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A Matter of Friendship: Educational Interventions into Culture and Poverty
Author(s) -
Shuffelton Amy B.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/edth.12025
Subject(s) - friendship , sociology , poverty , power (physics) , culture of poverty , agency (philosophy) , politics , law , social science , political science , basic needs , physics , quantum mechanics
Abstract Contemporary educational reformers have claimed that research on social class differences in child raising justifies programs that aim to lift children out of poverty by means of cultural interventions. Focusing on the Knowledge Is Power Program ( KIPP ), Ruby Payne's “aha! Process,” and the Harlem Children's Zone as examples, Amy Shuffelton argues that such programs, besides overstepping the social science research, are ethically illegitimate insofar as they undermine the equitable development of civic agency. Shuffelton invokes Aristotelian civic friendship, particularly as interpreted by Danielle Allen and Sibyl Schwarzenbach, as key to a politics that avoids relations of domination and subordination. She concludes that social justice requires that educators involved with culturally interventionist programs recognize the workings of power within schooling and society, that they accept the limits of their own perspectives, and that they remain open to what is of value in child‐raising practices other than those associated with the contemporary middle class.