Schools as sorting machines and the imperative of reform

In this review of Kaustuv Roy's (2003) Teachers in Nomadic Spaces: Deleuze and Curriculum I outline the significance of the work of Gilles Deleuze to education policy debates in British Columbia. After describing Roy's Deleuzian approach to curricular practice, I situate Roy's approach within a field of Deleuze-o-Guattarian-inspired education studies. In summary, I argue that Roy's text can serve as a vehicle for re-conceptualizing educational encounters, the lives of teachers, and curricular policy.

The 2014/2015 school year had a rocky start in British Columbia, Canada, where teachers finished the 2013/2014 school year locked out and on strike. Naomi Klein’s notion of shock doctrines provides a lens for understanding this struggle over public services. In this paper I analyze the contexts that drove BC's teachers to reject shock therapy and highlight the tactics used to cultivate shock resistance in BC. This clash of private and public values can be extended and adapted to other contexts to cultivate broad popular support for public education.

Keywords: Education Policy Implementation, Inclusive education, class composition, wicked problems, systems thinking, organizational learning

2013

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, 2010

Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver school trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the Vancouver School Board criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in BC reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. British Columbia is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world, but fortunately it is also a place to look for models of mass resistance to the neoliberal agenda. One of the most important examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade is the British Columbia teachers' 2005 strike, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest.

Critical Education, 2014

Public education in British Columbia is experiencing a protracted ‘crisis’. Teachers and the provincial government appear to be locked into a game of brinkmanship, and students’ unmet needs are at risk of being obscured by the fray. By extending Naomi Klein’s analysis of shock doctrines, I show how this impasse is not accidental and, in fact, acts as a means of enabling “orchestrated raids on the public sphere” to undermine public education in the province.

Cultural Logic, 2014

2013

Comparative and International Education: A Diversity of Voices aims to provide a comprehensive range of titles, making available to readers work from across the comparative and international education research community. Authors will represent as broad a range of voices as possible, from geographic, cultural and ideological standpoints. The editors are making a conscious effort to disseminate the work of newer scholars as well as that of well-established writers.The series includes authored books and edited works focusing upon current issues and controversies in a field that is undergoing changes as profound as the geopolitical and economic forces that are reshaping our worlds.The series aims to provide books which present new work, in which the range of methodologies associated with comparative education and international education are both exemplified and opened up for debate. As the series develops, it is intended that new writers from settings and locations not frequently part of the English language discourse will find a place in the list.