Two self-declared “old, white straight” North American education professors, Dennis Shirley and Andy Hargreaves, have gone out on a limb. Their latest book, The Age of Identity: Who Do Our Kids Think They Are? And How Do We Help Them Belong? (Corwin Press, 2024), wades into “identity politics” in K-12 education and attempts to bring clarity to the whole debate for the current generation of embattled school leaders.
Troubled by the divisive “culture wars,” the educational leadership luminaries, Dennis Shirley, former Professor of Formative Education at Boston College, and Andy Hargreaves, renowned educational change theorist now at University of Ottawa, have taken a risk and stepped into the breach. It’s actually the third in a series of leadership guides in a Corwin series akin to education administration for enlightened dummies.
Building upon commissioned educational field studies focusing on “engagement” and “student well-being,” the third book is more improvisational and speculative. Corwin book editor, former black educator based in New York City, Tanya Gans, came close to the mark in a recent live stream podcast. Confronting the current storm of controversy in American schools, it somehow manages to provide “nuance and clarity” without “being clear.” That may well be the secret to survival in today’s beleaguered school systems.
Confronting the Storm
While it purports to explain what’s happening to our children in and out of schools, it’s actually a self-help guide for school superintendents, district leaders and principals caught up in a storm and looking for direction. “The age of achievement and effort,” Dennis Shirley claimed speaking to the City Club of Cleveland in January 2024, has morphed into the “age of identity” and teenagers need help sorting out “role identity confusion” and finding confidence and a sense of who they really are as human beings.
Shirley and Hargreaves are a team of school change theorists deeply committed to social justice. Seeing the pandemic generation struggling to find meaning and purpose and educational leaders showing signs of fatigue, this short, 180-page ‘how to” guide ventures into the minefield of identity politics. It offers simplified versions of three key touchstones, Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development (1950), Shelley Moore’s One Without the Other (2016), and Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Karev’s Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t (2022). It’s aimed at busy and event-driven provincial and district educational leaders with little time to read but looking for a ‘quick hit’ to keep them current.
Buoyed by the effusive praise of the Corwin corps of education progressives, led by American education reformer Diane Ravich, New York State school consultant Peter DeWitt, and C21 Learning Canada champion Tom D’Amico, they return to a successful formula and attempt to find the old magic. Finding unity and coherence in a polarized, divided world may well be foolhardy, but Shirley and Hargreaves deserve some credit for sticking their necks out amidst the cross-fire on the front lines of the education culture war.
Making people more aware of oppression and layers of oppression has become a major driver of educational discourse, particularly in North American faculties of education. As educational progressives, Shirley and Hargreaves are committed to addressing oppression in all its forms, racial, class, ethnicity and gender. “We have to confront oppression openly and honestly,” they stated at the book launch. Having acknowledged that, Shirley and Hargreaves do contest the prevailing view of “intersectionality.’
Critical intersectionality, coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, may have made us more aware of the “multiple oppressions” experienced by racialized and marginalized groups, but it has its limitations. Awakened identities can, they point out, be positive and affirming and take the form of “celebratory intersectionality” best exemplified by international rap music star Drake who prides himself on being black, Jewish, and Torontonian. A third, and less recognized form is “conflicted intersectionality” experienced by groups which are ignored or treated unfairly for being representative of both the oppressors and the oppressed, most notably mixed-race children, Protestant sect non-conformists (Mennonites) and poor working-class whites.
Fashioning a New Narrative
Shirley and Hargreaves’ The Age of Identity makes a valiant attempt to demonstrate that divisive identity politics might be transformed into a unifying vision and set of operating principles. The so-called “New Narrative” will have a familiar ring to many Canadian school leaders, district consultants, and principals. The big takeaway is actually retooled from the 2017-18 Ontario “Student Well-Being” project. “What’s essential for some, is good for all” is, once again, presented as a virtual panacea.
Troubled by current disruptions and resistance, Shirley and Hargreaves claim that the open divisions over the prevalence of “critical race theory,” top-down DEI directives, and the marginalizing of dissenters, can be overcome. While not shying away from addressing the “great oppressions,” they see a critical need to emphasize “what we have in common.”
Adopting a “what is good for some is good for all” approach is presented as an antidote to what is causing the resistance. New narratives, Hargreaves says, should “not be built upon guilt and shame” or, perhaps inadvertently, advance “the self-interest of any group.” That may be a veiled reference to the controversial Toronto District School Board’s 2021-23 anti-racist program contracted out to the KOJO Institute linked to the August 2023 suicide of veteran principal Richard Bilkszto.
The book ends with a somewhat peculiar lyrical call to action. Confronting the controversies head-on, according to Shirley and Hargreaves, will require not only intestinal fortitude, but courage and bravery, two attributes honed on the battlefield. “When you are in the midst of the storm,” they exhort lead educators, “don’t turn away,” Then comes an educational change parable: “Be a Buffalo, stand firm, and turn into the storm.” Indeed, there’s safety in numbers, so “be a herd of buffalo” — and presumably a herd heading in the right direction.
Forging Unity out of Particularities – A Prognosis
Shirley and Hargreaves’ latest book, The Age of Identity, is the work of two romantic progressives whose idealism has not dimmed with the passage of time. “Try to create a world by getting closer to our kids,” Hargreaves told Peter DeWitt, “A world where we are closer to one another and where identity doesn’t divide us but becomes important to all of us as we develop as human beings over time.”
With ‘culture wars’ raging in and around schools, it may take saviours to transform the “age of identity” into a “radical common sense” counter-movement which succeeds in “bringing us together rather than driving us apart.” It’s by no means certain that “humanists” will weather that storm and “come out on the other side.”
Why did the two school change theorists wade into the storm stirred up by “identity politics” in K-12 education? Where does the latest book fit in the Dennis Shirley – Andy Hargreaves trilogy published by Corwin Press? Why did the book attract such lavish praise but so so little independent scrutiny and feedback? Should school leaders “be like a Buffalo” in turning back the storm? How realistic is the prescription of “forging unity out of particularities” presented in the book?
Educhatter 