Body pedagogics and the corporeal curriculum in "no-excuses" charter schools

• Published in: The Review of education/pedagogy/cultural studies Vol. 44; no. 1; pp. 25 - 43
• Main Author: Stahl, Garth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01.01.2022; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Charter Schools; Curricula; Discipline Policy; Discourse Analysis; Educational Policy; Excuses; Human Body; Neoliberalism; Racial Bias; Zero Tolerance Policy
• ISSN: 1071-4413; 1556-3022
• DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2021.1997499

Recent studies note how the US school reform movement is premised on a policy-making agenda that aims to redress what it sees as the complacent approach of educators who have, as reformers suggest, made poverty an excuse for low achievement levels in economically disadvantaged schools. An increasingly significant pedagogical approach employed to counter this apparent failure of complacency is "no-excuses" (NE) pedagogy, which combines high academic expectations with strict behavior rules meant to ensure a consistently controlled learning environment. Central to this approach is the body of the student, which is scrutinized as an object of surveillance. While it is difficult to assert the extent of NE pedagogies, they appear most often in the advertising materials for high-performing charter schools serving students of color which have come under scrutiny for these practices. Tomlinson and Lipsitz (2013) call attention to the need to scrutinize "social and cultural pedagogies that create neoliberal subjects, that show how people are made into neoliberal subjects able to overlook the contradictions of neoliberalism, the social conditions it creates, and its exploiting of racial arguments" (p. 7). Giroux (2003) writes how antiracist theorists have not focused enough on the link between racism and neoliberalism. In this article, Garth Stahl positions common theorizing on body pedagogics, making links to neoliberal policies and NE pedagogy. Second, an argument for the "corporeal curriculum" is articulated and how it concerns the policing and disciplining of students toward responsibilized neoliberal citizens. This is followed by an articulation of the analytical framework and methodology used to interrogate key teacher training texts where Stahl seeks to make connections between the empirical and the theoretical before concluding with a brief discussion and conclusion.