Underlying these misaligned viewpoints are fundamental assumptions about the roles parents should play in schools. Using a concept from sociologist Patricia Hill Collins, Dyrness argues that parents were trapped by “controlling images,” or stereotypical representations. For example, in the narrative of the school design and governance, a “good parent” was one that followed the lead of the education professionals, who presumably knew best. Any other behavior \u2014 like the demands for more voice from the Madres \u2014 was seen as a sign of a “bad parent” or “problem parent.”<\/p>\n

This critique extends to the initial community organizing campaign as well. The campaign is portrayed as politically successful and empowering for many parents. Still, Dyrness argues that the campaign fell prey to its own “controlling image,” that of the “angry parent” demanding change. In none of these three roles \u2014 good, bad, or angry \u2014 are parents seen as experts, people who have vital perspectives and knowledge that are necessary in the creation of a successful community-based school.<\/p>\n

In the end, as the Madres discover, this leads to a situation in which the school espouses a commitment to community and parent involvement, but struggles to make this vision a reality. This book suggests that participatory research \u2014 in which parents take on the role of researcher\/activists \u2014 offers a route to critiquing and changing power imbalances between teachers and parents. It also advocates the creation of “counterspaces,” private spaces of trust building and mutual support from which research and activism can sprout \u2014 in this case the kitchen of one of the members.<\/p>\n

Mothers United: An Immigrant Struggle for Socially Just Education by Andrea Dyrness University of Minnesota Press, $22.95 Relationships between urban<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[57,163,160,162,161],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1NDQx-8L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1404,"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/1404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/culturalorganizing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}