Working with and against the bureaucratic state: histories of grassroots organising for public education reform, 1970s–1980s

ABSTRACT

The article introduces an international Special Issue that addresses the significant question of how and why people organise to engage with policy making in the public sphere of education, from a historical perspective. Focusing on the phenomenon of ‘grassroots' community organising during the key formation period of the 1970s and 1980s, the issue collects articles from Australia, Canada, Chile, South Korea, Spain (Catalonia) and the United States for the purpose of examining what ‘grassroots' organising might look like or encompass under different kinds of states and state bureaucratic arrangements. This introductory article outlines the editors’ own research into the Australian context before highlighting how the various articles individually and collectively contribute to questions of 1) expanding understanding of what it means to organise at the grassroots level; 2) the complex relationships between state and school; 3) connections and disconnections between the local, national and international educational domains; and 4) how, methodologically, to capture people, experiences and organisations that may be fully or partly absent from official top down historical records.

KEYWORDS:

• Grassroots
• community organising
• education policy
• participatory citizenship
• educational activism
• school and state
• 1970s, 1980s

This international Special Issue¹ addresses the significant question of how and why people organise to engage with policy making in the public sphere of education. In doing so, we approach participation from a historical perspective and through the activity of community organising. Much present-day policy making presumes that citizens should participate somehow, but the form, function and policy context of this activity has shifted historically, and remains contested politically. The worth accorded to different modes of engagement – for example, organised or collective activity, individual engagement, responsibilisation – vary depending upon who is judging (e.g. see Newman and Clarke 2009; Reay and Crozier 2005). Raising the stakes, perceived gaps between citizen expectations and the performance of democratic institutions have been described internationally in terms of a crisis in democratic legitimacy, or a ‘democratic deficit’ (Norris 2011). The Special Issue focuses on the phenomenon of ‘grassroots’ community organising for education reform during the historical period of the 1970s and 1980s. The 1970s–1980s was a significant period for publicly expressed community ferment surrounding education across the globe, animated by a range of issues and working with and against a range of different kinds of states and state bureaucratic arrangements and was, we argue, a critical formation period for contemporary understandings and practices.

While the histories of public education institutions and systems are relatively well known from the perspective of top and centre, there has been less attention given to policy histories of those who worked to shape them from the ground up – from the grassroots. The articles in this Special Issue responded to a call for submissions offering alternative, outside-in, perspectives on the making and development of the structures and systems of public education institutions, during a key period in their modern development. Our international Call for Papers was motivated by a set of interests developed during our own research into the history of Australian education policy activism², which we outline below before turning to further discussion of the contribution of the collected articles.

Our purpose in issuing this invitation was to gather accounts that would advance a genuinely international understanding of the variety of aims, forms and strategies that might be included under the categories of ‘grassroots’ or ‘community’ organising and of how different groups of people worked with or against particular state arrangements and apparatuses in the education policy field. Organising from ‘below’ or ‘outside’ has, in different ways and in different places, been motivated by different educational ‘problems’ and been undertaken by groups of people with different kinds of claims to education expertise or authority or rights. There have been different kinds of success and failure and different reform agendas, such as those who might be considered ‘progressive’ – for example those seeking class, race or gender justice, and/or decolonisation – or those who might be considered ‘conservative’ – for example, pro-censorship or morals campaigners (e.g. see Gerrard, Goodwin & Proctor forthcoming; Arrow, Barrett Meyering, and Robinson 2021).

In bringing together perspectives from Australia, Canada, Chile, South Korea, Spain (Catalonia) and the United States, this Special Issue gathers accounts of a rich variety of contexts, circumstances and organisational forms in order to foster new historically grounded, international conversations about civic engagement, democratic participation, community action and educational administration.

Community organising and participatory citizenship in Australian education policy: an agenda for research

In the 1970s and 1980s, debates about the democratic legitimacy of the Australian parliamentary system of representative democracy, with a Westminster tradition of policy making in which primary control of policy decisions is in the hands of elected representatives, accelerated with demands for greater citizen participation (e.g. Pateman 1970). In what Anna Yeatman (1990) described as the ‘democratic-participative’ era in Australian public administration, governments responded with the development of new mechanisms to enable citizen participation – in some areas of policy and for some issues. It is in this period that a discourse of citizen participation in policy processes developed, and what Painter (1992) calls ‘an official ideology of participation’ emerged, meaning that citizens expected that for some decisions they would be provided institutionalised opportunities (beyond the ballot box) to participate (see also Gerrard 2017). In the midst of these debates an array of new organisations and associations appeared on the social and educational policy landscape in Australia. Small and large community groups concerned with issues such as gender equality, gay and lesbian liberation, childcare, adult education, migrant rights and Indigenous self-determination proliferated to press for changes in education practice and policy and make claims upon the state (e.g. see Burgmann 2003; Arrow 2023; Barrett Meyering 2022; Willett 2000; Brennan 1998; Martin 1978; Lo Bianco 2016; Goodall, Norman, and Russon 2022). Community-based political activity of this period has been theorised as central to developments in the Australian welfare state and Australian public administration, and to contemporary community development and political participation ideals (e.g. see Blackmore 1999; Meagher and Goodwin 2015; Sawer 2002).

The history of community organising and participatory citizenship in education policy in 1970s–1980s Australia can be situated as part of a much longer international history of interconnection between educational institutions, democratic structures and citizenship. The fostering of a democratically competent citizenry has taken different forms over the past century and a half in Australia, and education has been a key element, through state interventions including the introduction of compulsory schooling in the late nineteenth century, and the expansion of secondary schooling in the mid-twentieth (e.g. see Campbell and Proctor 2014). The idea that citizens, parents or community members could and should participate in the shaping of education was supported by varied rationales from ‘above’ and ‘below’. For instance, parent and community participation in school governance was advocated by one touring US expert during the 1950s as a bulwark against the dangers of Cold War totalitarianism (Butts 1955). In the early 1970s grassroots community participation was encouraged by the major Whitlam Labor government report Schools in Australia (Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commission 1973). Throughout the twentieth century and into the present, demands for educational reform have been at the heart of rights-based citizen mobilisations.

In the Australian context, the modern liberal political imaginary surrounding citizen participation, democratic structures and policy reform are invariably connected to the form and function of settler colonialism. The Australian nation state is a settler state, based on a logic of the eradication, containment and assimilation of Indigenous people and culture. This logic is driven by what Goenpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2015) describes as the ‘white possessive’, in which the settler state violently displaces Indigenous people, making both them and their land a white possession. Education has been central to the white possessive of Australia's nation state; central to the ways in which particular kinds of knowledge, culture, and existence are legitimised and authorised, and others ignored and destroyed (see Nakata 2007; Sriprakash, Rudolph, and Gerrard 2022). It is also a site of struggle, upon which alternative claims on the state have been, and are, waged in ways that refuse and resist the modern liberal democratic imaginary, demonstrating the ongoing character of settler colonialism, its violences, and its enduring presence and challenges to this (see Simpson 2014; Mills 2017).

Thus, in addressing the question of community organising in this Special Issue, we do not presume a linear arc of participation that views organising as constantly improving the modern bureaucratic state. Rather, we see community organising as one means by which the dynamic interrelationship between government and people is animated. Understanding the underpinning logics of settler colonialism assists to break free from problematic modernist linkages between ‘the state’ and ‘the people’ as stable and recognisable entities, and rather draws attention to the fact that who the people are, and what their relationship is to the state, has never been a pre-given, has been (and is) riddled with foundational exclusions and has never been settled.

Although their activities and campaigns occurred in living memory, the understanding of grassroots education reform groups and community organising as a collective historical phenomenon is limited and uneven. In calling for increased scholarly attention to this phenomenon we intend to strengthen consideration of community organising as a force, or movement, or collective experience – and to contribute to the mapping of synchronicity and of diversity within and between a variety of settings. This is challenging conceptually and also methodologically. By their nature, the kinds of groups active in the past can be elusive and fragmented in the public record and the boundaries around what is and what is not a ‘grassroots’ movement is hard to draw, even while, we argue, the idea of ‘grassroots’ is useful to think with. Many of these groups were ad hoc, ephemeral and almost invisible in the public record, while others either grew or were absorbed into more formal structures and yet others were subgroups, splits or fractions of larger organisations.

We propose that community organising is not simply a governmental form or political ideal but is also constituted by a set of social and knowledge practices encompassing a complex interaction of networks, sensibilities, activities and knowledge-making practices. These things cannot be understood as merely means to an end but build their own nature and momentum, in and of themselves shaping the nature, strength and sustainability of civic engagement and dispositions for participation. In the 1970s and 1980s, the activity was educational in itself, as people informed themselves and others about the substantive issues they were concerned about and also about how to conduct themselves organisationally and strategically. This included interactions between the local production of knowledge and expertise, and the international and global circulation of books, ideas and influencers, for example, radical thinkers like Paulo Freire and conservative Christian groups like the US's Moral Majority.

In the next section, we highlight how the Special Issue articles individually and collectively contribute to questions of (1) expanding understanding of what it means to organise at the grassroots level; (2) the complex relationships between state and school; (3) connections and disconnections between the local, national and international educational domains; and (4) how, methodologically, to capture people, experiences and organisations that may be fully or partly absent from official historical records.

International perspectives on community organising and education reform, 1970s–1980s

In the first article of this issue, Delamaza and Palma Carvajal (2023) provide an analysis of the development and transformation of grassroots educational organisations in Chile between the 1960s and 1980s. This was a period of dramatic political change – from democracy to dictatorship – and the history of Chilean NGOS involved in education reform during this period underscores how relationships between grassroots educational organisations and the bureaucratic state cannot be separated from the prevailing political conditions. The article shows that during the ‘democratic period’ (1958–1973) the Chilean state nurtured grassroots organisations through emancipatory political projects and encouraged the creation of NGO providers of education. Under the military dictatorship of Pinochet (1973–1990), the Chilean state became the adversary of grassroots organisations, where political leaders and activists were ‘persecuted, tortured and killed’, and grassroots organisations adapted to take on an oppositional role. The authors use the language of the state space being ‘closed’ to grassroots organisations during the civil military dictatorship. This closure was buffered at times through spaces for activists and opposition provided by the Catholic church, which had historically been very strongly associated with both popular education and education reform in Chile, and through international networks of support for Freirean popular education programmes including the production of oppositional education materials. The language of openings and closings might assist in thinking about grassroots organising for education reform, providing an alternative to conceiving grassroots organisations as a ‘counterweight’ to the state (see also Fawcett et al. 2009).

Thomas (2023) provides much-needed scholarly attention on the importance of Indigenous self-determination movements for education reform and practice in the 1970s and 1980s, focussing in particular on the efforts to establish the Indigenous-controlled Yipirinya School. As a non-Indigenous scholar, Thomas’ contribution is to document the work of Indigenous activists and advocates whose work was central to establishing Yipirinya School, drawing on interviews and school archives to which Thomas was granted access. As Thomas notes, there is a pressing need to acknowledge and engage with meanings and practices of Indigenous self-determination, particularly in the context of the weight of literature that focuses on assimilation and oppression (see also Rademaker and Rowse 2020; McKinley and Smith 2019; Behrendt 2003; Watego et al. 2021). In addition, the article shows the significant differences between self-determination as settler colonial state policy, and self-determination as envisioned by the Yipirinya founders and the local Indigenous polity. The account demonstrates how in settler colonial contexts interactions between grassroots organisations and the bureaucratic state are predicated on the denial of Indigenous sovereignty (see Bishop 2021; Tuck and Yang 2012). Thomas’ analysis highlights the limit-points of the liberal settler state's fiction of a universal public education, when this universality acts to exclude and oppress (see Simpson 2014). In response, the schools’ activists argue for the state's responsibility for public education as a responsibility for Indigenous control and self-determination.

Lee (2023) recounts how in 1985 the editors of the short-lived South Korean teachers’ magazine Minjung Gyoyuk (People's Education) described their intentions in advocating for progressive political and education reform: ‘We edited this book with great shame; the terrible shame that we have had our eyes closed to this contradictory reality in education for all these years. It is impossible to hold our heads high’ (2). Manifestos, pamphlets and periodical print publications were significant elements of the public pedagogical repertoires of grassroots groups during the 1970s and 1980s internationally and the quote comes from an editorial declaration that encapsulates the political wakening of a group who were explaining how they had been compromised by working within a corrupt system. The teachers were influenced by international reform movements from the west, for example, the magazine cited Bowles and Gintis and Michael Apple, but Lee's article especially invites consideration of the moral and affective dimensions of activism, through an exploration of the culturally grounded notion of shame. In what is known as the Minjung Gyoyuk Incident the magazine's editors were dismissed from their jobs and arrested, and the magazine was banned. The teachers involved were instrumental in the 1989 establishment of the ‘iconic’ progressive teacher union, the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (Jeonguk Gyojigwon Nodong Johab), after the transition to democracy in 1987. The union was closed down again during the 1990s, and its masses of members stood down because of a state restriction on teacher politicisation (also see Apple et al. 2022). The article shows the risk of activism in the face of the terrible repression under the military dictatorships of the 1980s.

Parcerisa, Collet-Sabe and Villalobos (2023) provide an account of the Rosa Sensat movement for pedagogical renewal in Catalonia, which emerged in the era of Franco's dictatorship and which then contributed to educational reform in the years following Franco's demise. Whilst a Catalonian movement, the Rosa Sensat movement was connected to trans-national educational debates and networks surrounding pedagogy and curriculum, pointing to the significance of international flows of educational ideas and practices in the construction of local grassroots activist networks (see also Giménez Martínez 2015). Rosa Sensat, the Catalonian teacher who the movement was named after, was also involved in transnational education conferences and networks throughout the early twentieth century. In this article, Parcerisa, Collet-Sabe and Villalobos trace how the Rosa Sensat movement crafted its purpose in resistance to Franco's dictatorship, in relation to the transition to democracy, and as an increasingly legitimised policy actor, acting more concertedly on – and in some cases with – the bureaucratic state by the late 1970s and early 1980s. This was a movement that combined teachers rights and conditions (i.e. the need for adequate pay and preparation) with a commitment to a universal right to education and ‘the idea of education as a service to society’ (6). Their close analysis of the movement's journal, books and autobiographical texts of key activists provides thoughtful insight into the transforming roles of activist organisations in the context of dramatic and drastic transformations of the state.

Johanek's (2023) article examines the history of grassroots community organising in Chicago tracking the emergence and significance of the city's United Neighbourhood Organizing (UNO). This particular case is the product of, as Johanek describes it, a ‘heady blend of Mexican-American activism, urban political reform, Alinskyite community organising, and Catholic social justice’ (2). Recounting its establishment, Johanek demonstrates the powerful ways in which parents – faced with educational inequalities, under-resourced schools, and structural racism – made their own networks, organisations, and even schools. These parents often had to work in antagonism with the state and local politicians, a struggle perhaps most evocatively captured in the display of a banner at a celebration of the opening of a new school: ‘The school was built by the community, not by the politicians – who can go straight to hell’ (Johanek, 2). Bringing attention to the enduring influence of American community organiser and theorist Saul Alinksy (see e.g. Alinksy 1990 (1971)), this article traces the ways in which the existing religious networks and cultures (in this case Catholicism) were entangled with new formations of community organisign in the 1970s and into the 1980s. Notably, Johanek's analysis reveals the centrality of women and mothers in the social history of education and schools, whose local work can be overlooked in favour of meta-histories of large-scale reforms and charismatic men (see Gerrard and Proctor 2022; Proctor et al. 2020).

Barnes, Meyers and Knight's (2023) contribution provides original insight into conservative forms of community activism in education in the 1970s and 1980s in Australia. Self declared as a grassroots group advocating for parent-controlled Christian schools and against secular state schooling, the Logos Foundation was connected to local networks of the Christian Right as well as having international links to the US-based right-wing think tank, The Chalcedon Foundation. Noting the diversity of what ‘the’ Christian Right is, Barnes, Meyers and Knight highlight how some of the Christian Right understood their religious commitment to be animated through political interventions and campaigning (see also Deckman 2004; Lugg 2000). Notable are the ways in which the Logos Foundation rallied against educational bureaucracies, teacher colleges, and any attempt at state standardisation as inhibiting their right to educate in (their view of) God's image. This article brings the history of school choice activism in the 1970s and 1980s into direct conversation with more recent reforms and now taken-for-granted conservative discourses surrounding the entitlements and rights of ‘school choice’, the public funding of religious schools in Australia, and the rights of Christian schools to discriminate in their employment and enrolment practices (see also Symes and Gulson 2008; McLeay, Poulos, and Richardson-Self 2023). Their analysis intermingles reflections of their own parents’ involvement in these movements (particularly Barnes and Meyers) with examination of the networks and outputs of the Logos Foundation, providing a rich account of the diversity of Christian RIght activism and its tactics. This methodology also highlights the somewhat ephemeral character of some of the groups of this era, whose records and archives are not easily available.

McDermid and Winton (2023) also position their work in relation to contemporary debates, in their case the question of government funding of private schooling. Shedding significant insight into the diversity of activism and standpoints, McDermid and Winton examine the competing, disparate and converging discourses that surrounded Ontario's Commission on Private Schools in 1984. This analysis demonstrates how discourses of equality, diversity, multiculturalism were interconnected with questions of school funding (see also Koizner, Nikolai, and Waldow 2017; Rowe 2016; Windle 2015; Campbell, Proctor, and Sherington 2009). Methodologically, the use of Hajer's discourse approach provides much-needed analytic depth for considering how coalitions are formed to advocate for educational change notwithstanding differences and even antagonisms within such coalitions. In so doing, McDermid and Winton highlight how critical policy moments, such as the Commission, are significant moments within which the meanings and practices of key ideas, such as fairness and multiculturalism, are contested and multifariously claimed. The messy entanglement of state bureaucracy, policy actors, advocates, and grassroots activism that McDermid and Winton describe, propels us to consider the blurry and fluid boundaries of the state, schools and their communities and the ways in which these boundaries are constantly being made and remade through the struggle over schooling.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen Proctor

Helen Proctor uses historical methods to examine the making of contemporary educational systems by focussing on the changing relationships between schools, families and communities. She has a particular research interest in histories of how schools have shaped social life beyond the school gate.

Jessica Gerrard

Jessica Gerrard researches the changing formations, and lived experiences, of social inequalities in relation to education, activism, work and unemployment. She works across the disciplines of sociology, history and policy studies with an interest in critical methodologies and theories.

Susan Goodwin

Susan Goodwin undertakes research on social policy, gender, and social change and is an authority on the application of poststructuralist perspectives in policy research. She engages in collaborative research projects with a range of government, nongovernment and civil society organisations and contributes to local, national and international policy processes.

Notes

1 The editors would like to thank Dr Heather Weaver for all her work in bringing this Special Issue to completion.

2 Proctor, Gerrard and Goodwin, 'Community organising in Australian education policy, 1970s-1980s', Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP200102378.