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Kyle A. Greenwalt
To cite this article: Kyle A. Greenwalt (2016) School sucks: Desire, Journal of Curriculum and
Pedagogy, 13:1, 35-38, DOI: 10.1080/15505170.2016.1138255
Article views: 5
Download by: [Michigan State University] Date: 24 May 2016, At: 09:03
JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY
2016, VOL. 0, NO. 0, 1–3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2016.1138255
rate things with our desires. I take for granted that schooling operates to both cre-
ate desires among children and give space for their release. That schooling acts to
concentrate desire and disperse it—that it both sucks and blows.
In seeking an opposite for the sucking of desire, then, I propose that we also
consider the way in which “school blows.” Like the head of the spent dandelion
that most every child finds so irresistible, schooling also takes our desires and
blows them away in the most random of manners, allowing them to drift hither
and thither, unanchored and unrealized.
CONTACT Kyle A. Greenwalt greenwlt@msu.edu Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State Univer-
sity, Erickson Hall, 620 Farm Lane, East Lansing, MI 48824.
© 2016 Curriculum & Pedagogy Group
2 K. A. GREENWALT
then we need help in distinguishing between what we desire and what is truly
desirable. School might play a bigger part in shaping desire toward those most
desirable ends—and, indeed, in recognizing the very limits, if not the essential dys-
function, of desire itself.
But can a teacher really love the children under her care, in a way, as Horace
Mann hoped, that was “better than parental?”
Probably not.
Going to school in my pajamas—or even worse yet, naked—is a dream I have
had many times in my life. In this, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.
If such a shared dream does in fact exist, it is a unique testimony to what school-
ing has done to our desires. Universal, compulsory schooling is not an ancient
institution. It has not entered into the collective unconscious through its approxi-
mation to some powerful archetype.
No. If such dreams are common, it is because the experience of schooling is
nearly universal. So, apparently, is the underlying desire that we can achieve inti-
macy in that space: union with a significant other, in an institution that promises
love but cannot deliver it.
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 09:03 24 May 2016
In this way, our dreams speak to us a profound truth. School sucks. And don’t
forget it!
Contributor
Kyle Greenwalt is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan
State University. He studies the school curriculum by exploring teacher–student relationships
and the factors that have shaped such relationships over time. Kyle’s forthcoming book, Home/
schooling, is published by Sense Publishers and explores themes relating to the moral and emo-
tional well-being of children, parents, and public school teachers.
References
Blount, J. (2005). Fit to teach. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Garrison, J. (1997). Dewey and Eros. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Mann, H. (1843/1957). Seventh annual report to the Massachusetts board of education. In L. A.
Cremin (Eds.), The republic and the school: Horace Mann on the education of free men. New
York, NY: Teachers College Press.