Creating Understanding

Found out today one of our families is currently homeless and in great despair.  Much like other issues discussed in this blog, the the fact that I am in a place where knowing someone who is homeless is a fact forces me to unpack this reality as part of my own personal consciousness.  No longer a reality detached from my own personal world, knowing I interact with someone who is homeless forces a lever of  authentic learning that speaks to the way we become communicatively competent.  I find myself struggling to comprehend the very idea of being homeless, trying to understand how it can happen, and feeling quite powerless to actually change this reality.  I also find myself struggling with anger thinking there are people with multiple homes and more wealth than one could ever need, but simply not exposed to the kind of reality that forces them to think deeply about how they could have a little more balance in their life.  Until they are exposed to the depth of inequality in a profound and personal way, they will continue to protect more than they ever need while not knowing what just a little bit of their wealth could do for those in true need.  

Class versus Race

In reflecting upon student behavior and achievement at the various schools where I have worked, the question of whether race or class is the primary determinant of school and student performance is of great interest to me.  The first step in the process toward providing an answer based on my observations is to answer the question of whether or not the two can be 1) separated, and 2) ranked as primary and secondary in influence,

Let's start with the question of separation and let's begin by clearly stating that this discussion is limited to the issue of educational performance.  I say this because race as it manifests itself inside the four walls of the school building can be quite different than how race influences behavior outside the four walls of the building.  The belief is inside the four walls the environment can be somewhat (not completely) controlled whereas control is quite a bit more challenging outside the school building.  Further, by control, I mean the attitudes, values and beliefs of all who are involved,  If we assume (a potential problematic) that educators are largely above racist attitudes, then what happens inside the four walls is determined less by skin color and more by academic and social performance. If we assume, as sociologists such as Habermas and Bowers do, that effective processes of dialogue will help people overcome some of their deeply embedded negative attitudes about race, we can hope teachers have been the beneficiaries of the outcome of communicative action/competence and therefore are better prepared to not see color.  This may be simplistic in its application of Habermas and or Bowers, but for our discussion the point is that we certainly hope teachers are not carrying overly racist attitudes into the classroom.  While known this idealistic attitude can be tripped up by one racist teacher, let's use the dreaded "generally" for the sake of this discussion.    

Perspective on Alan Borsuk Education Column in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/mps-takeovers-abele-means-heading-in-a-different-direction-b99615729z1-348904831.html

Really interesting column on the task force.  What a political hot potato. Of course, the mention of community schools was of paramount interest to me.  

I wonder if MPS even realizes Hopkins Lloyd was reorganized a few years back as the first MPS community school.  Because that school was in the neighborhood where I did my field work and it was ostensibly interested in community engagement, I included it in my study.  I had a tough time getting entree and when I did talk to the principal, I got the impression he did not necessarily have the kind of positive attitude/leadership style needed to embrace the potential energy outside the four walls of the school building. Indeed, the people at Walnut Way told me he was not the most welcoming leader.  

It seemed like the most outward looking person at Hopkins Lloyd was Ruby, the coordinator of the Parent Center.  That place was happening.  She had the attitude of outreach and inclusion essential to building a community school culture.  Maybe she should have been the principal! 

When I looked at the literature on community schools across the country, I found that a principal with a positive attitude about the external community was an essential piece of creating a successful community schools.  A principal who can bridge those two worlds is essential to success, but my research findings indicated those types are really hard to find.  Going confidently outside those four walls is not necessarily part of the traditional leadership training programs. Some of it is tied to leadership style, some is the amount of time it takes to building relationships, some of it is history, and some is the different "language" between inside and outside the four walls. I called it the inside-outside dichotomy.  

One other flaw I continually came across when talking with educators about community involvement in school improvement was their inability to conceptualize community beyond parents (and in a low level easy, the bake sale volunteer-type).  Community in the community school model is much broader in its mobilization of people/organizations and more meaningful in the level of engagement.  

This narrow understanding of community leads me to my last point. While I am fully convinced this is a viable model for school improvement, it is a huge change from the common school tradition that has had a hold on schools since the turn of the century...the 20th century that is!  Too often I hear people use the word "paradigm shift" in a way that would make Thomas Kuhn roll over in his grave. People have a tendency to reduce the significance of the ideas that have created what Kuhn defined as a paradigm.  When  I wrote about community schools,  I saw them as so different from the traditional common school that I concluded only deep seated, in the Kuhnian sense revolutionary, change in the very ideas that have created school behavior would have to occur for them to be successful.  

I hope this task force grasps the depth of change necessary to create a true community school.  

Charter School debate

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/upshot/a-suburban-urban-divide-in-charter-school-success-rates.html?emc=eta1

In the comment section, a reader commented this author (a University of Michigan Professor of Education) was pro-privatization and anti-union. The following is my comment in rebut to that post.

As a person who recently finished his doctorate in Education, I can assure you most colleges and universities are neither anti-union nor pro-charter. In fact, they have a vested interest in protecting the status quo public school as that means no tampering with teacher certifications or administrative licensing. If charters can break through the bureaucratic hold of most state department of instruction rules and regulations, the results would be a decrease in the number of classes and teachers in Colleges and Schools of Education. You really think most Colleges of Education are going to embrace, for instance, Teach for America, a program that does not even require certified teachers, much less membership in the union! I suspect Charters use TFA more than traditional schools and that means a change to traditional teacher preparation programs. All I am saying is self-interest is alive and well on college campuses.

What to Make of It.

During a moment of silence at last Sunday's packer -Lions game, someone yelled "I hate all Muslims."  While I suspect there were more than a few people in stadium who share his attitude, especially in the emotional post-Paris environment, not one person made the peep in response to this declaration.  One person did say "Show Some Respect," but again, no other noise.  In a stadium with almost 79,000 people, the silence of the other 78,999 people spoke volumes.

I'm just trying to figure out what the silence meant.   Given just how horrific the actions of these terrorists, I was really surprised people did not clap in agreement or yell some response that sent a message of unity with the person.  I would have not been surprised had there been an outbreak of loud support for this perspective. One of my colleagues summed it up nicely when he said "Not that we all don't feel that way a little right now," but we all agreed it was ill-timed.

However, as anyone who attends a Packer game can attest, there are a lot of people who are unencumbered when it comes to expressing an opinion.  Could the "rules of a moment of silence" be so strong that these people dare not yell back in unison?  Or, are people willing to resist indicting an entire religion due to the behavior of a small, but powerful faction of extremists.

I do not have the answer and, frankly, am a little torn between both answers.

One person who is not is the Packer quarterback . What's more amazing than his perspective, is the fact he could hear the comment.  The fan was in my section and about four rows up from me,  I was 53 rows above the field so you do the math. http://es.pn/1HNpIAR

Small Steps

This past week, the Walnut Way Conservation Corp held a ribbon cutting ceremony for Phase I of a two phase building project.  The Innovation and Wellness Commons is another piece in the Walnut Way movement to revitalize the physical landscape and social spirit of the  Lindsay Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee. As part of a huge study I did on that area, the following was in my conclusion.  I wrote this in 2013 and am so pleased the organization was able to make it happen.  At the time, I was not sure if it was feasible.  (Please note:  MHNA is Walnut Way, Maple Heights is Lindsay Heights, and Bridge Harbor is Milwaukee.)

In perhaps its most ambitious response to creating a structure to support and encourage collaboration, the MHNA recently announced plans to build the Healthy Living Commons, a $6 million, 45,000 square foot mixed-use development that will create what Tommy calls “a healthy living campus for the neighborhood.” By far the largest financial undertaking in the history of the MHNA, the Healthy Living Commons will provide space for organizations and groups wanting to collaborate on behalf of Maple Heights.

Mrs. Anderson sees the groups and organizations “that land in the Healthy Living Commons will be of like mind around something, you know, their missions will be aligned in terms of working with the community.”  While the idea of school as a neighborhood hub is often mentioned as an important piece of the reconceptualization of the school-community relationship, Tommy talked about how the Healthy Living Commons could function as a focal point and gathering place for the residents of Maple Heights.  He describes the vision MHNA has for the Healthy Living Commons:

It will be a central hub where it’s easy to be healthy, easy to connect with people, it’s easy to find some something that you need, it’s easy to connect socially.  It’s built out of this idea ‘let’s really make this hub central to this campus, people can go to, but then trickle out and connect to the rest of the neighborhood.’  It’s about starting in one single spot and growing things out.  Growing this is like a vessel, like an artery from the heart, so the Commons is the heart.

Intended to be part of the commercial development of Maple Heights, the building will provide physical and social space for the partners and residents who are committed to Maple Heights. Located right in the center of the Maple Heights commercial corridor, Jack talked about “the transformation impact of having a building like this, what it looks like now and what it can become, and what it will do to the commercial corridor.” 

At a community event announcing the Healthy Living Commons project, residents reflected on both the past and future of Maple Heights.  One of the residents spoke about the significance of both this building and the people who will give the building its meaning and action: 

I grew up not too far from Susan, my little sister and Susan was best friends, so I guess to me, this whole thing is transformational, but it’s also a reinvigoration of the community that I grew up in.   This community, that’s why Susan so vested in it, but when I say that, because we know what this place can be, we know what it was, so part of it for me is the reinvigoration of the community.   I want people to know that it is going back to the path I used to see. Sitting on a porch with a handful of people in the midst of really bad stuff and having them focus away from that that bad stuff and have them say ‘we will take care that.’  I do know one thing.  If it’s gonna happen at all in Bridge Harbor, it’s gonna happen here in Maple Heights.

Is it possible this building can be so transformative?  My argument in matters such as this one directly explains my “uneasy optimist” attitude.  Is it naive to believe structures like the commons can send a powerful message of hope and change in one of the poorest zip codes in Milwaukee? What will be interesting is just what kind of message this building sends to the rest of the neighborhood.   Do the residents even see the message this project is conveying or is it too idealistic to think the renovation of one building can be a counter-narrative to the many buildings that are in complete disrepair?  The building’s importance goes beyond the businesses it will attract, the jobs it will bring, to how it affects the tacit knowledge that has been created through years of socialization.  As someone who has watched with great interest the revitalization of this neighborhood, is it plausible to think this building can be another part of the movement to truly change a neighborhood that has suffered from years of physical, social, and emotional neglect?  When I stare at this one building in the midst of so much despair, I have hope that it will be another  small step in the reemergence of a once-proud neighborhood.  However, considering this has been one of the most violent years in Milwaukee's history, I suspect there are many who would think this is like the proverbial pebble in the ocean.  That may be right, but if I really believed them, I could no longer be the Uneasy Optimist..... 

Understanding Social Capital

Too often I hear people say low-income families do not have the necessary cultural or intellectual capital, but these two phrases convey some extremely unsavory thoughts about their values, beliefs, ability to think, etc.  It implies they have some kind of genetic flaw in their brain power or they lack the history, family, values, civility necessary to be constructive participants in society. Indeed, the anthropological definition of culture is the "sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another."

In terms of capital, low-income families of color certainly do not lack either intellectual or cultural capital.  They all have brains and they all have a rich history.  Whether they use their brains or are interested in their rich history is not the focus of this discussion.  What they lack is the social capital that is developed by trusting, interacting, and connecting with people who have similar worlds and interests. The realities facing urban neighborhoods, for instance, actually create isolation and distrust of neighbors.

So often I find myself attempting to accurately portray what low-income families lack in terms of their ability to control their own world.  While am obvious first need is financial resources, another need is what we theorist call social capital.  The following is a carefully written piece on my understanding of social capital and its use in urban areas and its affect on school performance

Social Capital.  If educational capital is primarily focused on the individual community member, social capital is concerned with the way community members connect with each other in their collective relationship to the school.  In terms of working definitions, Michael Woolcock and Deepa Narayan (2000) wrote that social capital was “the norms and networks that enable people to act collectively” (p. 226), while Warren, et al., (2010) believed social capital was a “resource that inheres in the relationships between people, allowing them to act collectively to achieve agreed-upon ends” (p. 2211-2212).  Kevin Leyden (2003) wrote that social capital was the “social networks and interactions that inspire trust and reciprocity among citizens” (p. 1546). Daniel Brisson and Charles Usher (2005) defined social capital as the “network of trusting relationships that exist in a community for community members and creates benefits for community members” (p. 644). 

      Angela Valenzuela (1999) wrote that social capital emphasizes “networks of trust and solidarity among actors wishing to attain goals that cannot be individually attained (p. 21) and this collective unity translates into power.  She also notes that social capital is derived from the “non-rationalistic, emotional commitments among individuals who are embedded in supportive networks” (p. 27).  Indeed, the famous sociologist Amatai Etzioni wrote that faith in social capital was based on a belief in the power of the “reinvention of the spirit of community” (in Riley, 2008, p. 312) to be part of unified mobilization effort for change. 

     Given conditions in impoverished urban areas, the need to increase social capital is essential.  Janice Hiroata and Lauren Jacobs (2003), for instance, have identified high levels of social capital as an essential part of marginalized groups’ preparedness to become more active and involved in challenging conditions in schools and the surrounding communities.  Saying that even in the “poorest neighborhoods there exists strengths and capacities to be tapped,” (p. 255), Jean Anyon (2005) wrote that “the existence of active residents in poverty neighborhoods belies the stereotype of a passive, unconcerned population” (p. 120).  The development of social capital in neighborhoods considered “high risk, needy, or vulnerable” (Cohen-Vogel, Goldring, and Smerkar, 2010, p. 53) represents a way for these fragmented communities to rediscover the power that results from cohesion and unity.  Woolcock and Narayan (2000) characterized social capital as an “asset, one that can be called on in a crisis and leveraged for material gain” (p. 226). 

      In her book Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, Angela Valenzuela (1999) talked about the way school structures and cultures have created social “decapitalization” (p. 29) in certain schools.  She talks about, for instance, the way tracking in schools have created exclusionary behaviors among students.  The sense of cohesion and unity that is part of social capital has been disrupted by school policies, as well as a school culture where these kinds of programs overwhelm a caring environment.  In his work on the history of neighborhoods initiatives to address poverty, Robert Halpern (1995) believes poverty, inequality, and segregation have created what he calls the “difference dilemma” (p. 230), which is not only the real difference in economic, political, social, and educational realities between urban and suburban areas, but difference in behavior that have resulted from exposure to these conditions.   Marginalized groups are also characterized by an attitude of exclusion and this attitude is a real obstacle to the kind of collective mobilization that is needed for real change.   

     These theorists point out the value of collective, unified action as part of a movement to change conditions in urban neighborhoods.  What is needed, then, are learning programs that target the sources of this exclusionary attitude. One of the important intentions of social capital building programs is to create learning that reconnects community members in ways that allow them to rediscover their collective strength.  Given that inequality in resources and power have caused this fragmented state, Warren (2005) argued that it was essential that urban communities participate in programs that specifically address current levels of social capital. Warren believed high levels of social capital gave rise to relational power parents and the community needed to challenge the conditions that created and perpetuated inequality.  Relational power translated to collective unity, and that unity allowed previously marginalized groups to constructively confront conditions and realities that had produced underperformance in schools.  One of the keys to tapping into the collective passions of groups appears to be the ability to create learning processes and experiences that strengthened the bonds between them. 

     When the Coleman Study (1967) concluded that school underperformance in high poverty neighborhoods could be explained by weak community norms and low levels of trust, and not inadequate facilities and economic disparities, it put the focus for change on the importance of human relationships found in these communities.  Concluding that “social capital was absolutely essential to a strong community,” (p. S101), Coleman wrote that reforms should focus on building relations that strengthened collective behavior, arguing that groups within which there “is extensive trustworthiness and extensive trust are able to accomplish much more than a comparable group without trustworthiness and trust” (p. S101).  High levels of social capital create energy and unity that translates into collective action on behalf of school improvement. 

     Social capital, then, is a behavior that can be at least partially constructed—or deconstructed—by addressing conditions and realities in neighborhoods because, after all, it is these very conditions that have created behavior.  Because the premise of social capital is rooted in social relationships, the first step in building social capital is to create opportunities for communities to reconnect.  Keith (1996) emphasized the importance of grass roots, informal, democratic activities that acted to connect and unify the community. She talked about how community fairs, neighborhood walks, and town hall-like public reports on the state of the neighborhood allowed the community to “be nourished from its own base” (p. 257). 

     Kevin Leyden (2003) studied the way neighborhoods created walkable areas to enable or encourage social ties and community connections.  In a similar study, researchers Robert Sampson, Jeffrey Morenoff and Thomas Gannon-Rowley (2002) synthesized data on 40 urban social capital-building programs aimed at transforming neighborhoods.  They found neighborhood community gardens, play areas, and the creation of green space were having the desired effect of reuniting urban communities and concluded these programs created the following attitudes and corresponding behaviors:

The willingness of residents to intervene on behalf of children may depend, in larger part, on conditions of mutual trust and shared expectations among residents. One is unlikely to intervene in a neighborhood context where the rules are unclear and people mistrust or fear one another. (p. 457)

      In a later study, Coleman (1987) tied the building of social capital to a dominant value system that bound groups together and was strengthened by what William Cutler (2000) argued was open and honest communication between home and school.  Coleman attributed the successful performance of Catholic schools to the existence of a value system that unified participants.  The building of a relationship between the two groups was based on the power of ideas to exert control over actions and behaviors and agreement between two disparate groups about the fundamental truth of these ideas to produce action. 

     However, for both Coleman (1987) and Cutler (2000), the school remains primarily responsible for creating high levels of social capital among the community—understood here as parents who are suffering from the negative effects of social isolation.  As Cutler wrote, “Coleman maintained that school could increase the social capital of their communities by strengthening both parent-teacher and parent-parent relationships” (p. 197).  The real challenge is for educational theorists to transition away from thinking of the school as the dominant (only) partner in creating social capital and move towards community-based organizations as a source of social capital building.  Neighborhood-based institutions are certainly capable of organizing more formal community learning programs that build social capital in neighborhoods.  

     In response to the poor educational conditions faced by Blacks in the Mississippi Delta areas, the Mississippi Educational Working Group (MEWG), for instance, implemented a variety of programs which provided leadership training to its local community members and then helped place them on neighborhood planning boards that worked with schools (Lambright, 2001).  These home grown leaders drafted legislation, sat on educational boards, and built political relationships with key politicians.  They also implemented an extensive communications network with the local community, which became an important source of education and information about the state of Black education in this area. Nsombi Lambright (2001) found MEWG was an important part of a process that changed          Black community behavior from one of “isolation and powerlessness to one where there was common ground on which they could work together and that unity enabled them to have “collective impact” (p. 11) in challenging the combination of political and educational neglect in this region. 

     The Southeastern Taskforce (SET), a Baltimore based local CBO employed a grass-roots approach to social capital building that included door-to-door education of the neighborhood, as well as the mobilization of churches, community groups, and neighborhood leaders in developing a neighborhood revitalization agenda that included a great deal of community engagement  (Gray and Wheeldreyer, 2001).  According to Richard Gray and Laura Wheeldreyer (2001), SET established a Church Outreach group that provided easy-to-understand information that contributed to the development of common understanding among the immigrant population.  Lastly, and perhaps most important for the collective dimension so important to social capital, SET organized parent meetings that enabled parents to gather and share their school-related concerns and because teachers and administrators respected SET, attendance by these two groups was usually quite high. 

     What both SET and MEWG did was organize social capital building around issues that were determined by the very community in which they lived and worked.   They then built structures that would provide the community with forums allowing them to constructively participate with schools.  The structure became part of the process for not only building social capital, but for ensuring the plan had brought input and buy-in from previously marginalized groups.  It also increased the educational capital of parents and community participants.     

     While these are examples of local, grass roots, organized activities that can increase levels of social capital, in his work on urban neighborhoods, theorist William Julius Wilson (1997) discussed the way economic conditions affected what he called the neighborhood’s social organization, which he defined as “the extent to which residents of a neighborhood are able to maintain effective social control and realize their common goals” (p. 20).  In his study of Chicago urban neighborhoods,         Wilson argued that high levels of joblessness led to low levels of social organization, which affected “friendship ties, the degree of social cohesion, the level of resident participation in formal and informal voluntary association, the density and stability of formal organizations, and the nature of informal social control” (p. 20).  

     What we have is a contrast in the origins of collective behavior, then, with Wilson’s (1997) social organization primarily determined by economic conditions and Coleman’s social capital created through “relations (his italics) among people” (S100-101).  Indeed, Wilson’s argument was that social organization as a behavior could be explained by neighborhood economic conditions whereas Coleman believed that social capital actually created human capital necessary for economic activity.       Coleman resisted the economic determinism that characterized Wilson’s work. Jean Anyon (1995, 1997, and 2005) also realized that economic conditions influenced community behavior, but she described in great detail the impact social, political, cultural and educational policies had in creating neighborhood behavior.  Health care, housing, political neglect and fair wages were among a number of factors that influenced social behavior.  All needed to be addresses as part of a broad approach to creating conditions that would allow the community to behave differently.   

      However, Anyon (2005) also talked about the important role that churches, schools, and non-profits could play in creating learning conditions that could reenergize and reconnect the community.  For Anyon, the origins of social capital were found in the structures, policies, learning, and institutions that worked in unison to create a mobilized community well-prepared to mobilize on behalf of social, educational, economic, and political justice.  High levels of social capital were created by programs held in these institutions and this led to what she called “movement building,” which characterized the behavior of a group that was unified and mobilized by a just cause.  Movement building was the powerful action of collective energy. 

     Warren’s (2010) relational power had much in common with movement building because it was the behavioral outcome of a community prepared to engage on behalf of policies that affected education.  Social capital and relational power enable communities to reconnect on the basis of common interests and the strength and confidence it needs to exert pressure on schools and politicians.  In this context, social capital, like educational capital, is a source of energy that enables the community to think and behave differently.  Although an important contrast between the two is that educational capital building ties action to the individual and social capital aims to strengths the collective will, both correctly identify the importance of new learning processes that create a community capable of constructively engaging on behalf of school improvement.   

     Ultimately, though, the principle challenge, as pointed out by Julie White and Gary Wehlage (1995) was simply that “social capital is difficult to build.” (p. 34).  Echoing this thought, Robert Sampson, Jeffrey Morenoff, and Thomas Gannon-Rowley (2002) said one of challenges facing social capital as part of a reform strategy was developing a suitable set of criteria to measure the effectiveness of these programs to actually change neighborhood behavior.  Warren recognized the difficulty of assessing the impact of social capital when he wrote that signs of improvement in Logan Square neighborhood schools were partially based on anecdotal evidence.  Spirit and will do not necessarily lend themselves to quantifiable evaluation for their effectiveness, but social capital theorists certainly believe the existence of these qualities can impact school improvement. 

Flawed Thinking About the Ways to Build Collective Efficacy and Social Capital In Milwaukee's Urban Neighborhoods

I had the pleasure of attending Dr. Robert Sampson's presentation to the Marquette University community on Sept. 16.  When I rsvp'd to this presentation, I did so because the topic was of interest to me. Frankly, I did not look closely at the guest presenter.  Soon into his presentation, I realized I was listening to one of the inspirations behind my entire doctoral dissertation.   In response to his presentation that day, I wrote him the following.  

 I had the pleasure of attending your formal presentation to the Marquette University community on Sept. 16, but did not want to attempt to chat with you at the post-presentation reception. I based most of my doctoral dissertation on your definition of neighborhood effects as it related to my study of a neighborhood association involvement in supporting urban school improvement in a poor neighborhood in a large Midwestern city.  Over the years many years I spent doing field work focused on the concept of neighborhood effects, I often times encountered people who would shake their head in agreement as I described both my research findings and suggestions for reform.  I believe, however, it is actually quite difficult for people to truly understand and respect the powerful sociological effect neighborhood conditions have on behavior.  While there were many heads shaking in agreement with your conclusions, I suspect they had little understanding of the concept of neighborhood effects, perhaps because they are so far removed from the realities facing residents in the neighborhoods you studied in both Boston and Chicago. 

Your discussion of the concept “collective efficacy” was of particular interest to me.  If I were to connect collective efficacy to my research, I would probably equate it to the way I conceptualized social capital in these urban neighborhoods.  The idea is tied to a belief in the power of collective action to address conditions in both neighborhoods and, because I was interested in connecting neighborhood effects to schools, academic achievement.  You mentioned Lindsay Heights as a neighborhood through which you traveled and correctly noted some movement building occurring in Lindsay Heights.  I would argue that is because Lindsay Heights has a phenomenal neighborhood association, the Walnut Way Conservation Corp, leading the movement to revitalize and rebuild Lindsay Heights both physically and emotionally.   This grass roots organization, with deep-seated local knowledge and a plan that was funded by, but not controlled by, the Zilber Foundation, is creating collective efficacy or building social capital among its residents. 

The challenge facing the creation of collective efficacy in Milwaukee is there are very few foundations like Zilber.  Most not only want to provide the resources, but consider themselves capable of controlling the programs and the people.  This top down, corporate mentality, is perhaps the biggest obstacle to substantive change in Milwaukee.  It completely disregards the power of authentic local knowledge to know what needs to happen and the trust that is built through years of grass roots leadership.  Fortunately for Lindsay Heights, Joe Zilber grew up in that neighborhood and it had an organization like Walnut Way already in existence.  Sharon and Larry Adams, the leaders of Walnut Way, are extraordinary individuals and have been the engine behind the rise of collective efficacy—dare I call it pride in the neighborhood—that has been part of the Lindsay Heights revitalization movement. 

In Walnut Way, the Zilber Foundation may have found the perfect partner in its effort to support neighborhood revitalization.  Armed with what I think is a unique attitude of optimism about the potential within Lindsay Heights, and led by a humble, committed, and determined couple, Sharon and Larry Adams, Walnut Way has the credibility essential to lead the physical and social transformation of the neighborhood.  Additionally, because it is not equipped to develop and run--or most importantly control--many programs, Walnut Way is a local organization whose focus is bringing together other organizations on behalf of a common goal. What Zilber has done is provide important resources and just the right balance of guidance that Walnut Way needed to create the plan around which it could then mobilize organizations inside and outside Lindsay Heights.  As I have heard many times when talking about Walnut Way, it is a "convening" organization. 

One of my friends down there described Walnut Way in this way: 

In all of these, our role has been around convening groups and identifying sort of catalytic initiatives.  As a neighborhood association, we look to convene and facilitate these larger initiatives.  We do offer a little bit, but not too many direct programs. But the invitation to serve as a convener in a much larger area is to then develop a process that brings various groups together and map out the quality-of-life plan.  It’s not that we control everything but we are really interested in helping others who are in control.

I believe Milwaukee has many neighborhoods with high quality local leaders and a set of appropriate values and beliefs to guide behavior, but the business/corporate community and their corresponding foundations, will simply not put their trust (and their money) into worthy local organizations, those most capable of building collective efficacy as part of the plan to revitalize neighborhoods.  Control is a fickle human emotion, even more so when it is in the hands of people whose only real exposure to urban neighborhoods like Lindsay Heights in through Google maps.  This mentality, as much a part of Milwaukee as the segregation we all find so offensive, but conveniently dismiss as soon as we reach our comfortable, safe, clean, suburban neighborhood, is, I believe, the primary obstacle to real change in urban neighborhoods.  

To the occasional visitor, the one who unfortunately made up the great majority of your audience at Marquette, Lindsay Heights is just another dangerous neighborhood, one that is fairly hopeless, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I spent three years walking this neighborhood and the change I have seen is dramatic.  Some of the houses and yards would be the envy of suburbanites.  Change will take time, but it is happening in that neighborhood.  If those with the resources would stop duplicating programs, but rather direct those valuable resources to the those with authentic local knowledge and programs already up and running, change would occur at something better than a snail's pace....

Epilogue

Below are links to two opinion pieces that appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's op-ed section back in 2013.   After reading both pieces, I certainly hope people will be able to deduce which side I am in this debate.  I'll give you a hint.  The people who wrote about cradle to career don't have a clue what that concept actually means and how to put it into practice.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/work-toward-a-unified-education-agenda-ag8dq5h-187539521.html

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/defend-public-schools-our-children-our-democracy-fs8gpnr-188424701.html

Who the heck is Chet Bowers?

     Among my favorite thinkers is a sociologist by the name of Chet Bowers.  While I am not entirely sure Bowers is among the pantheon of more noteworthy sociologists, but there were a couple of concepts associated with Bowers that make more and more sense to me as I continue a journey of self-discovery related to unpacking what he calls one's " taken-for-granted beliefs or tacit knowledge."  In my current role, I am in an environment where my tacit knowledge is being constantly challenged and I am unpacking many of those beleifs that have gone innocuously unexplored over my lifetime.  I want to first talk about Bowers and then about the application of some of his concepts to the social growth that is happening in my own personal world.  

     Taken-for-granted knowledge generally relates to the patterns of behavior that have their origins in the historical development of institutions and structures that have largely determined how people function in response to the needs of these institutions. Social knowledge has been transmitted in a variety of subtle and overt ways to the point where they have created patterns of behavior that go unchallenged,  The origins of many of our ways of thinking are gradually learned and reinforced through knowledge acquisition.  If we assume the family and school as primary socialization agents, the knowledge each provides eventually begin to create in all of us values, beliefs and attitudes that becomes our tacit knowledge, those deeply embedded values and beliefs that are in us,.  For Bowers, because tacit knowledge is not critically examined, it can be an obstacles to the creation of the kind of socially just society (equality, acceptance, respect) he envisions. 

     Starting from the premise that reality is socially constructed, Bowers develops a theory of knowledge acquisition that treats education and teachers as primary socialization agents in creating a society characterized by human dignity, social justice and responsible political citizenry.   Bowers first seeks to more fully develop a theory of knowledge that emphasizes the importance of communication in making explicit the ideas, values, social meaning and behavior that are transmitted by language and then describes the specific nature of teacher preparation, pedagogy, and curriculum needed to substantively examine this knowledge. Through greater interrogation of socially constructed taken-for granted attitudes, values, beliefs, and institutions, teachers and students will reconceptualize the foundations of their social knowledge and better understand the potential for alternative social relationships in an “increasingly materialistic world.”  (Pg. 73)  Bowers believes schools should play a primary socialization role in creating the intellectual environment necessary to explore knowledge, meaning, and practices that have been largely approached as outside human control and therefore impervious to the kind of critical investigation that can persuade people to consider the kind of social, political and economic ideas Bowers deems necessary for the creation of a more just society.  Bowers “promise of theory” challenges the dehumanizing nature of learning and postulates that all knowledge has human authorship”.  (Pg. 68)

Conceptual Framework   

     Owing much to the Sociology of Knowledge theory originally developed by sociologists Alfred Schutz, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Bowers develops a process of learning that leads to the establishment of “communicative competence,” a state of sociological enlightenment and perhaps the paramount goal of Bowers’ theoretical approach.  The sociology of knowledge contends that communication (primarily language) is the primary transmitter of cultural beliefs and the patterns that result from these beliefs. Language, both audible and silent, transmits the values, beliefs, and attitudes that construct social reality and creates one’s cultural map.  Bowers believe the current state of social knowledge is largely characterized as “taken-for-granted” knowledge about social reality and behavior. Taken-for-granted knowledge generally relates to the patterns of behavior that have their origins in the historical development of institutions and structures that have largely determined how people function in response to the needs of these institutions. Social knowledge and patterns of behavior have been determined by these institutions, are reinforced through patterns of socialization intended to support these institutional and structural needs, and become relatively unquestioned aspects of one’s knowledge.  These values, beliefs and attitudes represent the tacit knowledge that is deeply embedded in society and have been relatively unexamined for their actual contribution to the creation of the kind of socially just society Bowers envisions. Communicative competence is the outcome of becoming “culturally literate, which is the ability to read or decode the taken-for-granted assumptions and categories that underlie the individuals world of experience.”  (Pg. 2)

     Bowers treats education, communication, and socialization as nearly interchangeable terms.  By treating them as interchangeable, Bowers argues that all three have the potential to “liberate thought and facilitate the communication of new ideas to others:  it is also a binding force that may prevent people from seeing how their lives are shaped by social conventions.” (Pg. 31) Largely derived from Berger and Luckmann, there are five underlying propositions to Bowers theoretical approach to understanding the existence of social knowledge.

1. Social reality is shared, sustained and continuously negotiated through communication.  (Pg. 35)
2. Through socialization the individual’s acquires knowledge that is used to make “sense of everyday life.”  This is the origins of tacit or taken-for-granted knowledge.  It is at this point that people acquire cultural codes for organizing reality.  (Pg. 39)
3. Much of the social work of everyday life is learned and experienced by the individual as the natural, even inevitable order of reality.  The nature attitude toward the everyday world is experienced as taken-for-granted. 
4. The individual’s self-concept is the result of interaction with significant others:  the individual not only acquires the socially shared knowledge, but also an understanding of who she/he is in relation to it.  This is a dependent relationship where the individual is the recipient of knowledge and is incapable of negotiating this knowledge.  (Pg. 41) 
5. Human consciousness is characterized by intentionality.  Human consciousness is free, but it is influenced by the learning that has been internalized through socialization. 

     Communicative competency as a way to make sense of social reality is intimately tied to the fifth proposition’s belief in the power humans have to control and shape social reality.  This occurs when individuals engage in relativizing the taken-for-granted values, beliefs, cultural codes, and attitudes that are part of historical meaning-making and are approached as objective truths and therefore outside the questioning process.  Relativizing these ideas and practices breaks them down and reformulates them as part of a new social reality.

     Underlying the process of relativizing is belief in the individual to more fully exert authority over the social knowledge that produces behavior.  Relativizing knowledge re-exerts human authorship over the ideas, practices and values that have been largely understood as the result of system and institutional needs. The sociology of knowledge characterizes these values as objective truths, above examination and detached from human authorship.  This dehumanization, or reification, is the “moment of forgetting or losing sight of human authorship” over reality. (Pg. 60)   Rationality, efficiency, stratification, and competition are deeply embedded social values, seemingly essential to a well-run, industrialized, society, and they have been relatively immune to critical examination for their actual social worth.  When these values are relativized, they become subjective in nature and can then be more easily negotiated as part of new knowledge.             

     According to Bowers, “liminal space follows the relativizing process.”  (Pg. 7).  Liminality is the creation of intellectual space that allows the introduction of new ways of social reality to be part of one’s consciousness and is the result of relativizing current taken-for-granted knowledge (tacit knowledge) because the process of going beneath the surface to unpack this taken-for-granted knowledge opens up new ways of thinking about the foundation of current social reality.  Bowers characterizes liminality as a “brief period of openness that follows the relativizing of taken-for-granted authority.”  (Pg. 7)  Relativizing and liminality do not necessarily intend to replace the taken-for-granted values, attitudes and beliefs that are the results of historically powerful language socialization, but they do intend to be part of a process that moves their existence to an explicit level, where they become part of language dialogue.  They are now important parts of the everyday language that is part of the creation of social reality.  Treating them as subjective truths allows for their examination. Communicative competency is the act of making sense of these attitudes, patterns, and behaviors.  The potential is to broaden the understanding of the existing knowledge base of values and beliefs and perhaps introduce new knowledge that can contribute to Bower’s social vision.

     Relativization and liminality are intimately related to, and somewhat dependent on, an educational system that prepares students to think critically about the very foundations upon which social reality has been constructed.  That education has to accept a more prevalent role and a different approach to the socialization of students is perhaps the key to Bower’s theoretical approach to understanding the nature and power of existing knowledge, as well as influencing the acquisition of new knowledge.  It is the role education, primarily teachers, can play in creating the learning environment, organizing the classroom, and implementing the curriculum, that allows students (and teachers) to explore the origins and continued existence of these taken-for-granted values, beliefs and attitudes that shape current society and will have to be renegotiated in Bower’s socially constructed just society.  Their role in reestablishing human authority over social reality, engaging in de-reification as it were, is tied to their access to language codes deeply embedded in classroom structure, curriculum, textbooks and the teacher-student relationship.  They have to work hard to unearth these codes as they are also products of the very same language socialization.    

     In a change of the Berger-Luckmann construct, Bowers includes teachers as sources of primary socialization.  Indeed, Bowers believes that teachers do not have a choice about getting involved in the socialization process; “How they choose to socialize is the key.  (Pg. 95)   Bowers contends that educators are uniquely positioned to be “significant others” in the process of examining knowledge the origins of knowledge. (Pg. 55-57) Because there is such a strong connection between language and thought in schools, “we can see the potential of schools to influence the thought of students.”  (Pg. 53)  Schools’ power to control and legitimize symbolic knowledge, the knowledge that relates to the institutionally “sanctioned words, concepts, and theoretical framework,” is related to the “simple fact that the primary means of representing the culture is through language.” (Pg. 52)  

     Perhaps the greatest challenge to Bower’s theoretical construct is the simple fact that the educational system he believes must play a central role in creating change is the product of the very same values, beliefs and attitudes that has  created the social dysfunction of which Bowers is so critical.  The second part of Bower’s book is focused on the specifics of a new educational approach, an approach that requires teachers to create language environments that have the potential to reconceptualize student attitudes in order to change the very nature of American society and to create the communicative competence to support this new society.    

Action Recommendations

     Relying a bit on Tyack’s interpretation of the origins of educational organization, schools are characterized by a structure that is bureaucratic, efficient, and highly centralized, are designed to control the scope of knowledge and behavior of an increasingly pluralistic student population, and exist to serve the needs of an industrialized, politicized society.  Reflecting this interpretation, Bowers believes students are “processed” through the system. It is this powerful historical tradition that teachers and educators must confront and change.  Teachers must contest these objective truths that are responsible for the cultural ideas that influence the organization of schools and that have shaped teacher preparation and behavior since the early days of the common school movement.                Through their understanding and use of language, teachers can exert control and shape social reality, as opposed to being largely subservient to the dehumanized schools. 

This whole idea of human authorship is fundamental to making sense of Bowers’ sociology of knowledge construct.  Bowers postulates that the loss of human control can be countered by an education that is focused on a communication approach that encourages human ownership over ideas and practices.   It is not necessarily about creating new ideas, but understanding the origins of current attitudes in order to internalize them.  Bowers argues that all “social reality is a human construct:  all knowledge has human authorship.”  (Pg. 68)   Because communication, education, and socialization are interchangeable terms, teachers have the power to control the language that is being used to create social reality.  The question is whether the “dynamics of cultural transmission carried on by the teacher contributes to the student’s ability to think and communicate more effectively or binds the student to a world of taken-for-granted beliefs where behavior and thought are culturally dictated. “ (Pg. 56)  It involves a reexamination of how teachers organize their classrooms, how they interpret their relationship to students, how well they have relativized the curriculum, what kind of pedagogy they use to deliver knowledge, and their willingness to problematize taken-for-granted attitudes.                These are all manifestations of a communication approach that demands much of teachers.  To a certain extent they are also faced with understanding and overcoming facets of their own socialization. The following are aspects of the kind of teacher Bowers believes can create an intellectual environment that will ensure the development of communicative competency. 

1. Teachers must possess the means of understanding the dynamics of the socialization process in which the student is involved.  Teachers have to comprehend the nature of socialization. 
2. Teachers must understand the content of the curriculum and how it conveys the take-for-granted beliefs and knowledge.  They must make some of these explicit and therefore subject to critical analysis and understanding.  They can problematize taken-for-granted knowledge.  (Pg. 58)
3. There should be very little objective reality and the teacher has to be able to identify which aspects of reality need to be “de-reified.”  (Pg. 63)  This is part of the process of becoming culturally literate. 
4. Teachers should guard against audible silence.  This form of communication suggests that teachers are unable or unwilling to deal with the taken-for-granted belief.  They are aware but unwilling to communicate.
5. They must analyze the cultural codes embedded in the curricula.  Curricula create and reinforce reality.  Teacher need to identify the language codes embedded in curricula. 
6. Teachers must redefine the nature of authority relationships with students.  They cannot be “ego-involved” in protecting their traditional role as classroom authority. (Pg. 75)
7. They have to reevaluate their role as protectors of taken-for-granted beliefs.  They control more complex language codes and may be unwilling to explore these codes at an explicit level.  This “undermines the development of communicative competence that the educational process is supposed to foster.”  (Pg. 67)  
8. Teacher preparation has to be reevaluated and include greater focus on cultural and cognitive preparation. 
9. Teachers have to recognize the educational moment in order to make explicit the cultural message being transmitted. 
10. Teachers have to better understand the world of the student in order to examine the deeper level of their cultural maps.  Teachers have to understand the language environment of the student, recognize the power that metaphors have on behavior, and generally incorporate the “student’s phenomenological culture in the process of socialization.”  (Pg. 87
11. Teachers should use a cross-cultural approach to broadening realities.

     Teachers, then, play an essential socialization role in the Bowers approach to making explicit the taken-for-granted assumptions and ideas that have created social reality.  On the surface, Bower’s reconceptualization of the teacher seems to be a radical departure from the more traditional teaching role, but Bowers believes that “teachers should not be neutral public servants because knowledge is not neutral.  (Pg. 68)  Bowers points out that teachers exercise power over the process of socialization and this power can either limit or increase the student’s taken-for-granted knowledge. 

     Through their use of language, teachers are important conveyors of symbolic knowledge and language codes that contain powerful, largely unexplored, meaning that comprises much of our tacit knowledge.  According to Bowers, “one participant has cultural capital—symbolic knowledge—language codes, rules, assumptions, images and conceptual models.”  These are the initiated group who will share the “basic recipe beliefs with the uninitiated.”  The uninitiated have limited access to alternative interpretations of one’s world.   Symbolic codes become powerful shapers of the individual and teachers as significant others are in a position to understand the power that language has to create social meaning.   Bowers believes that “the individual must possess knowledge of the culture that is being renegotiated.” (Pg. 29) 

     Culture, communication and consciousness moving that knowledge from tacit to explicit through interrogation and the ability to engage in meaning movement should be part of teacher preparation, classroom organization and curriculum design.  Bowers is challenging teachers to explore the content of their own socialization as well, and to realize that language is loaded with meaning that creates social reality.  How they use it has a profound impact on the origins of meaning.  Only by breaking down the ideas and meanings hidden in this language can students begin to build it back up.  The goal is to create communicative competence in students, preparing them to be active and constructive contributors to their own social reality. 

Critical Conclusion

     The radical element in Bowers approach is that he is calling on teachers to examine fundamental values and beliefs that have been part of the institutional and organizational fabric of American society.  These are also the very same very values, beliefs and ideas that have given them (teachers) their identity.  (Pg. 45)  These beliefs are historically grounded; they permeate textbooks and curriculum, and have gone largely unquestioned for their social, political, and economic value.                Bowers is highly critical of these ideas; the radical nature of his argument then is the call for teachers to lead the examination of the specific content of knowledge, those deep-seated truths that have largely created society, and the exploration of alternative values and beliefs that could possible contribute to a different social reality.  Bowers wants to “bring ideas and values to the level of explicit awareness and examine them for their social worth.”  (Pg. 63)  The radical aspect is two-fold:  1) Teachers challenged to interrogate their own consciousness, and 2) teachers are challenged to examine fundamental assumptions.  As a group they are now elevated to a position of meaning maker. It assumes that they are capable of creating explicit awareness.

     Although communicative competence, the “culturally literacy, which is the ability to read or decode the taken-for-granted assumptions and categories that underlie the individuals world of experience,” is dependent on education, Bowers recognizes out that teacher preparation programs are not designed to prepare teachers to engage in the kind of sophisticated language interrogation that is essential to exploring tacit knowledge. He writes:  “Communicative competence demands the individual must possess knowledge of the culture that is being renegotiated.”  (Pg. 29)  University departments of education must seriously consider the importance of communicative competency and design their programs to more fully prepare teachers to achieve this goal.  He correctly points out that the community could resist this activist teacher.  Again, communities do not necessarily understand, but they accept as objective reality the ideas that Bowers wants schools to more fully examine. These are “sacred (although we do not know why) realities and to challenge them is neither easy nor readily acceptable.”  (Pg. 111) 

     Lastly, no discussion of Bower is complete without mention of his criticism of neo-romanticists, liberal-technocrats, and neo-Marxists, other social theorists intent on changing the existing social system.  Bowers believes that “their denial of one’s history is problematic.  This denial does not allow them to provide the perspective that would enable the individual think about the direction in which their culture is developing.”  (Pg. 27)  He contends that “awareness of the past is simply not part of the conceptual framework of these educational critics.”  (Pg. 27) As cited above, communicative competence demands the individual possess knowledge of the culture that is being renegotiated.  Further, Bowers is not necessarily advocating overthrow of the existing system, but rather the inevitable social growth that can occur through a better understanding of its origins and foundations.  Compare this consciousness to the Neo-Marxism, liberal-technological, and new-romantics belief that the new can be understood on its own terms with Bowers theory of socialization that says that we are unconscious carriers of our past and we must first understand how that past knowledge has been acquired and what identity it has created in terms of a conceptual framework and sense of identity before we begin to a new process of socialization.  Bowers’ construct may be critical of historically grounded knowledge, but unlike other modernist reform ideologies, he does not believe we can truly break from the past. 

     Bowers concludes his discussion by asking the following question:  Does the socialization process in the classroom contribute to the student’s ability to understand the conceptual foundations for the major problems confronting society? Communicative competence, in the full sense of that phrase, thus becomes the litmus test of the adequacy of the theories that guide our approach to the education of teachers.  When debating the value of Bowers’ promise, one has to decide if the kind of communicative competence Bowers advocates is appropriate and if so, are teachers capable of creating the conditions necessary to give rise to this dialogue.  It is an enormous undertaking and one that demands mobilization of many other sources of socialization.  Teachers alone, even those most capable, are but a few of the voices that must be heard in order to ensure that human dignity is part of the language of American society.     
Epilogue
     I originally wrote most of this essay in 2009.  Since then I have moved into a new job where I am in a diverse socieconomic and racial work place.  Additinoally, I did my doctoral field work and research in the poorest zip codes of a larger Midwestern city,  In both these phenomenological experiences, I was put in a position of exploring and unpacking my tacit knowledge through a process of communicative competence through knowledge acquisition that did not necessarily have its origins in the formal classroom or was led by teachers.  Mine has been a rather personal journey toward the kind of outcomes Bowers envisions for a society based on social justice and equality.   

The sources of behavior

Lately I have found myself lapsing into the same OBSS thinking I have been railing against lo these many years. In a discussion the other day, I was looking for the one reason/explanation for a positive behavior I have noticed in certain people.  As the discussion unfolded, it became apparent to me there was no one answer, but rather a myriad of people and learning-- that together created subsequent behavior.

I found myself reflecting back to Peter Luckmann and Thomas Berger, who wrote the seminal work The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge.   I dug up the following and after reading it, decided I could do no better than to merely copy and paste it here.  I wrote it in 2009, but it is most relevant to my thinking today.  (I think my professor actually liked it as well.) I especially liked that it was grounded in a belief in the primary importance of social interaction and therefore, the ability of all to have certain control their own world--and therefore behavior.  

Because the fundamental premise of Berger and Luckmann is that social order “exists only as a product of human activity” (Pg. 14) their challenge is to fully develop the ways that knowledge becomes part of one individual and collective consciousness.  Their work may be a sociological treatment, but due to the fact that they stay so focused on an abstract plane, the book reads like a philosophical treatise on the origins of  knowledge.  I think the characterization of this work as a phenomenological philosophy is fair because Social Construction intends to explain the complex influence that all social knowledge has on the eventual construction of the current phenomena called social reality.  B & L define reality as a “quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as having a being independent of our volition and to define knowledge as the certainty that phenomena are real and they possess specific characteristics. “ (Pg. 1) 

          When we as readers struggle to understand B & L, we must always remember that they begin from the rather large assertion that “sociology of knowledge must concern itself with everything that passed for knowledge in society,” (Pg. 14) a tall task indeed.  Knowledge for B & L is the “sum total of what everybody knows about a social world, an assemblage of maxims, morals, proverbial nuggets of wisdom, values, beliefs, myths, and so forth.” (Pg. 65.)  It is an attempt to make sense of human behavior and interaction, mainly the man in the street, a potentially irrational subject for analysis.  Their intention is to make sense of how human reality is constructed and they resist approaching it as simplistic or narrowly originated.

While they utilize religion and social production in order to develop their theory, Sociology of Knowledge essentially describes the theoretical process of knowledge acquisition and eventual transmission throughout society.  Ironically, at the same time we struggle with rather sophisticate philosophical approach the authors take to explaining they early in the book tell us that their intention is to more fully explain “common sense knowledge” and the process of socially constructing “everyday life.” (Pg. 15-19)  B & L do not set out to describe the actual construct of social behavior; Sociology of Knowledge is primarily about how one’s social world is built.   

The complexity of the B & L construct relates to their belief that “sociology must be carried out in a continuous conversation with both history and philosophy or lose its proper object of inquiry.  This object is society as part of a human world, made my men, inhabited by men, and, in turn, making men.  It is a humanistic discipline.” (Pg. 189)  Society is the result of a myriad of increasingly complex shared human interactions and experiences.  B & L belief that there are three parts to the socially constructed world. (Pg. 61)   

1.      Social order is a human product.

2.      Society is an objective reality.

3.      Man is a social product.   

Additionally, the level of process complexity builds when going from part one to part two to part three.  Starting at the point of social order creation, B & L trace knowledge acquisition through a number of exceedingly more sophisticated levels of knowledge acquisition until they reach primary and secondary socialization, which seem to be the point at which knowledge is part of the individual and collective objective and subjective consciousness.  This is also when the individual internalizes meaning into his own social world and becomes capable of transmitting this meaning to future generations and possibly even switch worlds.  (Explanation:  I am going to skip Parts I and II as they are not pertinent to our concern today.)

Part three of the process is when man is viewed as a social product and the individual begins to internalize social meaning.  Internalization is defined as, “the immediate apprehension or interpretation of an objective even as expressing meaning, that is, as a manifestation of another’s subjective process which thereby becomes subjectively meaningful to myself.” (Pg. 129)  It is both the basis for understanding others and for understanding the world as a meaningful social reality.  At this level the individual is a participant in the creation of social meaning and begins to transmit this reality to future generations.  By ‘successful socialization’ we mean the “comprehensive and consistent induction of an individual in to the objective world of a society.”  (Pg. 130) Induction takes place through primary and secondary socialization.

1.     Primary socialization – “the first socialization an individual undergoes in childhood through which he becomes a member of society.”  (Pg. 130)  This is usually the most important one for an individual and is carried out by the family. According to B & L, at the time when primary socialization ends, the “he is an effective member of society and in subjective possession of a self and a world.”   (Pg. 130)

2.     Secondary socialization – “any subsequent process that inducts an already socialized individual into new sectors of the objective world of his society.”  (Pg. 130)   

Some Concluding Thoughts

I think their development of primary socialization was perhaps a bit too narrow and probably a little too clean.  While family is a predominate source of values and beliefs, I would also argue that school, church, and peers are important primary influences.  These socialization agents are actively interacting at ages that can have profound impact on the core knowledge that one acquires.  I am not entirely sure when these influences cease to be meaningful.  

The Social Construction of Reality fundamentally respects the role humans play in creating social knowledge.  This knowledge is highly personal to its creators and attempting to understand its origins is a difficult proposition indeed.   Their sophisticated approach to understanding the deep individual and collective meaning may leave the reader a bit confused at times, but the subject matter does not lend itself to easy explanation, nor should it be.  Meaning and consciousness originates in the thoughts, ideas, values, beliefs, and language of individuals and groups.  B & L offer us a compelling social philosophical approach to understanding how meaning is created and the possibility that it can also be recreated.  I dismiss any concerns about the date of publication and consider the work as relevant today as in 1966.  We as readers must remember that this is first and foremost a treatise on process and is thus not time bound.  Let us not let the use of sexist language obfuscate their serious pursuit of understanding.   Their theory of knowledge construction is easily applicable to contemporary society. 

Ultimately, though, B & L offer hope that we can control our own world.  After all, we created it.  We are in a position to understand and change the nature of the knowledge that we use to construct our social world because we own that reality.  Although I question the relative absence of recognition of economic and political influence on socially constructed knowledge, B & L believe that our reality is not external to us and therefore to a certain extent we possess the ability to alter or change it.  Understanding this as a complex challenge, the point remains that this is as they say a “humanistic” discipline and is thus focused clearly on the human condition.  Power and control reside in our consciousness.  We must first understand the process that has created our own consciousness and only then can we begin to change the consciousness of others.  

This "humanistic" conclusion is important to me.  It implies for me they have a fundamental belief in the inherent goodness/rationality of humans. However, I suspect they would argue there is no such thinkg as a state of nature, but rather behavior is shaped--and explained--by knowledge acquired in both the primary and secondary socialization phases.  This might explain why people do bad things, like the recent slaughter of innocent students in Oregon.   Does it not also explain why people do good things as well.  We can shape knowledge and behavior, but I cannot reduce my own belief that there is inherent goodness in us.  If people go awry, I choose to belief external socialization has so strong as to overwhelm internal goodness. This struggle between good and evil is precisely why I am "The Uneasy Optimist...."