The Challenges Facing Teachers Today:

A Conversation with Michael W. Apple

In Part 1 of the conversation with Lucia and Tina, Apple talks about his life as an activist educator-scholar and the major influences and experiences in his own formation as a teacher. The culture of “official knowledge,” with its test-driven structure, creates a unequal system. Apple critiques the current focus on and privileging of technology, STEM, charter schools, and the displacement of education programs in higher education in favor of neoliberal training programs such as Teach for America. Organizations such as Rethinking Schools (where a former student Wayne Au is an editorial board member) are working to expose the hidden curriculum.

Participatory democracy requires students who are able to transform their knowledge to solve problems in community (The Algebra Project is one example). In Part 2 Apple examines the keywords of democracy, power, and freedom and the need of educators to reassert their control over these words. Apple is optimistic that educators, in collaboration with unions and grassroots movements for social change, can reclaim education from the market-driven push of the neoliberal right wing. Collective voices can reclaim the narrative, and create new, transformative alliances.