Resisting Divide-and-conquer Strategies in Education : Pathways and Possibilities

Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns continue to stoke fear, othering, villainization, and dehumanization of minoritized groups, pushing false and problematic narratives that inhibit progress toward social justice. Weaponizing hegemony and leveraging misinformation, reactionary agents and institutions seek to suppress truth, block access to democratic participation, and dismantle education and other sites of emancipatory possibility through the strength of divide-and-conquer mechanisms, pitting relatively disempowered groups against one another to preserve the dominant social order.

Readers of this book will encounter conceptual and critical interrogations of divide and conquer. The text will help facilitate inquiry and engagement into how divide and conquer operates and how it can be resisted. It looks at the history of the phenomenon, as well as its current state, especially as it relates to education. What insights and lessons might we learn from a focused examination of divide and conquer, and what strategies of resistance are both possible and necessary for challenging it?

This text is designed for undergraduate and graduate classrooms in education and social sciences. Part I, Ideology and Sociopolitical Contexts, dissects how divide-and-conquer mechanisms operate ideologically and sociopolitically. Part II, Policies and Practices, focuses on how divide-and-conquer mechanisms shape exclusionary U.S. educational policies and practices. Part III, Resistance and Liberation, documents efforts of liberatory communicative, curricular, and pedagogical possibilities. Each chapter concludes with a set of critical questions for reflection and engagement.

Perfect for courses such as: Foundations of Education; Schools and Society; Schooling in America; History of Education; Philosophy of Education; Sociology of Education; Social Studies; Critical Theory in Education

Dr. Dennis L. Rudnick is an Assistant Professor of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He has over 25 years of experience as an educator, researcher, administrator, facilitator, program developer, consultant, and public speaker on multicultural, civil rights, and social justice issues. Dr. Rudnick formerly served as an Assistant Professor and Dean's Diversity Fellow at Missouri State University, and Associate Director of Multicultural Education and Research at Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis. Dr. Rudnick's research focuses on the relationships between identity, ideology, socialization, knowledge construction and their impacts on White anti-oppressive teacher identity development. Recent scholarship includes “The Least Racist White Person in the Room,” published in Unhooking from Whiteness (3rd ed.); “Dilemmas in Asynchronous Multicultural Teacher Education From a Relational Pedagogy Perspective,” published in the Handbook of Research on Opening Pathways for Marginalized Individuals in Higher Education; and “Walking on Egg Shells: Colorblind Ideology and Race Talk in Teacher Education,” published in Multicultural Education Review.

Dr. Zeus Leonardo is Professor and past Associate Dean (2018–2021) of Education, and Faculty of the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and a past Vice President of AERA’s Division G, Social Context of Education (2017–2020). He has received recognition from several organizations, including the Derrick Bell Legacy Award from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association and the Scholars of Color Distinguished Career Contribution Award from AERA. Leonardo has authored or edited ten books, including Race Frameworks; the 2nd edition of Education and Racism (with Norton Grubb); Race, Whiteness and Education; and his most recent book, Edward Said and Education. Throughout his career, his intellectual engagements have moved across the works of Paulo Freire, Louis Althusser, Charles Mills, Edward Said, and Frantz Fanon. In many publications, he has critically analyzed race, class, and gender stratification in education; democratic schooling; and diversity in multiple forms, including epistemological and ideological difference. His work in ideology critique is interdisciplinary and brings together insights on ideology from sociology, classical and contemporary philosophy, and cultural studies. In addition to invitations in the U.S., Professor Leonardo has delivered keynotes in England, Sweden, Canada, and Australia. He is at work on his next book, on Fanonian Studies in Education. He is a member of the American National Academy of Education.