Abstract
Jean Anyon was a well-known critic of U.S. political and economic institutions that undermine quality and meaningful public education. She has been honored by colleagues for her leadership in the development of progressive thinking about the roots of educational inequality. She has also been praised by former students for her dedication to the preparation of politically aware and committed teachers. Her first and best-known book, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Ghetto Educational Reform (Anyon, 1997), examined reform efforts in the Newark school system. As a participant in those reforms, she observed the ways in which poverty and discrimination hampered well-intentioned efforts to improve the educational experience of poor children, a theme repeated and amplified in a series of seminal articles on the place of educational institutions in the larger political economy. In 2005, Anyon published Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education and a New Social Movement, in which she moved beyond explanations for contemporary educational crises and failures to advocate strategies to alter structural impediments to progress. Jean Anyon died in 2013, shortly before the appearance of the second edition of Radical Possibilities.
This new, revised edition begins with a long exploration of the many economic, political, and social relationships that hinder the education of poor minority children. Schools and their students are discussed mainly as their circumstances reflect structural inequalities. Educational reforms have generally achieved little, Anyon argued, because they do not challenge the greater political economy. The many complex paths from these institutional and structural relationships to disappointing educational outcomes include mismatches between parental skills and available jobs, housing and employment discrimination, financial and corporate concentration, and federal and metropolitan tax policies. The 2008 to 2011 recession, which occurred after the publication of the first edition of Radical Possibilities, is treated at length as well. The result is a wide-ranging radical analysis of how the United States has failed its poorest and youngest members. As a primer for prospective teachers, it offers a useful description of the origins and near intractability of concentrated urban poverty. Social science teaches us, however, that measurement is difficult. Anyon cited a broad range of data sources, but provided few explanations of how data were derived. Moreover, some cited studies from the 1990s and early 2000s have not been affirmed by newer research. While I have little disagreement with the general thrust of the argument, it is difficult to know without more information whether or not constituent points are sound .
That said, Anyon’s running commentary on why some reconceptualizations are in order is both interesting and valuable. For example, Anyon indicated that her students’ objections convinced her that a “deficit view” of urban students’ cognitive development (p. 84) was both offensive and inaccurate. In this edition, she embeds poor students’ academic achievement in the test regimens that reward the “cultural capital” of higher-income students. She noted as well that discussions with students and others after the publication of the first edition of Radical Possibilities moved her to reconsider the value of neighborhood schools. While desegregation policies that transported children to racially mixed schools yielded positive results for minority students, they also robbed families of participation and engagement in important community institutions. Anyon qualified her position, however, by arguing for more mixed-income, racially integrated schools of the kind created in some locales as a result of progressive housing and zoning policies.
Another important point of revision is the introduction of new evidence about the impacts of family resources on student academic achievement. Even small increases in the incomes of poor and working parents have, in multiple settings, produced higher student scores on standardized tests. These findings bolster Anyon’s crucial point that educational reform must extend beyond the classroom to address the income, health care, housing, and job needs of poor families.
The last quarter of Radical Possibilities offers a roadmap for change. Anyon pointed to lessons in leadership, networking, legal validation, and the appropriation of threats by past social movements. She noted, in particular, how the Civil Rights movement extended its goal over time from institutional access to matters of social justice. She considered, too, contemporary examples of successful community-based organizations, again making the argument that coalitions for jobs, education, health care, and other valued rights and goods are essential to dismantling the structures that foster poverty. She spoke specifically to the need for hopeful visions and effective organization to raise community confidence in radical “contention.” Therein lies a conceptual tension that Anyon, sadly, did not live to address. Movements like Occupy and the more recent Black Lives Matter are intentionally decentralized with decision-making broadly diffused, while relying on new forms of communication (e.g., social media) to educate and motivate their followers. They do indeed address the broad complex of institutional barriers to greater equality and in that sense are coalitional. However, the lack of central organization can also be an obstacle to continued effectiveness, as the gradual dispersal of Occupy participants suggests. While it is surely true that many supporters of Occupy went on to other important contentions, the original dynamism has dissipated and was at best transformed into other kinds of protest.
As Anyon noted in the concluding chapter of Radical Possibilities, “Urban schools are at the center of the maelstrom of constant crises which beset low-income neighborhoods” (p. 170). In the same way, she argued, they can become an important location in creating social change. Citing examples of movements and reforms that have emanated from schools and student groups, she showed the capacity of teachers for both educating students in social change and serving themselves as catalysts in community collaboration. While too rarely addressed, the work of students like those in Philadelphia’s city-wide Student Union illustrates once again the capacity of young people for incisive political thinking. The discussion more generally shows the power of Anyon’s analysis of the political economy of education and the steps that concerned educators and their community partners can take to bring better life possibilities for poor children and their families. Her voice will be missed.