Session Information
23 SES 08 A, Education as a Site of Struggle: Discourse and Subjectivity
Paper Session
Contribution
“Goetsch in die Primatenschule!”[1] So read the slogan on a sign – held by a 6-year-old child – at a fall 2009 protest against a planned school reform measure in Hamburg. The protest was organized by Wir Wollen Lernen!, now called Besseres Lernen.[2] This citizens’ network formed in 2008 to oppose to the reform measure as designed and advocated by Christa Goetsch, until 2010 Hamburg’s education minister. In fact, since the protest that fall, the network sponsored and won a ballot initiative to block a key provision of the reform.
At one level, the research reported here begins to construct a living history of this contested policy reform and to draw out lessons for education reform in other multilingual, multicultural urban contexts. At another, however, the research that informs this paper unpacks the uses and abuses of race, class and language in the construction – and in this case, obstruction – of education reform.
To be sure, efforts at school reform in Hamburg flow directly from a general anxiety in Germany confirmed by three rounds of PISA exams: that educational attainment in Germany is a function of one’s social and/or linguistic background.[3] This anxiety appears in many social contexts, including the media, political discourse and public opinion.[4]
In fact, official Hamburg policy documents[6] began to make the connection between the intended reforms and the needs of German language learners.[7] And with good reason: well over 30% of incoming 1st-graders are either bilingual or monolingual in a non-German language; German language learners repeat a grade at disproportionately high rates; they are grouped at disproportionately high rates in the vocational and basic secondary institutions; and they leave school without qualifications at disproportionately high rates.[8]
The fallout from this effort at urban education reform is a process still unfolding; as such, the research reported here is by definition exploratory and interpretive. The following questions guide this analysis:
- How do policy actors understand the planned reform measure in terms of their perceptions of its motives, goals and dis/advantages for Hamburg’s school children?
- How and to what extent do these interpretations come into conflict with one another?
- What are the implications of this potential conflict for education reform in other multilingual urban contexts?
Here, I frame my analysis of this contested policy reform with Jane Hill’s notion of language panics. For Hill, language panics emerge from social conflicts that present as questions of language use in society, in this case at school. However, they in fact employ a highly racialized discourse that targets minoritized communities as a threat. That a 6-year-old child held a sign advocating that Goetsch be sent to the “primate school” – a new school form meant to integrate multiethnic Hamburg for two additional years of primary schooling – is one indication of how this panic manifested.
[1] Send Goetsch to primate school!
[2] We Want to Learn, now known as Better Learning
[3] Baumert, Stanat, & Watermann, 2006
[4] c.f. Institut tns Emnid, 2008; Krupa, 2009; Leffers, 2009; Menke, 2008; Otto, 2009
[6] see Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung, 2009
[7] SchülerInnen mit “Migrationshinweis” nach der Hamburger Begrifflichkeit
[8] Arlt et al., 2009
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Arlt, S., Bange, D., Beck, K-F., Doose, C.-H., Eichelbauer, C., Fickermann, D., Jacobi, J., Kammigan, I., Krätzschmar, M., May, P., Meier, R., Pietsch, M., Scholz, J., Wolff, J. (2009). Bildungsbericht Hamburg. Hamburg: Behörde für Schule und Berufsausbildung. Retrieved July 16, 2009 from http://schulreform.hamburg.de/. Baumert, J., Stanat, P., &Watermann, R. (2006). Herkunftsbedingte Disparitäten im Bildungswesen: Vertiefende Analysen im Rahmen von PISA 2000. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwisseschaften. Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung. (2009). Schulentwicklungsplan für die staatlichen Primarschulen,Stadtteilschulen und Gymnasien in Hamburg 2010-2017. Hamburg: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg. Retrieved July 14, 2009 from http://schulreform.hamburg.de. Hill, J. H. (2001). The racializing function of language panics. In R. D. González & I. Melis (Eds.), Language ideologies: Critical perspectives on the Official English movement (Vol. 2) (pp. 245-267). Urbana, IL and Mahwah, NJ: National Council of Teachers of English and Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. Institut tns Emnid. (2008). Integration durch Bildung: Ergebnisse einer repräsentativen Bevölkerungsbefragung in Deutschland. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung. Retrieved July 20, 2009 from www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/.../xcms_bst_dms_25183_25184_2.pdf. Krupa, M. (2009, April 23). Gucci-Protest. Die Zeit. Retrieved July 15, 2009 from http://www.zeit.de/2009/18/Lsp-Schulreform. Leffers, J. (2009, January 7). Sägen an der Schulreform. Der Spiegel. Retrieved July 15, 2009 from http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/wissen/0,1518,599904,00.html. Marshall, C. & Rossman, G. B. (1999). Designing qualitative research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Menke, B. (2008, October 10). Spiegel-Interview: “Wir müssen die Selektion der Zehnjährigen überwinden”. Der Spiegel. Retrieved July 15 from http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/wissen/0,1518,582794,00.html. Otto, J. (2009, March 12). Schwarz-grüner Sprengstoff. Die Zeit. Retrieved July 15, 2009 from http://www.zeit.de/2009/12/C-Schulreform. Yanow, D. (2000). Conducting interpretive policy analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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