Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics of Victorian Education Reform arose from my observation that, historically speaking, Anglo-American schools have always been in crisis. I argue that the crisis of the failing school is a rhetorical problem rather than an economic problem as most scholarship suggests. Much like the cultural myth of the One True Love, education reform debates tend to position the school as an institution that can rescue the nation from all perceived social ills. Not only is this unrealistic, the patterns of language are inconsistent as ideas about the purpose of school are translated into policy. This causes further disjuncture between ideal notions of the public school and its reality. I treat a range of archival materials through a variety of theoretical frames including metaphor criticism and Kenneth Burkes notion of the terministic screen, which illustrates that school failure is not an objective occurrence but a rhetorical construction designed to achieve predetermined social ends. This research uncovers three insoluble conditions of public schools in capitalistic societies: a tension between the need for collective education while privileging individualism, a gap between the expansive purposes envisioned by the general public and the narrow measures policy can enact, and a lack of attention to the circulation of institutional energy. I conclude that conversations about education reform can become more productive by respecting the insoluble conditions and searching for non-binary ways to think about schooling.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-03292017-095759 |
| Date | 06 April 2017 |
| Creators | Davis, Vicki Jean |
| Contributors | Weinstein, Sue, Heifferon, Barbara, Michie, Elsie, Veldman, Meredith |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-03292017-095759/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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