The Production of Schoolchildren as Enlightenment Subjects (original) (raw)

2017, American Educational Research Journal

This article investigates children's elementary school experiences, exploring how they become autonomous, rational individuals-the type of person envisioned in the European Enlightenment and generally imagined as the outcome of Western schooling. Drawing on ethnographic research that followed one cohort of Latinx children across five years, we examine how schooling practices change across the elementary school years in a context that foregrounds high-stakes testing. We describe how practices that focus heavily on testing mold children into autonomous, rational individuals while marginalizing those who don't fit this model. Adhering to these practices and naturalizing the Enlightenment subject limits educators' ability to serve students who resist the normative practices of schooling. HOLLY LINK, PhD, is director of educational programming and research at RevoluciĆ³n. Link is also an educational consultant in the fields of English as a Second Language and dual-language education. At RevoluciĆ³n Arte, she is developing a participatory research center for young people and adults from Latinx immigrant backgrounds through which they can promote social transformation and inform public policy. SARAH GALLO, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University. Her research draws on ethnographic and linguistic anthropological tools to promote school-based learning that better recognizes and builds on young children's mobile and heterogeneous resources in the United States and Mexico. STANTON E. F. WORTHAM, PhD, is the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School of Education of Boston College. A linguistic anthropologist with expertise in how identities develop in human interactions, Wortham has conducted research spanning education, anthropology, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and philosophy. He is the author or editor of nine books and more than 80 articles and chapters that cover a range of topics, including linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, ''learning identity'' (how social identification and academic learning interconnect), and Mexican immigration to the United States.