Education policy as 'counter-insurgency'?

Andrew J. Bacevich reviews a recent book that examines, and deconstructs, the military strategy of counter-insurgency (in the Chronicle of Higher Education). He retells the key points made by the author (Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War).  Reading them, I was stuck by the analogy to education.  Perhaps inappropriate?  Perhaps, indeed.  Yet, let me elaborate.  Below are Bacevich's summary of the criticisms of COIN made by Porch. After each, I will explain the resonance to education.

• First, COIN is neo-imperialism in drag. The same "ethos of paternalism" that empire-builders once devised to justify their actions persists. What we have and represent is what they—Algerians, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans—want and need. COIN ostensibly offers the means to make good on this invented obligation. Underlying "contemporary COIN as a hearts and minds, good governance, state-building exercise," Porch writes, is a tacit assumption that "non-Western societies exist in a time-warp which the adoption of Western practices ... will allow them to overcome."

Policy makers claim to speak for the goals and purposes of education. Rather than investigate the indigenous practices, norms and meanings that constitute effective teaching and learning that emerge in local communities and across campuses from the ground up, policy makers posit their own norms and meanings (and increasingly, mandated practices: see NCLB and RttT). Teachers exist in a time-warp to the policy makers, resisting advanced practices that will allow them to overcome the encrustations of bygone, failed systems.

• Second, this duty to liberate, civilize, or uplift provides a pretext to do the otherwise impermissible. "This small wars tradition," Porch writes, "views insurgents as beneath the respect accorded combatants by the laws of war." The bad guys are mere outlaws or criminals—in contemporary parlance, terrorists. As a consequence, Western soldiers engaged in small wars cite "the barbarous nature of their enemies" to exempt themselves "from the requirement to follow civilized standards of warfare." In practice, this provides a tacit authorization for torture, prisoner abuse, and collective punishment of local populations deemed insufficiently cooperative in helping to out the insurgents.

Convinced of the supremacy of their ideas, policy makers can view teachers as 'outlaws,' obstructionists in need of (at best) managing and (at worst) removal.  The 'laws of war' are changed: elimination of collective bargaining rights, teacher autonomy and local curricula. Punishment replaces reward.   Being a team player - 'cooperative' - matters (think of the influx of PLCs shaped by top-down agenda, rather than organic discussions about students and their needs).

• Third, peel back the grand claims, and there's remarkably little substance underneath. Counterinsurgency inverts Clausewitz. Rather than defining war as the continuation of politics, it employs violence as an excuse to avoid tough decisions, compensating for a "lack of a strategy with tactical solutions." COIN offers technique devoid of larger purpose, amounting to "a doctrine of escapism." What purports to be a thinking man's approach to war actually gives policy makers license to stop thinking.

The outcomes of education become test scores as measured by 'adequate yearly progress' and international comparions (TIMMS; PISA; NAEP; and soon, assessments on/for the Common Core curriculum). Rather than a means utilized by teachers to better help students learn, tests are the ends, and thus all work is subsumed to increasing achievement. The problem is that these tests are held up as representative of something larger then themselves - economic competitiveness, usually - for which there is zero evidence (nor any attempt to focus on what else impacts economic competitiveness in a global marketplace) that achievement on these tests significantly affects this larger purpose. Despite its low level of face validity (of course a more educated populace might perform better in many spheres of the global world), this policy lacks any significant substance.  It is just assumed to be valid

• Fourth, when put to the test, counterinsurgency doesn't work all that well. Even when nominally achieved, mission accomplishment exacts enormous costs. Solutions—the French "victory" in the Battle of Algiers is one example—tend to come unstuck. For this very reason, sustaining a COIN campaign finds supporters conjuring up some vast existential threat—monolithic communism or the prospect of a new caliphate controlled by rabid Islamists. Put another way, counterinsurgency stokes fantasies that undermine strategic realism.

We have been graduating more students, matriculating more students into college, increasing test scores  and IQ scores and generally accumulating a massive databank on successful pedagogies for at least a generation (especially since introduction of NCLB in 2002). And yet, the consequences indicate that, by the reformers' calculations, things are worse than ever. Thus, policy makers continue to gin up the existential threat of bad schooling to impose even more 'rigorous' standards and practices that extract enormous costs from communities (and get to beat upon teachers - see point 'Second' above).

• Finally, sooner or later, COIN-incubated chickens come home to roost, appearing as intrusive surveillance systems, militarized police forces, and profiling that categorizes certain citizens as "subversives because of their ethnicity or ideas." Porch also emphasizes counterinsurgency's corrosive impact on civil/military relations. COIN undermines military professionalism. Selling small wars converts officers into hucksters, with senior commanders subordinating truth-telling to the imperatives of public relations as they court politicians and curry favor with journalists. Worse, counterinsurgency campaigns that end badly foster resentment among soldiers who feel misused or stabbed in the back.

Scripted curricula; aggressive accountability measures; corrosive affects on teacher attitude and school climate, including erosion of collaboration (teachers working in merit pay context are incentivized not to share their best practices with others) and professionalism (cheating scandals); for profit companies sprout up to offer schools an assortment of materials that promise to maximize student gains, thus turning administrators into 'hucksters' for the sunk costs; and resentment, from teachers and communities aware of what is happening.

Bacevich ends with a prick on the military's new emphasis, like drone warfare and special ops militarism: "Together they provide not a basis for strategy, but a further excuse not to have one, even as they sustain illusions of kick-ass military supremacy."  I would argue that the reformers use of their current methods - COIN for Education - permits irresponsibility.  When means becomes the ends,  no need to consider just what school is for exists.

Inappropriate?  Please let me know.