Journal of Urban Mathematics Education

December 2009, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 1–5

©JUME. http://education.gsu.edu/JUME

DAVID W. STINSON is an assistant professor of mathematics education in the Department of

Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology, in the College of Education at Geor-
gia State University, P.O. Box 3978, Atlanta, GA, 30303-3978; e-mail: dstinson@gsu.edu. His re-

search interests include exploring sociocultural and sociohistorical aspects of mathematics and

mathematics teaching and learning from a critical postmodern theoretical (and methodological)

perspective. He is co-founder and current editor-in-chief of the Journal of Urban Mathematics

Education.

EDITORIAL

Mathematics Teacher Educators as

Cultural Workers: A Dare to Those Who

Dare to Teach (Urban?) Teachers

David W. Stinson

Georgia State University

ecently, there has been a stormy whirlwind of disparaging rhetoric blowing-

about regarding the preparation of teachers, and the work that colleges and

schools of education do—work that, I believe, is the most vital work any institu-

tion of higher learning might undertake. Being relatively new to the profession of

teacher education, I thought that the current assault on colleges and schools of

education was a new phenomenon, somehow a means of surveillance and discip-

line (Foucault, 1975/1995), similar to the solidifying surveillance and discipline

that is occurring in K–12 schools. William ―Bill‖ McDiarmid (2009), Dean of the

School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, however,

informed me: a new phenomenon—it is not.

Dean McDiarmid (2009), responding, in part, to Secretary of Education

Arne Duncan’s (2009a) October 9th speech delivered at the Rotunda at the Uni-

versity of Virginia and, in part, in anticipation of a forthcoming similar, highly

critical speech, claimed that ever since colleges and schools of education were es-

tablished within universities over a century ago they ―have been the frequent

whipping boy of politicians, commentators, liberal arts faculty and others‖

(McDiarmid, 2009, ¶ 1). To substantiate his claim, McDiarmid provided a 1928

quote from H. L. Mencken, the noted American journalist and essayist:

The great majority of American colleges [of education] are so incompetent and vi-

cious that, in any really civilized country, they would be closed by the police. …In

the typical American State they are staffed by quacks and hag-ridden by fanatics. …

The profession mainly attracts…flabby, feeble fellows who yearn for easy jobs. (as
cited in McDiarmid, 2009, ¶ 1)

But even with this enlightened history regarding the ―status‖ of colleges and

schools of education, I waited (and I suppose like many other teacher education

professionals) with hopeful anticipation for Secretary Duncan’s (2009b) follow-

Stinson Editorial

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 2, No. 2 2

up speech that he was to deliver on October 22nd at Teachers College, Columbia

University. The 23 days between the two speeches, I believed, provided Secretary

Duncan ample time to re-reflect, re-think, and re-engage with several teacher edu-

cators and education scholars who hold different and divergent perspectives on

colleges and schools of education, and the work that they (we) do—or could do.

After all, didn’t President Obama win the presidency, in part, on a platform that

emphasized the crucial need to bring different and divergent voices to the table

when discussing grave national concerns? And isn’t developing a more com-

plex—perhaps, even a rhizomatic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987)—understanding

of how the nation might provide all its children with a humanizing pedagogy

(Bartolomé, 1994) equal to any other current national concern? Therefore, I im-

agined that Secretary Duncan, as an agent at the highest level of the Obama Ad-

ministration, would bring different and divergent voices to the table in those in-

tervening days.
1
I, however, was sadly disappointed.

When Secretary Duncan (2009b), during his speech at Teachers College, re-

ferred to E. D. Hirsch as the ―father of the acclaimed, content-rich Core Know-

ledge Program‖ (¶ 29), I knew then that Secretary Duncan and I have very differ-

ent understandings of knowledge (cf. Foucault, 1969/1972), and therefore, (most

likely?) very different visions for ―effective‖ teacher education programs and col-

leges and schools of education. As he applauded E. D. Hirsch’s (1988) book Cul-

tural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, I wondered what he might

think in regards to how I use Hirsch’s text, and other similar text (see, e.g., Schle-

singer, 1998), in my mathematics teacher education courses. Along with scholars

such as Joel Spring (2008) and others, I do use Hirsch’s text as an extraordinary

exemplar, an exemplar of the delimiting and debilitating hegemony that structures

U.S. public schools and society in general—a hegemony that, on the whole, con-

tinues to reify and privilege ―only one universal subject of human history—the

white, Anglo, heterosexual male of bourgeois privilege‖ (P. McLaren as cited in

Torres, 1998, p. 178).

I also wondered why Secretary Duncan, in either speech, failed to mention

any one of the three books that have become the foundation in which the learning-

teaching–teaching-learning experience is built upon in my mathematics teacher

education courses: John Dewey’s (1938/1998) Experience and Education, Paulo

Freire’s (1970/2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Gloria Ladson-Billings’s

(1994) Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children. My

1
Henry Giroux (2009) noted, ―Just as his economic advisory team and his security council include

not one progressive or antiwar advocate, Obama’s education team is divorced from liberal and

Left-liberal perspectives‖ (p. 259), and claimed that President Obama’s ―call for education reform

in many ways embraces many of the same arguments made by George W. Bush‖ (p. 264).

Stinson Editorial

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 2, No. 2 3

hope—and yes, I am still hopeful
2
—is that many of the scholars whose work has

informed not only my scholarship but also, and most important, my pedagogy will

be asked to the table (and soon) to provide their different and divergent perspec-

tives on the national concern of teaching all of the nation’s children and, in turn,

the teacher educators who teach (and learn with) the teachers
3
(see Harvard Edu-

cational Review, Volume 79, Number 2: ―Education and the Obama Presidency‖

for perspectives from many of these scholars).

Although I was disappointed by Secretary Duncan’s remarks at both the Ro-

tunda and Teachers College, the whirlwind that his remarks blew up did give me

pause to think and reflect, and begin to examine more precisely what I—as an ur-

ban mathematics teacher educator—do in my courses, and how and why I do the

things I do. In other words, his remarks made me think: What if I was asked to the

table? Just how might I precisely articulate my vision for an effective urban ma-

thematics teacher education program or urban teacher education program in gen-

eral? But then again, why do I even use the word ―urban‖ as a descriptor? Is an

urban mathematics teacher educator, urban mathematics teacher educator pro-

gram, or, for that matter, an urban college or school of education different from

say, a ―non-urban‖ mathematics teacher educator? Should they be different? Or

should they be the same? Is an urban mathematics teacher educator one who es-

tablishes issues such as diversity, equity, democracy, freedom, and social justice

as primary and reoccurring themes in her or his mathematics education courses?

But shouldn’t such issues be primary and reoccurring themes in every mathemat-

ics teacher educators’ courses? Or, for that matter, in every teacher educators’

courses? Even in non-urban (mathematics) teacher educators’ courses? I could go

on ad infinitum posing questions that Secretary Duncan’s remarks motivated for

me as I began to examine more precisely the what, how, and why I do the things I

do in my courses, and how the things I do might or might not be compatible or

2
My hope is derived, in part, by comments made by Linda Darling-Hammond (2009) who headed

President Obama’s education policy transition team; she stated:

What attracted me to [Obama’s] campaign...were his early pronouncements of education. I sensed a sin-

cerity and a depth of commitment to education, a genuine concern for improving the quality of teaching

and learning, an intolerance of a status quo that promotes inequality, and a drive to move our education

system into the twenty-first century—not only in math, science, and technology but also in developing

creativity, critical thinking skills, and the capacity to innovate—a much-needed change from the narrow

views of the last eight years. (pp. 210–211)

3
For a bit of speculative storytelling on the probable outcomes of Secretary Duncan’s current

―corporate model‖ strategy, see Gloria Ladson-Billings (2009). And although I do not claim that

Dr. Ladson-Billings possesses some mystical powers of predicting the future (nor does she); I

have discussed with students that her speculative storytelling or predictions regarding New Or-

leans after Katrina have been and continue to become frighteningly accurate (see Ladson-Billings,

2006), an acknowledgment that she makes note of as well (2009).

Stinson Editorial

Journal of Urban Mathematics Education Vol. 2, No. 2 4

consistent with Secretary Duncan’s vision for effective teacher education pro-

grams and colleges and schools of education in general.

Nonetheless, so that I might ―scientifically‖ respond to Secretary Duncan if

I am asked to the table, I have begun doing science on the what, how, and why I

do the things I do in my mathematics education courses (and yes, the work that a

critical postmodernist does is science). As I began this new science project, I

turned to the grand master of transformative, empowering pedagogy: Paulo Freire.

It is Freire’s (1998b) posthumously published book Teachers as Cultural Work-

ers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach that inspired the title of this editorial. (I

recommend this book as a starting point for any [mathematics] teacher educator,

urban and non-urban alike, who might choose to begin a similar such project.) Al-

though Freire wrote his 10 letters to Brazilin teachers, I thought that I might use

his letters to begin organizing—in a more precise, scientific fashion—the what,

how, and why I do the things I do as a teacher (and learner) of (with) urban ma-

thematics teachers in the United States. I did not turn to his letters to provide me

with prescriptive answers to what I should do; Freire, throughout his prolific

scholarship (see, e.g., 1970/2000, 1985, 1994, 1997, 1998a, 1998b), was adamant

that his work is not to be duplicated but reinvented. Rather, I turned to Freire’s

letters to remind me that, as in all of his scholarship, he asks teachers, teacher

educators, and, in turn, colleges and schools of education to dare to think diffe-

rently, to dare to act differently, to dare to dream differently:

We must dare to learn how to dare in order to say no to the bureaucratization of the

mind to which we are exposed everyday. We must dare so that we can continue to do

so even when it is so much more materially advantageous to stop daring. (1998a, p.

As teachers of (urban?) mathematics teachers, I want to challenge—no, I

dare—each of us to institute as the primary goal for the community of mathemat-

ics educators the cultural transformation of the discipline of mathematics from the

psychologically brutalizing discipline of stratification (Bourdieu, 1989/1998) into

the psychologically humanizing discipline of freedom. We have, I believe, an eth-

ical responsibility to do so. And for me, this dare is how I plan to begin the dis-

cussion if (when?) I am asked to the table. How might you begin the discussion?

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