"Our" Schools

This paragraph from Teachers & Texts by Michael Apple struck a major chord with me:

"...we continually find references to a particular concept -- our. It is 'our' country, 'our' school system, 'our' democratic society. It is in this very construction that a danger resides. For the repeated use of 'our' covers the reality of relations that are structurally unequal - relations that are not due to education and will not be solved by them."

I work at an innovative, project-based charter school in Minnesota. It is run by a teacher cooperative, and the students have a lot of freedom over their own learning as well as the structure of the school. Yet in this admittedly quirky microcosm of the education system, I see this very same construction of 'our' (or 'their', as this case may be) play out almost daily. Students are told that this is 'their' school, expected to be self directed in order to foster 'their' success, and disciplined using restorative justice based on what is deemed to be best for 'our' community. For a lot of students, this works really great. But for many others, there seems to be a serious cognitive dissonance between what the schools stated ideals are and the reality of certain students life experiences and situations. Not surprisingly, these are our at-risk students; the ones who have bounced between a dozen+ schools in their young lives (some have been to three different schools just this year), who have unstable and often tragic home situations, who have never had anyone make sure that they get dinner much less a bedtime story. It's not hard to see that for a 15 year old (or 12, or 18, etc.) with that kind of life experience under their belt, getting invested in any notion of "community" is not at the top of the list of priorities. They are just trying to survive; they don't have the time or skills or resources to figure out how to thrive. It is a really frustrating dynamic. I know and like and respect the majority of the teachers at the school, and I know they are all social justice minded teachers who don't want any kids to slip between the cracks. But I definitely think there's more than a little ignorance of what it really takes to keep certain kids from slipping through the cracks.

If I see this dynamic playing out even in just my little school with its foundational commitment to community, I have to believe that large institutions without such a core commitment very easily lose sight of what the word our really truly means.