To render accessible to a multitude of men fsicj the inspection of a small number of objects" (italics added): this was the problem to which the architecture of temples, theaters, and circuses responded. With spectacle, there was a predominance of public life, the intensity of festivals, sensual proximity. In these rituals in which blood flowed, society found new vigour and formed for a moment a single great body. The modern age poses the opposite problem: "To procure for a small number, or even for a single individual, the instantaneous view of a great multitude" (italics added). In a society in which the principal elements are no longer the community and public life, but, on the one hand, private individuals and, on the other, the state.
Dangerous Counterstories in the Corporate Academy, 2013
A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
Journal for Critical Educational Policy Studies, 2007
: "The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. W... more : "The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are concerned about questions like these: How can we teach against racism, national chauvinism and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals and still teach--or learn? Whose interests shall school serve in a society that is ever more unequal? We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what that is. We seek to build a caring inclusive community which understands that an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless." This article briefly describes the theory and practice of the Rouge Forum's last decade. In practice, the Rouge Forum's activists led mass boycotts against high-stakes standardized exams in the U.S., helped lead sanctioned and wildcat teacher and student strikes and walk-outs against the tests and military recruitment, and operated effectively inside
Contesting Neoliberal Education: Public Resistance and Collective Advance , 2009
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people... more Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves . . . (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.
Public Resistance, May 1, 2005
The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity i... more The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity in the Bush administration's reckless revival of naked imperialism in Iraq belies the fact that investigative journalism in the mainstream press died in the 1970s. The corporatization of the media that reduced reporting to regurgitating the official statements of politicians and their trained handlers, of course, began much earlier. While Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism reveals the extremes to which private and state power will go in colluding to control the public mind, many of us on the left have always been aware of the corporate media's propaganda role in advancing the interests of the state and private power.
Critical Civic Literacy, 2011
Critical issues in social studies research …, Jan 1, 2001
Progressive Perspectives, 2001
Cultural Logic, 2000
In this paper the authors pursue the evolving relationships between Foucauldian understandings of... more In this paper the authors pursue the evolving relationships between Foucauldian understandings of "surveillance" and Debordian notions of "spectacle." Using the contemporary commitment to standards-based educational reform (SBER), they address the following questions: (1) To what extent might contemporary K-12 education be understood in terms of a "blending" of surveillance and spectacle? To what benefits? (2) Within what contexts and via what mechanisms does this merging occur? (3) What are the potential practical consequences of this arrangement? and (4) How might SBER (as a case study) illuminate the fusion of surveillance and spectacle in terms of cause(s), effect(s), context(s), mechanism(s), consequence(s), critique(s), and resistance(s)?
Education as Enforcement (2nd Edition), 2011
Within the convergence of surveillance and spectacle high-stakes testing functions as a mechanism... more Within the convergence of surveillance and spectacle high-stakes testing functions as a mechanism of enforcement, proceeding as a matter both of control by images and control of images, a circularity in which power is an effect of image and image is an effect of power—image-power or power-image. Certain dominant images, established and maintained by elite educational managers, force a disciplinary and antidemocratic conformity on the part of (among others) teachers, students, and schools toward the interests of the (same) wealthy and powerful minority who sanction the contents, policies, procedures, and consequences of high-stakes testing in the first place. Those who control images produce images that control—power produces (and maintains and reinforces) images, images produce (and maintain and reinforce) power—all in their own power-laden interests. We offer the practices of dérive and détournement not as absolutes or final statements, but as quotidian and incremental praxis, a tentative set of steps toward reestablishing the place of living and authenticity as against alienation, passivity, antidemocracy, conformity, and injustice. For in the end, high-stakes testing is not the whole story but merely a piece of the bigger story, one in which we and our children are author and character, subject and object, player and played on. Perhaps this is our true test. If so, then the stakes are high indeed.
Reinventar a Pedagogia Critica , 2005
O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstácu... more O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstáculos que se colocam a uma sociedade mais “justa” e o que é necessário fazer para os superar. O texto debate o significado do que vem a ser justiça social e como ela pode ser obtida no quotidiano. Para isso o texto advoga a necessidade de uma revolução do quotidiano que altere as relações de alienação e opressão promovidas pelo poder.
Education as Enforcement, 2003
Increasingly today conceptualizations of public schooling rest upon the influence of dominant and... more Increasingly today conceptualizations of public schooling rest upon the influence of dominant and dominating images rather than on more authentic understandings of the complex realities of classroom life. We create our interpretations of what is, what was, and what should be based on what is presented within the mainstream "news" media and what we see in the movies and on television. This especially holds true in the ever more powerful contemporary social/cultural/political/economic/pedagogical settings of standards-based educational reform, 1 most clearly, perhaps, within the current move toward high-stakes standardized testing, a regime in which both the cultural knowledge and the behavior of students, teachers, administrators, parents, classrooms, schools, and districts are not only (in)validated but also disciplined. Simply, the convergence of a number of phenomena related to image and high-stakes testing, including various means by which scholars might seek critical and practical insight, the mechanisms by which image and high-stakes testing both reflect and are reflected by societal circumstances, the enforcing consequences of such actualities, and the techniques by which both might be resisted define the scope of this chapter's efforts.
Contemporary Social Studies: A Reader, 2012
""Making sense of contemporary US social studies education means making sense of it within the pr... more ""Making sense of contemporary US social studies education means making sense of it within the prevailing contexts of standards-based educational reform (SBER). Although so¬cial studies has yet, generally speaking, to be as standards- and test-driven as reading, mathematics, and science, it still functions within a dominant and dominating setting characte-rized across the country by myriad content and curriculum standards documents and wide-spread high-stakes testing on the state and local levels.
In this chapter we explore social studies education and SBER from a variety of perspectives and on a variety of levels. We begin by over/reviewing the nature and meaning of SBER, defining the term, for example, and briefly introducing its recent history, particularly vis-à-vis national public school policy work and the work of those national commissions and “blue ribbon” panels that influenced its development and evolution (e.g., The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s 1983 publication A National at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform) and legislation such as the President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and President Obama’s “Race to the Top.” Second, we frame social studies education itself within the larger milieu of SBER, focusing primarily upon the curriculum standards work of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). We consider here the creation and influence of such significant documents as Charting a Course and Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Third, we introduce and explicate the continuing debate surrounding social studies education and SBER, first with respect to the widely publicized debate over National History Standards and second with respect to more recent NCLB-inspired critique. We present, of course, both the pro-SBER and anti-SBER perspectives. And fourth, we situate the present status of social studies education in terms of SBER. We conclude by considering the “big picture” of what all of this might mean for contemporary and future social studies education, particularly in terms of purpose, curriculum, instruction, teaching methodologies, assessment, teacher education, and policymaking.""
International Journal of Society, Culture and Language (formerly Iranian Journal of Society, Culture and Language), Aug 28, 2013
In this paper we set out to accomplish several goals. Primarily, we seek to re-interpret Guy Debo... more In this paper we set out to accomplish several goals. Primarily, we seek to re-interpret Guy Debord’s (1967) work The Society of the Spectacle in light of modern-day schooling, principally within North America (although we recognize the global connectivity inherent in any current discussion of formal education). In addition, we aim to utilize Debord’s conceptualizations as a series of means and mechanisms by and through which to examine (1) various threats posed against the ideals of publicly supported schools and (2) modes of resistance, particularly what we term “dangerous citizenship,” via which committed advocates might challenge the possible consequences of such threats, consequences including disciplinarity/deterrence, anti-democracy, oppression, anti-collectivity, and inauthenticity.
Reinventing Critical Pedagogy, 2006
Curriculo sem Fronteiras: A Journal for Critical and Emancipatory Education, 2005
O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstácu... more O presente artigo debate o tema da justiça social, bem como analisa alguns dos principais obstáculos que se colocam a uma sociedade mais "justa" e o que é necessário fazer para os superar. O texto debate o significado do que vem a ser justiça social e como ela pode ser obtida no quotidiano. Para isso o texto advoga a necessidade de uma revolução do quotidiano que altere as relações de alienação e opressão promovidas pelo poder.
Antiquity had been a civilization of spectacle. "To render accessible to a multitude of men fsicj... more Antiquity had been a civilization of spectacle. "To render accessible to a multitude of men fsicj the inspection of a small number of objects" (italics added): this was the problem to which the architecture of temples, theaters, and circuses responded. With spectacle, there was a predominance of public life, the intensity of festivals, sensual proximity. In these rituals in which blood flowed, society found new vigour and formed for a moment a single great body. The modern age poses the opposite problem: "To procure for a small number, or even for a single individual, the instantaneous view of a great multitude" (italics added). In a society in which the principal elements are no longer the community and public life, but, on the one hand, private individuals and, on the other, the state.
Times-Union (Albany, NY), Feb 25, 2001
Lexington Herald-Leader (KY), Oct 29, 2001
Theory and Research in Social Education / Z Magazine, 1999
In 1989, President Bush called the nation's governors together for the first national education s... more In 1989, President Bush called the nation's governors together for the first national education summit. They set goals and tried to develop ways to measure progress, but were stymied by resistance to federal interference in local school decisions. Seven years later, governors and 44 top corporate leaders met at IBM's conference center in Palisades, NY and set up an approach for states to accomplish what had eluded participants in the first summit, namely defining what should be taught in local schools and enforcing curriculum standardization through state mandated tests-what is called the "standards movement."
The Rouge Forum News, 2009
Educational Studies, 2004
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, with... more All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: t/k ISBN: 0-275-98295-5 (set) 0-275-98296-3 (vol. I) 0-275-98297-1 (vol. II) 0-275-98298-X (vol. III) 0-275-98299-8 (vol. IV)
Defending Public Schools addresses the historical, current, and future context of public educatio... more Defending Public Schools addresses the historical, current, and future context of public education in the United States. While the essays provide an overview of education and schooling issues, the overarching concern is that public schools are under attack and deserve to be defended. Since 80% of America's student-aged population attend public schools, a fair and balanced look at a school system that has educated and continues to educate a population that is diverse in every way possible, is sorely needed. It can be said that a national school system has never had to educate so many young people through secondary school with mastery of so much information. While no one rejects the necessity of school reform to meet contemporary needs, the question of how to achieve the greatest good for the greatest numbers remains for thousand of schools across the nation. Defending Public Schools is a practical, necessary addition to the work of administrators, teachers, policy makers, and parents as they negotiate the difficult path of how to best teach and educate today's children and youth.
One point—if not the point—of this book is to defend public schools against the vast array of cur... more One point—if not the point—of this book is to defend public schools against the vast array of current criticism—from both the Right and the Left—and whether or not there are any real, meaningful differences (at least between traditional conservatives and liberals) in their various complaints and their variously construed and effected results. As such, the chapters in the volume address a multiple range of contemporary concerns relative to American public schooling and education.
Defending Public Schools: Curriculum and the Challenge of Change aims to support public schools specifically with respect to the curriculum as it exists, and could or should exist, today. Although critical, the authors here generally indeed are critical principally via the conditions and limitations imposed on schooling by those who control its complex and power-laden (post)modern functionings (e.g., governments, corporations), and not of public schooling—overarchingly—and/or its underlying and productive ideals per se. That is, although we know, of course, that not all teachers are good teachers and not all the curricular and instructional decisions they make are good decisions, we still support their continuing and remarkable efforts—as well as those of parents, students, and administrators—especially as they strive to do their very and underappreciated best under frequently less than optimal, and/or even less than supportive, circumstances (to say, in our view, the least).
To this end, each chapter included in this volume incorporates a number of related ideas and addresses several connected and timely themes. The authors all, for instance, offer a critique of the contemporary state of public schooling. While, initially, this might seem rather incompatible or inconsistent with the goal of defending public schools, in fact it really is not. For in each case the authors advance a discussion of both positive and negative characteristics, and do so with the knowledge and optimism that education—particularly the curriculum—can, and should, be better. Certainly we—teachers, our children, and society at large—deserve nothing less.
Image and Education: Teaching in the Face of the New Disciplinarity explores the importance of th... more Image and Education: Teaching in the Face of the New Disciplinarity explores the importance of the visual image in contemporary education. Kevin D. Vinson and E. Wayne Ross draw on a range of (post)disciplinary traditions, including the study of visual culture, cultural studies, media studies, and film studies, as well as an array of significant thinkers, such as Michel Foucault, Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard, Marshall McLuhan, Roland Barthes, Mikhail Bahktin, and Daniel Boorstin. The authors take on the surveillance-based and spectacular conditions of (post)modern schools and society and pursue not only a radical critique of the disciplinary gaze, but also the means by which teachers, students, and other interested stakeholders might resist its various conformative, anti-democratic, anti-collective, and oppressive potentialities.
Social studies have a contentious history as a school subject and this article begins with an ove... more Social studies have a contentious history as a school subject and this article begins with an overview of the historically competing viewpoints on the nature and purposes of social studies education in the North American context. Next, we provide a critical examination of recent educational reforms in the USA (No Child Left Behind and Common Core State Standards), which use high-stakes testing as a tool for standardizing the social studies curriculum and teaching methods. The final section of the article examines both the significant levels of resistance to high-stakes testing and curriculum standardization by students, teachers, and the public and the question of whether social studies education will promote citizenship that is adaptive to the status quo or the reconstruction society in more equitable and socially just ways.