Beyond Academic Outcomes

Abstract

it may seem, because it lies behind many of the contemporary debates that circulate around and within either side of the academic-nonacademic outcomes discussions. For example, when critics within multicultural education argue that a reliance on programs that focus mostly on celebrations of difference and the recognition and valuing of nondominant cultures leaves unaddressed issues of structural transformation and the redistribution of power, they are building from the fundamental recognition that the institution of schooling functions as both a universal and differential mechanism of recognition and (re)distribution. Herein rests the reason it is possible to find variants of race theory, or multicultural education, that self-identify as race theory or multiculturalism. The critical impulse to understand and with the differentiating functions of schooling, as part of the larger societal apparatuses of structural inequality, will apply in any debate about what outcomes schooling does, could, or should produce. Herein lies the reason skepticism remains about the ultimate efficacy of programs that focus on celebrations and recognition of difference or identity in the critical pursuit of structural transformation (Badiou, 2008). Ultimately, however, such debates are not going to be settled by theoretical fiat or analytical nuance. The questions about what outcomes schools might produce and what their effects may be in the larger distributions of primary goods beyond schooling can be advanced beyond irreconcilable theoretical debate only if they are understood as questions of lived experience, empirical effects, and social collective experience. In 1981, Harold Berlak and Ann Berlak pointed out a paradox facing progressive educators who are concerned with educating the whole child. That is, as one of their dilemmas of schooling, Berlak and Berlak named a tension that lies between understanding the child as a person versus the child as a client. Applied to our current discussion, teachers focusing on the child as a client might be more inclined to This content downloaded from 157.55.39.130 on Wed, 23 Nov 2016 04:55:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 138 Review of Research in Education, 34 focus on academic outcomes, whereas those concerned about the child as a person might lean toward focusing on nonacademic outcomes. However, as tempting as it is, as Berlak and Berlak pointed out, the more sides of a child's life we address as teachers, the more we open the whole child to our surveillance and control. Herein lies one of the paradoxes faced in debates about nonacademic outcomes. At the same time, though, it is very hard to know which outcomes to promote (or choose not to promote) without much more research into which nonacademic programs actually do work and which have lasting, powerful outcomes.