Pesquisador consagrado no campo das políticas educativas e do Currículo, Michael Apple tem sido uma voz alternativa no debate educativo contemporâneo, como bem se pode constatar na entrevista a seguir.
Apple: um conselho aos professores
Michael
Apple is a professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy at
the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has written extensively on the state
of education in the US, deconstructing what knowledge is, what we are teaching
our students, and how it is that we make meaning. His contributions include
helping teachers learn how to confront issues in education, how to question
knowledge, what knowledge is, and bringing to light the "hidden
curriculum" in classrooms. He has published a vast compilation of books,
articles and essays, all of them encouraging educators and students alike to
question the dominant power and to wonder about how their knowledge came to be
legitimated.
Prof Apple, you are
considered to be at the forefront of progressive education. What would you say,
in a word, is your desire for teachers?
Resistance. Resistance represents everything that I want teachers to embody.
This does not mean that I want teachers to all be revolutionaries—what it means
is that I want teachers to question the power dynamics in which they have been
placed, and the race and gender relations of which they are a part. For too
long, our society has been focused on complaining about teachers’ resistance to
administrative and educational change. I think we should celebrate and
encourage this resistance. Resist the dominant paradigm in society, which is
based in an antiquated patriarchal system, and teach your students to resist
and question as well.
What are the foremost
issues in education, in your mind?
One of the most important issues to me is looking at how knowledge is created.
Language, which is the primary means by which we make meaning, is
context-specific, and is inundated with power relations. We need to question
how language is created, and how it then creates knowledge.
The most important question we can ask of education is, Whose knowledge is
considered legitimate? How do we know? Who controls the collection and
distribution of knowledge? How is that collection and distribution linked to
the unequal distribution of wealth? How will this knowledge be made accessible
to students? How can we make this knowledge meaningful to students? These are
some of the questions at the forefront of my mind. (www.perfectfit.org)
You said, in your article, Cultural Capital and Official
Knowledge, that “I want us to think of knowledge as a form of capital. Just
as economic institutions are organized (and sometimes disorganized) so that
particular classes and class fractions increase their share of economic
capital, cultural institutions such as universities seem to do the same thing.”
What did you mean by that? (fromwww.perfectfit.org)
I want teachers and students alike to realize that education, like economic
units, is a commodity, and we need to understand how it is that we distribute
it. If we don’t acknowledge the commodified way in which we distribute
education unequally, we will never be able to change it, and allow equal access
to education for all students.
How would you describe education in general? How does that shape what you
think we should change about education?
I think of education as a connection of economy, politics and culture.
Textbooks, for example, which shape our curriculum in large part, represent
what powerful groups have deemed as legitimate knowledge. Our curricula are the
result of hegemonic and counter hegemonic movement. And, the more that we
acknowledge that textbooks and curriculum are subject to multiple readings and
interpretations, are a circuit of cultural production, the more we will be able
to work with students to look for what they think is legitimate and meaningful
knowledge, and not just take everything we read and see at face value.
Everything, especially knowledge, is full of cultural contexts, of which we
will probably never be fully aware; but the more we question this context and
bring them to light, the better we will be able to provide our students with a
quality education. (Apple, 1996)
What is one way that educators can work to bring the ways in which we deem
knowledge as legitimate to light?
Critical discourse analysis is one way that I have found legitimacy in
questioning where knowledge comes from, and whose knowledge is legitimate.
Language has a role in producing meaning, and it always has a social context.
The dominant discourse is a product of historical synthesis of events, social
formation and culture, and it looks organic, but is often a result of the
forces of society. We need to be careful and aware of these forces. Critical
discourse analysis has as its goal to destabilize authoritative discourse, and
to generate agency. This means giving teachers and students the tools to allow them
to see texts as embodiments of particular representations of social and natural
world, and of particular interests. It is all about resisting what we see,
questioning its origins, and creating new knowledge and ways of knowing.
(Apple, 1996)
What do you predict to be the future of education in the US?
I am optimistic in some ways, and pessimistic in others. For example, I am not
optimistic about the future of urban schools. I see their curriculum becoming
more rigid, and less updated. This will become even truer as teachers are faced
with having to do more and more work for less pay. The stress on teachers is
incredible. This unequal distribution of benefits among teachers reflects the
unequal distribution of wealth in larger society.
Teachers will also have to justify what they are
teaching more and more, as ideologically-based groups try to push their own
agenda in schools. This will only add to the stress that they face. This is
part of the larger argument of what basic content should be taught in schools.
However, more importantly, teachers are being told to focus more on how they teach, rather than on whatthey teach. Methods are trumping content, and this is
dangerous. Without more of a focus on what they are teaching, teachers will have a hard time
defending what they are teaching.
I hope that schools will continue to move away
from a tracking system, and more toward a system that allows students to
identify their strengths, and which provides teachers and personnel to help
them develop those strengths. However, with the shortage in personnel growing
greater all the time, it is unlikely that schools will be able to give much
individual attention to students.
These fiscal constraints are having a profound
impact on available resources for students. For one thing, as resources
decline, there will be an accompanying decline in curriculum alternatives.
Textbooks will get more and more outdated. This trend will be more obvious
among poorer schools, and this will serve to increase the disparity between what
privileged students will learn and what underprivileged students will learn. In
short, without an increase in funding, without more attention paid to
curriculum, students will continue to get the short end of the stick in
education.
Additionally, curriculum is becoming more and
more standardized, and teachers are losing control over what they are allowed
and expected to teach. My fear is that as teachers use fewer of the skills that
they have learned over the years, those skills will atrophy and be forgotten.
They may begin to feel alienated from what they are teaching, which will lead
to atrophy and burnout. This needs to be addressed.
Some of
Apple’s Contributions to Education
Michael Apple has traveled extensively all over the world, bringing his message
of education reform to anyone who wanted to hear it. He has also spent time in
Africa, keeping schools whose status as an open school was threatened by
government closure. He has taught in secondary as well as elementary schools,
and has conducted studies of schools from the kindergarten level all the way to
the university level. In these studies he looks primarily at the role of
pre-determined curriculum, textbooks and knowledge determination on teachers
and their classrooms. His concern is primarily for teachers, and for how they
can move beyond the gendered, classed and politicized roles in the classroom.
Apple is also concerned with a return to conservative values, and with the
conservative ilk that is now presenting itself more and more in schools. This
concerns him because of a spiral of conditions that are presenting themselves.
First, teachers are becoming more strapped for time, and are earning less and
less money. This puts a strain on them in many ways, not the least of which is
that they will have less time to spend on developing their own curriculum.
Curriculum will become more and more standardized, and teachers will lose
motivation to create original, engaging lessons. At the same time,
conservatives who have political power will begin to demand more and more that
teachers teach to their agenda, and that teachers justify what they are
teaching. In short, the pressure will become too much for teachers, who have
been taught in teacher school to focus more on methods, and less on content,
and will not be able to defend their curriculum choices. In turn, they will
burn out and either quit, or continue teaching without engagement. This is
Apple’s worst nightmare.
The name of the game for Apple is resistance. Resisting cultural norms,
resisting curriculum that was created without thought or question, resisting
the urge to make things easy and painless. Without resistance, Apple argues,
education will be on a steep decline.
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