CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTER PROPOSALS

Understanding The Myths of Educational Reforms: Responding to the
Political and Corporate Takeover of Education

Co-edited by Arthur T Costigan (arthurtcostigan@gmail.com) & Leslee
Grey, Queens College, The City University of New York
(leslee.grey@qc.cuny.edu)

We are inviting chapter submissions for a proposed book which
critically analyzes the current discourse o
f contemporary educational reforms in the United States and other
countries today, and which points the way to real improvements in
education.

Our volume is centered on the idea that the discourses of educational
reform have become mythologized. Such common myths are: Schools are
responsible for creating the nation’s economic competitiveness; there
are massive numbers of deficient teachers; more testing creates better
learning; competition, corporatization, and privatization are worthy
goals; and, education is solely an act of teachers’ and students’
individual willpower and personal initiative.

As with the political myths of Willie Horton, the Cadillac-driving
Welfare mother, and Obama’s birth certificate, educational myths are
the commonly accepted statements, stories, or beliefs which coalesce
and unify a perceived reality, and reduce or eliminate the need for
the effort of critical analysis. These commonsense myths serve the
reformers’ own cultural, economic, and political values and
ideologies, such as neoconservatism, neoliberalism, and corporatism,
rather than addressing the actual social, political, economic, and
educational realities of teaching and learning in the United States
and other English-speaking countries today.

Such myths have become a normative, a commonsense, and implicit part
of the language of educational reform. The co-editors are critical of
these understandings and seek to publish a volume that examines these
problematic beliefs and which sets out an educational agenda more
grounded in contemporary social, economic, and educational realities.

We envision an edited volume that addresses the following questions:

1. What are the myths, belief systems, or worldviews, of educational
reform? What is behind, and what drives, the seemingly commonsense
discourses of educational reforms? Where did these beliefs come from?
Whose interests do they serve? What values are promulgated through
these reforms? What sustains this type of thinking? What it its
future?

2. What is the relationship of these myths, or these commonsensical
understandings, to the actual social, cultural, and economic realities
of the United States today? How are these myths, or thought processes,
beneficial or harmful to improving education?

3. What improvements can be made to this conversation about education
reform in order that these discourses are congruent with the
political, economic, and social realities of life in the United States
today?

The Editors conceive of this book as a focus on the current landscape
of educational reforms which balance:

1. Research into the current realities and implementation of educational reforms
2. Analysis of theoretical and conceptual frameworks of thinking about
educational reforms
3. Synthesis of trends and possibilities which can be understood by
both the education professional and the educated lay reader.
4. Suggestions for specific ways to better ways to frame the discourse
and to point ways towards authentic educational reform.

If you are interested in contributing a chapter to our proposed
volume, send a one-page single spaced synopsis of chapter theme,
content, and or focus by January 1, 2012. Submission of a synopsis
does not guarantee publication. Include references in APA 6th edition
format, if possible. Our goal is for authors to complete their
chapters and submit them for selection by the editors by May 1, 2013.

Listed below our contact information are some suggested themes and
topics for individual chapters. These are suggestions and the editors
welcome further approaches to understanding the educational reforms.

If you are interested, please send an email to both co-editors.

Possible Topics for Chapters

• The myths of corporatocracy. Understanding the “neoliberal” in
educational reforms. Myths about market-based school reform. The myth
that corporations know best and provide the best means for improving
education.

• The myth of meritocracy. The myth of the power of individual
initiative and willpower independent of social and economic
conditions. The “American Dream” and school reform. Myths about school
competition. Myths about privatization and charter schools. Myths
about unions and collective bargaining.

• Myths of development. Psychological myths. Myths of childhood and
how they affect schooling policies and practices. Myths about young
people, pre-adolescent, adolescent, or middle and high school
students, including those labeled “at risk.”

• Myths about the curriculum. The persistent myth that testing equals
knowledge. The narrowing of the curriculum and the impoverishment of
pedagogy. The perennial call for “back to basics.” The myth that
controversial topics should be kept out of the classroom. Myths about
the effectiveness of standards, rubrics, testing, and accountability
systems. Myths about high stakes tests.

• Myths about students and Learning. Myths about tracking students,
testing, standards-based instruction, scripted lessons, and a “teacher
proof” curriculum. The myth that teaching is easy. The myths that the
corporation-“expert” knows best. Myths about the individual’s personal
power and initiative for school success which ignores the social,
economic, an cultural contexts.

• Myths about teachers and teaching. Myths that teachers are defective
or deficient and are in need of help from the private sector. Myths
about rewarding and punishing teachers. Myths about why people go into
teaching and leave teaching. Myths about the culture of corporatized
management systems. Myths about standards and accountability. Myths
that teachers and students must constantly subjected to surveillance.

• Myths about diversity. Myths about equal access to education, and
“all children can succeed.” Myths about the obsolescence of
multiculturalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and inequality in
society and schools. Myths of disabilities, “dumbing-down” schooling,
and the labeling of students. Myths about gender, sexuality and sexual
orientation.