What is Enough (to achieve lasting change)?

What is Enough (to achieve lasting change)?

As many social studies and history teachers can attest, a significant portion of our profession consists of the surveying of struggle and progress, both domestically and internationally. From the Peloponnesian War in Greece in 431 BCE, to the Industrial Revolution within the western world in late 1700s; from the catastrophic ramifications endured by Africa resulting from the Berlin Conference in the 1880s, to the Michael Brown (2014), Brianna Taylor and George Floyd protests (both in 2020), discussing conflict and how societies emerge from them are central elements of our practice. That said, in my honest thoughts, which I do share with my students both at Camden High School in Camden, NJ and in my political science course at Rutgers University-Camden, I wonder what, in today’s contemporary era of 1% rule, is sufficient to achieve “victory”, and will whatever efforts the People put forth ever be “enough” to secure it.

As a city high school teacher of social studies, former union president, and researcher of urban education, the bulk of my work demands that I remain aware of narratives that influence conventional wisdom and policy within education; identify errors and blindspots in popularly understood narratives and confront them by providing broader practical and research-based context - none of which can be done while wearing rose-colored glasses. In calling attention to the linking of urban education reform and redevelopment during the Chris Christie years in Camden from 2011-2016; identifying the broad misunderstanding of “failing” urban schools; exploring the insufficiency of schooling for “college and career readiness” for specifically urban students of color, part of my responsibility as an educator and researcher is to be honest about what I’m seeing and what research indicates.

As such, it is quite often that my conclusions do not elicit a sense of joy or motivation but, hopefully, a sense of realism and contextualized understanding that could help sustain honest exploration about what exactly we are dealing with. To be sure, we are in an exceedingly tenuous moment in American history and looking away from reality will not save us any more than insufficient solutions will. The late Barbara Ehrenreich commented that “delusion is no way to confront reality”, and Ruddick (1999) and Musschenga (2019) wrote about the dangers and delusions of false hope. Collectively, the bulk of our American public seems to be wishing and hoping that the ...