Teach for America and Symbolic Violence: A Bourdieuian Analysis of Education’s Next Quick-Fix

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze Teach for America (TFA) in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence in an attempt to expose the ways in which this organization perpetuates structures of inequality in the existing social order. The paper begins with a general description of TFA, followed by an overview of several studies in support of and opposition to the program. Next, Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence is outlined, after which the program is analyzed in terms of the ways in which it has perpetrated symbolic violence against both corps members and TFA-taught students. This analysis suggests that TFA cannot “create the systemic changes that will help end educational inequity” because it fails to take seriously its own embeddedness within and reproduction of these inequitable structures (Teach for America 2011a, p. 1). In effect, the ways in which TFA aims to accomplish its mission reveal the hidden, violent acts against both corps members and the students whom it purports to help.