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Hollar, Jim. Deciphering the Future in the High School Science Fiction

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Hollar, Jim. Deciphering the Future in the High School Science Fiction Deciphering the Future in the High School Science Fiction Classroom: A Critical Multicultural & Critical Qualitative Approach By Jim Hollar A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Curriculum & Instruction) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 2013 Date of final oral examination: 5/15/13 The dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee: Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor, Curriculum & Instruction Michael Apple, Professor, Curriculum & Instruction Mary Louise Gomez, Professor, Curriculum & Instruction Craig Werner, Professor, Afro-American Studies Tracy Curtis, Professor, Afro-American Studies i America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description. -Ralph Ellison The canon is…the name for that body of texts which best performs in the sphere of culture the work of legitimating the prevailing social order.... To understand their content is largely to accept the world-view of the socially dominant class. -Arnold Krupat Racism is not historical. It’s futuristic. It is not going away. It is being refined. It is weaponized through deceit, secrecy, and violence, in that order. Its chief tools are not clubs, bullets, or nooses, but words. -Harry Allen ii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1 I. Entering the Space of the Problem 1 II. Statement of the Problem & Research Questions 5 III. Purpose of Study 7 V. Definition of Terms: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction and Afrofuturism 8 Chapter 2: Theory & Methodology 13 I. (Un)Theoretical Frameworks: Cultural Deficit and Culture of Poverty 13 II. Critical Multiculturalism as Theoretical Framework 20 Chapter 3: Methodology & Data Analysis 34 I. Introduction: Qualitative Research & The “Other” 34 II. Critical Qualitative Research Methodology 36 III. Research Narrative 44 Chapter 4: Findings & Implications 88 I. Describing & Explaining System Relationships 88 II. Challenges & Limitations of Research 99 III. Implications for Practice & Replication 103 IV. So What(‘s Next)? 126 Epilogue: Reflection from Cooperating Teacher, Mr. Rain 135 References 143 Supplementary Materials 151 Research Observation Journal 151 Lesson Plans for Three-Day Unit on Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” (1951) 156 Lesson Plans for Multicultural Science Fiction Unit 161 Defining Terms 184 Interview Document 191 Interview Questions 192 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION I. ENTERING THE SPACE OF THE PROBLEM True to the spirit of science fiction, I want to travel into the future of this dissertation and deal with the “So what?” question immediately. One might consider that an intervention into the curriculum of the science fiction high school elective does little to ameliorate the serious issues that face students and teachers, specifically within the contemporary context of high-stakes testing and shrinking numbers of electives offered in schools. One irony here though is the amount of literature that can be called “speculative” used in middle school Language Arts classrooms is on the rise in the last several years. Regardless, to the question of what difference can my undertaking here make, I would say first that the curricula of secondary school electives are an important site for reform since they are often unhindered by district mandates and standardized assessments that strangle both teacher and student creativity. Although I must acknowledge the difficulty that this contemporary context today in schools represents, this opening in elective courses remains a space to take advantage of. Once such change occurs in the small corners of our schools, like a computer virus perhaps, the affects have a chance of spreading and, perhaps, of becoming permanent. Thus, my hope is this particular kind of reform will serve as a model for other teacher-researchers who wish to make use of the curricular freedom that does still exist in our schools. Another irony we see is that even though the Science Fiction elective has this freedom, it has undergone very little change over the last three decades. A quick, yet 2 imperfect example of this stagnation is the anthology used for the specific course my research focuses on: it was published in 1983. We must ask ourselves why a course that to a great degree deals with the future, is still stuck in the past. In many schools the science fiction curriculum looks as it did when these courses become more widespread in the 1970s. Teachers of science fiction still use anthologies that order science fiction in historical terms. Such a curricular construction supports a particular type of paradigm that is taken for granted as semester follows semester. This paradigm presents an ordering of the future as one envisioned by white male authors and too often received by adolescent white male students. Thus, what is left out of these spaces are both the “alien” writers and students of color. Whether or not this curricular stagnation and the class segregation that follows is the result of more covert controls or simply laziness on the part of too many teachers will be difficult to discover through these efforts here. However, I want to think about what this “normal” science fiction curriculum may tell us about larger concerns of how schools construct certain students in certain ways. More specifically, I want to use this space to consider what beliefs about students of color have made it possible for the science fiction curriculum to remain so unchanged. If we believe that one of the functions of the school is to prepare students for the future, then science fiction literature and the specific elective takes on considerable importance as the only classroom where the future is explicitly discussed. So what does it mean then when it is these classrooms where we see very few students of color. The excuse given, although perhaps in more sanitized language, is usually that students of color aren’t interested in the future. And it is such thinking that offers my second counter 3 to the near future “So what?” question. Simply, my work here seeks to connect a stagnant curriculum to how culture of poverty and deficit thinking notions still exist in schools centering on students of color. Following this, we must consider such attitudes as part of the larger construction of adolescents in our schools and how these attitudes represent larger societal fears focused on the future and people of color. Thus, what I recount here is my mission: a voyage into the strange world of the American high school, specifically into the Science Fiction elective classroom. This current study puts into practice what has been for me largely theoretical. My mission is one of curricular intervention to transform how students, particularly those of color, envision their own futuristic missions. Although all students can benefit from the curricular transformation I seek, my study strives to serve the too often miseducated and undereducated students of color, particularly adolescent African-Americans and Latino/a students. My expectation is that including this material will be another way multicultural education can both empower teachers with effective curricula and reach out to students of color with material in which they see their futures. Presently, students of color are often cut off from envisioning a successful future by shortsighted assessment policies and ever- narrowing curricula. Instead, what my study seeks is a better way to communicate to students of color the potentiality of their future. To do this, teachers must work to transform the places where our curricula remain blind to the future as a place to not only address matters of science and technology, but also to interrupt and interrogate our “knowledge” of gender, sexuality, class, and especially, race. Although there are areas of concern for how authors of color are used (and misused) within English/Language Arts curricula across grade levels, the majority of high 4 school science fiction reading lists portray a clear exclusion of authors of color. Looking over various high school English course catalogs, one quickly notices the dominance of “Science Fiction and Fantasy” as a course title. It is the preference for these terms, consciously or not, which helps to maintain this “imaginative” curriculum as a space still reserved for white male authors. For example, the science fiction elective offered at the high school I taught at for five years offers the following as a reading list: 1984, The Andromeda Strain, Anthem, Brave New World, Dandelion Wine, Day of the Triffids, The Hobbit, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Martian Chronicles, The Terminal Man, and The Time Machine. Moreover, such syllabi seemingly have an aversion to anything resembling a racial and gendered theme. Although Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has made it into some science fiction reading lists, the vast majority fails to contain books that examine gender and sexism, much less race and racism. When envisioned in the standard science fiction curriculum, the future is a place of deepening class stratification, destructive technology, dwindling natural resources, and despotic governments. These are of course important concerns. However, when discussing the future within schools, we must include both explicit and implicit examinations of race and racism. Moreover, a majority of this discussion must originate from the narratives of people of color. Too often, the future is presented from the point of view of the white male. One problem with such an envisioning is how off-putting this might seem to students of color, as well as female students. This envisioning then creates another way students of color are implicitly excluded from imagining their own futures by limited curricula. The fact that this same white male future abounds within the larger 5 culture, depicted in films and television shows, makes the exclusions within schools all the more troublesome.
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