Educating for Insurgency: The Roles of Young People in Schools of Poverty

by Jay Gillen

A manifesto for today’s broken schools. Desegregation has failed. Schools filled with black and brown students have become plantations of social control, where the policing of behavior trumps the expanding of minds. Radical teachers and organizers in American public schools must help young people fashion an insurgency. That means, at the very least, seeing each student’s rebellion not as violation, but as communication. Jay Gillen writes with passion and compassion about the daily lives of poor students trapped in institutions that dismiss and degrade them. In the spirit of Paulo Freire, and using the historical models of slave rebellions and Civil Rights struggles as guides, Gillen explains what sort of insurgency is needed and how to create the tools and techniques required to build social, intellectual, and political power. This poetic manifesto of revolutionary “educational reform” belongs in the pocket of anyone who currently works in, suffers through, or simply cares about public schooling in this country. Jay Gillen teaches English in a Baltimore public school and has worked with the Baltimore Algebra Project since 1995, building math literacy among youth of color and youth experiencing poverty in US public schools. Bob Moses is an educator and Civil Rights activist. He founded the Algebra Project in 1982. In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Teaching, Race, Politics

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1900

Reviews

[Liz Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Like a glass of cool water in the desert. Every teacher should read this, especially high school teachers, and admin, and anyone else making decisions for today's youth. Education should be done *with* kids, not *to* them. Gillen works as a teacher in Baltimore and his insight and his practice is exceptional. I'm going to buy up multiple copies of this and hand it out to teacher friends. It's a quick read but inspirational so worth every minute.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

The intended audience of this book are "practitioners in a system of education that does not yet exist" [...]

The best book I've read about radical pedagogy. Primarily focuses on the author's experiences with high schools in impoverished communities, but the observations are general enough to resonate strongly with my own experiences as both an educator (of college students) and a former discontented student (in upper-middle-class schools).

The strongest aspect of this book is its consistent, explicit centering of student agency. It's not that students don't want to learn or lack motivation, it's that they're trying to live their lives and formal schooling is often inimical to their interests.

What are called failing schools are not places where the students attend regularly, listen to the teachers, complete assignments and homework, but fail to learn anyway. They are schools where the students evade or defy authority's demands: they stay home, roam the halls, don't listen, neglect homework, and act out. Reflexively today, public policies say adults are accountable for this noncompliance and that if either the teachers or the parents or both did their jobs properly, the students would learn, which effectively means "would comply." The possibility should be considered, however, that young people evade adult demands not because adults are inexpert in framing those demands, but rather because the young people have different purposes to and different interests from the adults, and are pursuing those purposes and interests according to their own plans, often successfully.

The role of the genuinely anticolonial teacher is thus very similar to the role of the political organizer: to help students define amongst themselves a consensus about what they want to do, and then help them implement structures for self-organizing toward that end. As educators, we can facilitate the growth of shielded pockets of insurgency – what the book refers to as "crawl spaces" – within otherwise oppressive educational institutions, and thereby support students in realizing their own purposes rather than those the institution attempts to impose.

[Chalida · Rating 5 out of 5]

45 pages into this book, my view of education was forever changed. Observing a class in a school of poverty after reading Gillen's text had me look at student in a whole other light and had me see them and their history so tightly intertwined. So many frameworks to wrap my head around-- the pastoral, education as a dramatic work, finding the crawl spaces. A must-read and re-read for everyone who works in urban schools or in all schools. Not to say this wasn't a difficult text, but one to continue to read and discuss. Thanks t4sj book club!

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the content has a powerful message, it is sometimes hard to follow and could have used more editing. I think it's worth reading, but those factors make it unfortunately unenjoyable to read for much of the book, especially parts one and two.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a philosophical treatise, this text offers a number of revolutionary ideas for empowering students to take control of their own education in an environment that Gillen sees as nothing less than antagonistic. One of his central metaphors casts students living in poverty as slaves who will inevitably stage a revolt to achieve liberty (in another uncomfortable metaphor, he compares teachers and students to partners engaged in flirtatious courtship). As Gillen forcefully advocates student autonomy, he fails to acknowledge that students often are not mature enough or knowledgeable enough to determine what is best for them. High school students are, after all, not yet adults—consequently, they do not always exercise the best judgment. Gillen’s unwavering faith in students’ ability to know what is best for them is naïve at best and catastrophic at worst.

Where this text fails most profoundly is as a work of scholarship. A few citations here and there and a smattering of footnotes are simply not enough to support his frequent musings on “idealized” hypothetical schools and classrooms, which he never describes in detail. He relies instead on decontextualized dialogues among students and other “dramatistic” devices that he never adequately explains. Nor does he ever clearly explain how to achieve this complex goal. The last of the four rambling, poorly organized sections (no subheadings to structure the material or guide the reader) alleges to provide “a description of the tools or techniques that we will need in order to develop a consensus among the many different kinds of people who must coalesce into a shared insurgency” (p. 144), yet Gillen simply offers more vague philosophy and no clear direction.

There’s no doubt that Gillen is passionately devoted to his vision, but his writing fails to show us how and why we might want to join him.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Schools for young people in poverty are marvelously successful at teaching about the scarcity of resources, arbitrariness of authority, and shunting of joy to peripheries that characterize the society they are actually growing up into As a species, we hardly need to go out of our way at all to make sure that each caste develops the skills and abilities they will need to perform their caste function. It is merely human to help the young grow up this way.
What is difficult is helping the young grow up into a society that does not yet exist. For this problem, imagination and creativity are required, and there are many opponents to the attempt. We must act as we would if the young were growing up into a different society, not this one. Acting methodically in such a way means creating a small society that makes sense to grow up in with its own terms, collaborative norms, and cooperative ways." (134)

[Crispin · Rating 5 out of 5]

an inspiring and thoughtful call to action for teachers everywhere wishing to nurture the seeds of self-determination vibrantly sprouting in young people everywhere.

[Polly Callahan]

recommended by author of Troublemakers

[Brinda Gurumoorthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking for teachers who work in low income schools and deal with students who (with good reason) struggle to find their purpose for being at school.

[Katie Florida · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely powerful challenge to the standard educational paradigm. some of the parallels drawn between prisons, slavery, and the typical power dynamic of the modern segregated school are haunting and should be convicting to us as educators and perpetuators of this inequity.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was great. The methods are in no way strange or unknown to me, but the motivation behind them, this was a great read to remember why we do things the way we do and why it's the right way. It also gives a new sense of purpose behind building relationships with autonomous human beings, rather than data points and test scores. Great read. Recommended for every teacher, radical or not!

[Jules Findlay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The facts about the history of segregated schools and what we can do right now to change them. A must-read for non-US educators unfamiliar about the extent racism pervades in both state and federal legislation - there is no federal constitutional provision to guarantee education! Also some great practical steps to realise insurgency, organise against the principals!

[k-os · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes the argument that reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream might be better preparation for teaching in Baltimore public schools than watching The Wire. Let that be an example of how intellectually 🤯 this book was.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a lot of things to think about when teaching. I'm passing this around to my coworkers.

[Kate Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

BRILLIANT.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. Made me think about empowering students more.