Illusions of Compliance: Performing the Public and Hidden Transcripts of Social Justice Education in Neoliberal Times

Abstract

From a yearlong qualitative study, I propose an explanation for the growing frustration amongst educators and students who find their imaginings for a social justice education largely unmet, if not deliberately crushed, in the public school classroom. I argue that competing conceptions of social justice manifest as public performances as well as innocuous behind‐the‐scene interactions inextricably entrenched within neoliberal demands. To illustrate, I use Scott’s (1990) concept of public and hidden transcripts to examine how students and their teacher, in the face of authority, act out institutional demands, yet offstage in more private quarters, furtively reclaim their personal notions of what justice work entails. As found, teachers and students simultaneously embody two conflicting approaches in their work in classrooms: those bent on social justice with concerns over issues of equity, diversity, and community activism, and those of neoliberal school cultures that foster competition, evidence‐based practices, and rugged individualism. As teachers and students keenly assess the degree of surveillance and the consequences for noncompliance, both these approaches coexist and are articulated differentially according to perceptions of space. As found, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it becomes their performative stealth in the hidden corners of the institution that allows for individual notions of freedom and resistance to grow.