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"You Don't Have to Be a Teacher to Teach This Unit:" Teaching, Technology, and Gender in theClassroomAuthor(s): Michael W. Apple and Susan JungckSource: American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 227-251Published by: American Educational Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1163008 .

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American Educational Research JournalSummer 1990, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 227-251

"YouDon't Haveto Be a Teacherto TeachThis Unit:"Teaching,Technology,andGender in the ClassroomMichael W. AppleThe University of Wisconsin, Madisonand

Susan JungckNational College of Education

Given the increasing power of conservative movements in the larger soci-ety, there is considerable pressure currently not only to redefine the man-ner in which education is carried out, but to redefine what educationis actually for. This has had a major impact on teachers' autonomy andthe definition of what counts as a skill. Weargue that teaching is a specifickind of labor process, one that is currently being subject to rationaliza-tion, deskilling, and intensification. Since teaching has historically beenseen as largely "women's paid work," the gender implications of suchtendencies are crucial. By interpreting teaching in gender and labor pro-cess terms, we report data from an ethnographic study of the use of acomputer literacy curriculum to illuminate the effects of these tendencieson teachers' daily lives. In this context, teachers often employed aprepackaged curriculum that deskilled them and frequently left thembored and reliant on outside experts and purchased material. Yettheyalso employed the curriculum for their own purposes, using it to partlysolve the problems caused by their intense schedule and work load. Thispragmatic response cannot be understood unless the gendered realitiesof teachers' work inside and outside of the school are recognized.

MICHAELW. APPLE s a professor of curriculum and instruction, and educa-tional policy studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Universityof Wisconsin, 225 North MillsSt., Madison, WI 53706. He specializes in curriculumstudies and sociology of education.SUSANJUNGCK is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the Na-tional College of Education, 2840 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60201. Shespecializes in qualitative methodology, the study of teaching, and computers ineducation.

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Apple and Jungckespite all of the rhetoric about teaching and professionalism, aboutenhancing teachers' power, and about raising pay and respect, thereality of many teachers' lives bears little resemblance to the rhetoric. Ratherthan moving in the direction of increased autonomy, the daily lives ofteachers in classrooms in many nations are becoming ever more controlled,ever more subject to administrative logic that seeks to tighten the reinson the processes of teaching and curriculum. Teacher development, coop-eration, and "empowerment" may be the talk, but centralization, standard-ization, and rationalization are the tendencies. In Britain and the UnitedStates-to take but two examples-reductive accountability, teacher evalua-tion schemes, and increasing centralization have become so commonplacethat in a few more years we may have lost from our collective memorythe very possibility of difference. Indeed, there are areasin the United Stateswhere it has been mandated that teachers must teach only that materialwhich is in the approved textbook. Going beyond the "approved"materialrisks administrative sanctions.

Teaching in CrisisAn odd combination of forces has led to this situation. Economic

modernizers, educational efficiency experts, neoconservatives, andsegments of the new right, as well as many working and lower middle-class parents who believe that their children's futures are threatened bya school system that does not guarantee jobs, and members of parts ofthe new middle class whose own mobility is dependent on technical andadministratively oriented knowledge, have formed a tense and contradic-tory alliance to return us to "the basics,"to "appropriate" alues and disposi-tions, to "efficiency and accountability," and to a close connection bet-ween schools and an economy in crisis.1Although we need to be cautious of being overly economistic (andindeed have argued at great length against such tendencies in otherplaces2), it is still the case that educators have witnessed a massiveattempt-one that has been more than a little successful-at exporting thecrisis in the economy and in authority relations from the practices andpolicies of dominant groups to the schools. If schools and their teachersand curriculawere more tightly controlled, more closely linked to the needsof business and industry, more technically oriented, with more stress ontraditional values and workplace norms and dispositions, then the prob-

1. SeeMichaelW.Apple,Teachers nd Texts:APoliticalEconomyof Classand GenderRelations n Education NewYork:Routledge, 986)and MichaelW.Apple,"Redefiningquali-ty: Authoritarianopulismand the ConservativeRestoration,"TeachersCollegeRecord90(Winter1988):167-184.2. MichaelW.Apple,Educationand Power(NewYork:Routledge,ARKEdition,1985).

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Teaching, Technology, and Genderlems of achievement, of unemployment, of international economic com-petitiveness, of the disintegration of the inner city, and so on would large-ly disappear, or so it is claimed.Over the past 10 years in the United States, a multitude of reports toldus that because of the inefficiency of our educational system and the poorquality of our teachers and curricula our nation was at risk. In Britain, asimilar argument was heard. Teachers were seen as holding on to a cur-riculum that was "ill-suited to modern technological and industrial needsand as generally fostering an anti-industrial ethos among their students.In all respects, schools and teachers were portrayed as failing the nation."3Industry was turned into a "dirtyword," a fact that supposedly contributedgreatly to the nation's industrial decline.As one of us has argued at greater length elsewhere, there is currentlyimmense pressure not only to redefine the manner in which educationis carried out, but what education is actuallyfor. This has not remainedoutside the classroom but is now proceeding rather rapidly to enter intoclassroom life and alter our definitions of what counts as good teaching.As we shall see in the second, more empirical part of this paper in ouranalysis of what happens in computer literacy classes-one of the new,high status areasof curriculum and teaching formed during the educationalcrisis-this can have a serious impact on the reality of teaching.

Among the major effects of these pressures is what is happening toteaching as an occupation and as a set of skilled and self-reflective actions.Important transformations are occurring that will have significant impactson how we do our jobs and on who will decide whether we are success-fully carrying them out. Seeing what is happening will require that werecapitulate a set of arguments about the relationship among teaching, thecomplicated processes involved in how one's work is controlled (what hasbeen called proletarianization), and the struggles over what counts as askill and who has skills.4

Teaching as a Labor ProcessIn order to understand this argument, we need to think about teachingin a particular way, to think of it as what might be called a complicated

3. This quote and the following quote from Stephen Ball, "Staff Relations During theTeachers' Industrial Action: Context, Conflict and Proletarianization," British Journal ofSociology of Education 9 (Number 3 1988): 290.4. The issue of the proletarianization of teachers is a complicated one. For furtherdiscussion, see Apple, Education and Power, 135-164; and Apple, Teachersand Texts,31-78.Some of the complexities are nicely articulatedinJenny Ozga and MartinLawn, "Schoolwork:Interpreting the Labour Process of Teaching," British Journal of Sociology of Education 9(Number 3, 1988): 289-306. Much of the next section is based on Michael W. Apple andKenneth Teitelbaum, "AreTeachers Losing Control of Their Skills and Curriculum?,"Journalof Curriculum Studies 18 (Number 2, 1986): 177-184.

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Apple and Jungcklabor process. It is a labor process that is significantly different from thatof working on an assembly line, in the home, or in an office. But, evengiven these differences, the same pressures that are currently affecting jobsin general are now being felt increasingly in teaching. In the generalsociological literature, he label affixed to what is happening is the degrada-tion of labor5 This degradation is a "gift" our dominant economic andideological arrangements have given us.In the larger society, there has been an exceptionally long history ofrationalizing and standardizing people's jobs. In industry, a familiarexam-ple of this was management's use of Taylorismand time-and-motion studiesin their continual search for higher profits and greater control over theiremployees. Here, complicated jobs were rigorously examined by manage-ment experts. Each element that went into doing the job was broken downinto its simplest components. Less skilled and lower-paid workers werehired to do these simpler activities. All planning was to be done by manage-ment, not workers. The consequences of this have been profound; buttwo of them are especially important for our discussion.6The first is what we shall call the separation of conception from ex-ecution. When complicated jobs are broken down into atomistic elements,the person doing the job loses sight of the whole process and loses con-trol over her or his own labor because someone outside the immediatesituation now has greater control over both the planning and what is ac-tually to go on. The second consequence is related, but adds a furtherdebilitating characteristic. This is known as deskilling. As employees losecontrol over their own labor, the skills that they have developed over theyears atrophy. They are slowly lost, thereby making it even easier formanagement to control even more of one's job because the skills of plan-ning and controlling it yourself are no longer available.7A general princi-ple emerges here: in one's labor, lack of use leads to loss. This has beenparticularlythe case for women's labor.Women'swork has been particularlysubject to the deskilling and depowering tendencies of management.8These tendencies are quite visible in a multitude of workplaces throughoutthe country, from factories and clerical and other office work to stores,restaurants,and government jobs, and now even teaching. More and moreof these seem to be subject to such "degradation".

5. Apple, Education and Power, 66-90; and Apple, Teachers and Texts, 31-78.6. As many of you may know, Tayloristic strategies have a long history of use in educa-tion. Forfurther discussion, see Herbert Kliebard, TheStruggle for the American Curriculum(New York:Routledge, 1986), Michael W.Apple, Ideology and Curriculum, 2nd ed. New York:Routledge, 1990) and Apple, Education and Power, 71-73 & 135-164.7. Ibid.8. Apple, Teachers and Texts, 56-58.

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Teaching, Technology, and GenderHow is this process now working through the job of teaching? At theoutset, it is important to realize that it has taken teachers decades to gainthe skills and power they now have. Even though in many school systemsteachers in reality have only a limited right to actually choose the textsand other curricular materials they use, these conditions are still a gooddeal better than in earlier periods of our educational history, when textand curricular selection was an administrativeresponsibility. The gains thatteachers have made did not come easily. It took thousands of teachers inhundreds of districts throughout the country constantly reaffirming theirright to determine what would happen in their classrooms to take eachsmall step away from total administrative control of the curriculum. This

was even more the case at an elementary school level, where the over-whelming majority of teachers have historically been women. Femaleteachers have had to struggle even harder to gain recognition of their skillsand worth.9Yet although curriculum planning and determination are now moreformally democratic in most areas of the curriculum, there are forces nowacting on the school that may make such choices nearly meaningless. Atthe local, state, and national levels, movements for strict accountabilitysystems, competency-based education and testing, systems management,

a truncated vision of the "basics,"mandated curricular content and goals,and so on are clear and growing. Increasingly,teaching methods, texts, tests,and outcomes are being taken out of the hands of the people who mustput them into practice. Instead, they are being legislated by national orstate departments of education or in state legislatures, and are being eithersupported or stimulated by many of the national reports, such as A Na-tion At Risk. Often these reports are simplistic assessments of, andresponses to, problems in education,10 ones that demonstrate the increas-ing power of conservative ideologies in our public discourse.For example, as of April 1990, in the United States nearly 40 of the50 stateshave established some form of statewide competency testing. Manyof these systems are quite reductive and more than a little unreflective.Although this is ostensibly to guarantee some form of "quality control,"one of the major effects of such state intervention has been considerablepressure on teachers to simply teach for the tests.' It is a part of a grow-

9. Ibid, 54-78.10. LawrenceStedman and MarshallSmith, "RecentReformProposals for AmericanEduca-tion," Contemporary Education Review 2 (Fall 1983): 85-104; and Apple, Teachersand Texts,128-149.11. The negative impact of such testing and reductive objectives-based curriculum andevaluation strategies is a major problem. It is nicely documented in Andrew Gitlin, "SchoolStructure and Teachers' Work," in Ideology and Practice in Schooling, ed. Michael W.Appleand Lois Weis, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 193-212. See also LindaMcNeil,Contradictions of Control (New York: Routledge, 1986).

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Apple and Jungcking process of state intervention into teaching and the curriculum andsignifies another instance in the long history of state intervention into thework of a largely female labor force.12As has been demonstrated at considerable length in Teachersand Texts,much of the attempt by state legislatures, departments of education, and"educational managers" to rationalize and standardize the process and pro-ducts of teaching, to mandate very specific content and teaching, to defineall teaching as a collection of measurable "competencies," and so on, isrelated to a longer history of attempts to control the labor of occupationsthat have historically been seen as women's paid work. We do not thinkit is possible to understand why teachers are subject to greater control andto greater governmental intervention, and what the effects of such man-dates are, unless we step back and ask a particular kind of question: Byand large, who is doing the teaching?Historically, teaching has been constructed as women's paid work. Inmost western industrialized nations, approximately two thirds of theteaching force are women, a figure that is much higher the lower one goesin the educational system. Administratorsare overwhelmingly male, a figurethat increases significantly the higher one goes in the educational system.Thus, both statistically and in terms of its effects, it would be a mistakeof considerable proportions to ignore the gendered composition ofteaching when we discuss the rationalizing ethos increasingly surround-ing it.13These rationalizing forces are quite consequential and need to beanalyzed structurally to see the lasting impact they may be having onteaching. In much the same way as in other jobs, we are seeing the deskill-ing of our teachers.14As we noted, when individuals cease to plan andcontrol a large portion of their own work, the skills essential to doing thesetasks self-reflectively and well atrophy and are forgotten. The skills thatteachers have built up over decades of hard work-setting relevant cur-ricular goals, establishing content, designing lessons and instructionalstrategies, "community-building" in the classroom, individualizing instruc-tion based on an intimate knowledge of students' desires and needs, andso on-are lost. In many ways, given the centralization of authority andcontrol, they are simply no longer needed. In the process, however, thevery things that make teaching a professional activity-the control of one's

12. Apple, Teachers and Texts, 54-78.13. Ibid. We are, of course, here making a "functional" argument, not necessarily an"intentional" one. Managers, policy experts, and others need not consciously plan tospecifically control the work of women for it to have this effect. For further discussion ofthe logic of functional explanation, See Daniel Liston, Capitalist Schools: Explanation andEthics in Radical Studies of Schooling (New York: Routledge, 1988), 75-101.14. Apple, Education and Power

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Teaching, Technology, and Genderexpertise and time-are also dissipated. There is no better formula foralienation and burnout than loss of control of one's labor (though it is quiteunfortunate that terms such as "burnout" have such currency since theymake the problem into a psychological one rather than a truly structuralone concerning the control of teachers' labor).Hence, the tendency for the curriculum to become increasinglyplanned, systematized, and standardized at a central level, tbtally focusedon competencies measured by standardized tests (and largely dependenton predesigned commercial materialsand texts written specifically for thosestates that have the tightest centralized control and, thus, the largestguaranteed markets)15may have consequences exactly the opposite ofwhat many authorities intend. Instead of professional teachers who caregreatly about what they do and why they do it, we may have alienatedexecutors of someone else's plans. In fact, the literature on the labor pro-cess in general, as well as that specifically related to women's paid work,is replete with instances documenting the negative effects of tight systemsof management and control and the accompanying loss of skill, autonomy,craft, and pride that results.16 As is too often the case, educationalbureaucratsborrow the ideology and techniques of industrialmanagementwithout recognizing what can and has happened to the majority ofemployees in industry itself.17These kinds of interventionist movements will not only have conse-quences for teachers' ability to control their own work. It is also becom-ing very clear that they are having some very problematic results in termsof the kind of content that is being stressed in the curriculum.A simple way of thinking about this is to divide the kinds of knowledgethat we want students to learn into three types: knowledge that, how, andto. Knowledge that is factual information, such as knowing that Madisonis the capital of Wisconsin or Baton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana.Knowledge how is skills, such as knowing how to use the library or howto inquire into the history of, say, women or unions in the United States.Knowledge to is dispositional knowledge. That is, it includes those norms,values and propensities that guide our future conduct. Examples includeknowing to be honest, to have pride in one's racial heritage, to want to

15. The economics and politics of textbook publishing are analyzed in much greaterdepth in Apple, Teachers and Texts, especially Chapter 4. The history of some of thesocio/economic conditions that led to such adoption policies is investigated in Michael W.Apple, "Regulatingthe Text:The Socio-Historical Roots of StateControl," Educational Policy,3 (June, 1989): 107-123.16. See, for example, Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain(New York:Basic Books, 1979)and David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work,Divided Workers(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).17. Ibid and Apple, Education and Power, 38-90.

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Apple and Jungcklearn more after one's formal schooling is over, to be intellectually open-minded, or to see oneself as part of a democratic community and to actcooperatively. Each of these is important; but if we were to place themin some sort of hierarchy, most of us would agree that knowing an assort-ment of facts is probably less important than higher-order skills of inquiry.And these in turn are made less significant than they should be if the per-son is not disposed to use them in educationally and socially importantways.With control over content, teaching, and evaluation shifting outsidethe classroom, the focus is more and more only on those elements of socialstudies, reading, science, and so forth that can be easily measured on stan-dardized tests. Knowledge that and occasionally low-level knowledge howare the primary foci. Anything else is increasingly considered inconsequen-tial. This is bad enough, of course, but in the process even the knowledgethat that is taught is made safer, less controversial, less critical. Not onlyis it a formula for deskilling, it is also a contraction of the universe of possi-ble social knowledge into largely that which continues the disenfranchise-ment of the knowledge of women, and of people of color and labor,knowledge that is increasingly important given the levels of exploitationand domination that exist not only within our nations but between themas well.18So far we have discussed at a very general level certain of the socialdynamics that threaten to transform curricula and teaching. This discus-sion cannot be complete unless we add one other significant concept, theidea of intensification.19Intensification is one of the most tangible ways in which the workingconditions of teachers have eroded. It has many symptoms, from the trivialto the complex-ranging from having no time at all to even go to thebathroom, have a cup of coffee or relax, to having a total absence of timeto keep up with one's field. We can see it most visibly in the chronic senseof work overload that has escalated over time. More and more has to bedone; less and less time is available to do it. This had led to a multitudeof results.

Intensification leads people to "cut corners" so that only what is"essential" to the task immediately at hand is accomplished. It forces peo-ple increasingly to rely on "experts" to tell them what to do and to begin

18. Some of these data are reviewed in Sheldon Danziger and Daniel Weinberg, eds.,Fighting Poverty (Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 1986), ErikOlin Wright, Classes (NewYork:Verso, 1985), and Michael W.Apple, "AmericanRealities: Poverty, Economy and Educa-tion," in Dropouts From School, eds. Lois Weis, Eleanor Farrar, nd Hugh Petrie (Albany:StateUniversity of New York Press, 1989) 205-223.19. For a more detailed elaboration of the process and results of intensification, seeApple, Teachers and Texts, especially chapter 2.

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Teaching, Technology, and Genderto mistrustthe expertisethey may havedeveloped over the years.In theprocess, qualityis sacrificedfor quantity.Gettingdone is substitutedforwork well done. And, as time itself becomes a scarce "commodity,"herisk of isolation grows, therebyboth reducingthe chances that interac-tion among participantswill enable critiquesand limitingthe possibilitythatrethinkingandpeerteachingwill naturally volve. Collectiveskillsarelost as "management kills"aregained.Oftenthe primary ask s, to quoteone teacher, o "findawayto get throughthe day."And,finally,prideitselfis jeopardizedas the workbecomes dominatedby someone else'sconcep-tion of what should be done.Asnoted earlier,with the growthof interventionist tyles of manage-ment and a focus on reductiveaccountabilityschemes in manynations,more and more curriculaand the act of teachingitself aredominatedbyprespecifiedsequential istsof behaviorallydefinedcompetenciesandob-jectives, pretestsandpostteststo measure "readiness" ndskilllevels,anda dominance of prepackaged extual and often worksheet material.Theamountof paperworknecessary orevaluation ndrecordkeeping softenphenomenalunder these conditions.Ashas been documentedelsewhere,increasinglycommon situationssuch as these often require eachers o bebusy with these tasksbefore and afterschool andduringtheirlunch hour.Teachers ome in veryearlyand leaveverylate,often to still be facedwith2 hours more work at home every night.20This is exacerbatedby the fact that, given the pressuresnow beingplaced on schools, what has actuallyhappened is thatnot only are cur-riculaand teachingmore tightlycontrolledbut more, not less, has to beaccomplished.Nothinghas been removedfrom the curriculum.Instead,elements have been added on. One of the best exampleshas been the ad-dition of "computer iteracy"programs n manyschool systems.In mostdistricts,nothing indeed has been droppedfrom the already mmenselycrowdedcurriculumand teachersarefacedwith the predicamentof find-ing the time and physicaland emotionalresourcesto integrate uch pro-gramsinto the school day.This may have even greater mplicationsforfemale teachers,as we shallpoint out in the following section.It is important to say here, however, that-as with other laborprocesses-one of the effects of these processes of deskillingand inten-sification is the threatthey pose to the conception of teachingas an inte-gratedwhole activity.Concerns of care,connectedness,nurturance,andfostering "growth"-concernsthat have historicallybeen linked to skillsand dispositionssurrounding he paid and unpaidlabor of women-aredevalued. In essence, they are no longer given credit for being skills atall, as the very definitionof what counts as a skill is furtheralteredto in-

20. Gitlin, "School Structure and Teachers Work", 193-212.235



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Apple and Jungckclude only thatwhich is technicaland based on a process "whichplacesemphasison performance,monitoringandsubject-centerednstruction."21As we shall see, such transformations an occur all too easily.Concepts such as deskilling,the separationof conception from ex-ecution,and intensification an remainabstractions nlesswe can see howthey representprocesses that have a real and materialexistencein day-to-day school life. Manyteachersare experiencingthese dynamics as veryrealalterationsn theirlives insideandoutsidethe classroom.In the nextsection of this paper,we shallsituatethese processeswithin the activitiesof a groupof teachers n one particular chool thatwas subjectto a long-term and comprehensive ethnographicstudy by one of us of the growthand effects of a mandateto make all students"computeriterate."The in-troduction of such a new curriculum mphasiswasofficiallythereto helpstudentsandteachersbecomemoretechnicallyiterate.Yet, t had anumberof unforeseen effects thatoften led to the opposite.The new curriculummandate to develop computer literacywas a response by this particularschool systemto the calls from a varietyof groupsfor a more technicallyoriented curriculumthat would teach the skills needed for access andmobility lateron. It occurredin an educational,economic, and politicalcontextin which the statedepartmentof education,businessandindustry,and many middle-classparentswere placing considerablepressure onschools to immediately develop programsthat guaranteednot only acomputer-literatechool population,but to makesuch literacya require-ment for graduation romsecondaryschool and to establish closer linksbetween educationaland economic goals.22As we shallsee, genderrelations, he changingconditions of the laborof teachers,and the organizational ndmaterial ealitiesbroughtaboutbythe fiscal crisis of the state23directly impinged on the construction ofclassroom life. In this site, the intensificationof the teachers'workload,the lackof availability f sufficientresources,the organizationaltructureof the school as it had evolved over time,and the complicatedrealityofgenderedlabor,all combined to create a situationin which few teacherswere fully satisfied with the outcomes.

Inside the ClassroomLakeside-MapleGlen School Districthas decided, in the face of nationaltrends and considerablepressure,to makeits curriculamore responsive

21. Ozgaand Lawn, "Schoolwork,"p. 333.22. Whethersuch literacy s in factnecessary n the way its proponentspropose andthe possibleeducational, ocial,andeconomic effects of such technologyareexamined ngreaterdepth in Apple, Teachersand Texts, 150-174.23. JamesO'Connor,TheFiscalCrisisof theState(NewYork:StMartin's ress,1973).

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Teaching, Technology,and Genderto recent and rapidsocial and technologicalchange.24 t wants to ensurethat its curriculaaremore responsiveto the "needsof the economy" andthe perceived futurelabor market.Computersareone of the keys in theschool district's trategies oraccomplishingthis.Yet,this districthasalsotaken the stance that such curriculumprogramsshould not be imposedfromabove,evengiventheconsiderablepressurebeingplacedon it. Rather,teachersthemselvesmust be deeply involvedin the curriculumdevelop-ment process.This latterpoint aboutgiving more responsibilityto teachers is im-portant.All too often, the criticalliteraturehas assumed that pressurestoward deskilling,the separationof conception from execution, and in-tensification must be imposed continuallyfrom the outside throughad-ministrativemandates,centralized urriculumdetermination, r externallyproducedandcontrolledevaluationplans.Thisis not alwaysthe caseandin factmay ignore the complexity of decision makingon the ground, soto speak. Becauseteachers have always sought ways to retaintheir dayto daycontrolover classroomreality,and arenot passivereceiversof top-down strategies,complexity must be recognized.25In fact, as we shalldocument in this section, these externalconditions do not totallydeter-mine the realityof curriculum ndteaching.Teachersmayindeedstillhavespace for maneuver.However, these pressuresmay actuallyalso createa context thatmakesit seemunrealisticandnot in their mmediate nterestfor many teachersto do other than participate n recreatingconditionsthatfostercontinueddifficulties n theirown labor.To a largeextent, thisis exactly what happened here.One of the first curriculumprograms to be developed and im-plemented under the District's new ComputerLiteracyProjectwas the10-dayComputerLiteracyUnit(CLU). twas to be addedon in everyMid-dle School seventh-grademath class.Mr.Nelson, a MiddleSchool mathteacherand the Districtcomputer"expert"andMr.Miller,anotherMiddleSchool mathteacher,were givensummer curriculumcompensation to develop the seventh-gradeUnitwhich they and three other seventh-grademathteachers were expectedto implementin the fall.AlthoughMr.Nelson and Mr.Millerhadconcep-tualizedthe CLUbefore fall,they hadnot specificallyplannedeach dailylesson or assembled the necessarymaterialsto be used. They began inthe fall with most of what became their Unit outline completed:

Day 1. Historyof and partsof a computerDay 2. Operationof a computer and computer vocabulary24. Most of the material in this section is taken from Susan Jungck, "Doing ComputerLiteracy," unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1985.25. See, Apple, Teachers and Texts for further discussion of and references on this im-portant point.

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Apple and JungckDay 3. Interaction with a computer (lab)Day 4. Input to a computerDay 5. Output from a computerDay 6. FlowchartingDay 7. Introduction to programming in BASICDay 8. Writing a program in BASIC(lab)Day 9. Group activity-a computer simulation (lab)Day 10. Test and effects of computers upon society.Mr. Nelson and Mr. Miller met frequently during the first 6 weeks ofschool to work on the CLU,a comprehensive task that consisted of prepar-

ing daily lesson plans, procuring worksheets, filmstrips, tape recordings,audio visual equipment and rescheduling the Computer Lab.The CLU wasdeveloped with a number of "givens" in mind, givens that bear on ourearlier arguments.One given that Mr. Nelson and Mr. Miller considered was that theschool's seven computers were being used in the Computer Lab for theeighth-grade computer elective courses, and were not available whenseveral of the seventh-grade math classes met. Therefore, they recognizedthat most of the Unit would have to be taught without the use of com-puters, a major obstacle because they believed that hands-on computerexperiences were very important. Through elaborate planning, the teacherswere able to schedule 3 of the 10 days in the Computer Lab, not verymuch considering that there would be about 25 students sharing sevencomputers on those Lab days.Minimalcomputer access, a problem of considerable moment in manybudget-conscious school systems, affected the curriculum and the teachingbecause skills and concepts most effectively developed through using acomputer had to be taught in more vicarious ways, such as observationsand lectures, or eliminated altogether. For example, too few computersand too little time in the Computer Lab meant that most students neverwere able to write a program in BASIC even though it was a specific ob-jective and represented the general, active, hands-on experiences that wereconsistent with the district goals.A second given which influenced how the CLU was developed wasstated by Mr. Miller this way: "Youhave to remember that we have facultyin this department who don't know much about computers. We neededa program that everyone could teach." Mr.Nelson explained that a crucialfactor in developing the Unit was that teachers who know nothing aboutcomputers would be able to teach it. He said, "You see we really neededto develop a canned Unit."The three other math teachers, all women, wereuninvolved in developing the CLU and only found out about it in the fall.One woman, Ms.Wilson, a recent graduatewho was newly hired on a part-time basis, had no computer experience, and was quite apprehensive abouthaving to teach a Computer Literacy Unit. Another woman, Ms. Linder,238



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Teaching, Technology,and Genderhad some computer experience but had just returned from a year's leaveof absence and had just learned of the required Unit. The third womanteacher, Ms. Kane, was experienced in the department but had no ex-perience with computers. Thus, the Unit was "canned" so that these orany future teachers would be able to teach it.

A third given resulted from the organization of the MathDepartment.It was a regular practice in the Department to test all seventh graders afterthe first 10 weeks of school and transfer those with "superior ability" toan eighth-grade math class. Selection by "talent,"with all its stratifying im-plications, was not an invisible process at work here. This scheduletherefore determined that the Unit would have to be completed in allseventh-grade math classes by the 10th week of school. In order to be ableto share the computers and other equipment and schedule the ComputerLab, half of the math classes had to implement the Unit during weeks 7and 8 and the other half had the Unit during the 9th and 10th weeks ofschool. This schedule placed tremendous time pressures on Mr.Nelsonand Mr. Miller to complete the unit quickly.

Given these time pressures, the intensification of their own work, Mr.Nelson and Mr.Millerhad to assemble the materialsrapidly and communica-tions with the other math teachers about the Unit were minimal. Whatthey did was to examine some commercially prepared Computer Literacycurriculum materials that were available.

The foundation of the Unit that they planned consisted of twofilmstrips and a prepackaged commercial curriculum consisting of tape-recorded lessons and coordinated worksheets. The topical outline that hadbeen partially completed was finalized on the basis of some of these tape-recorded lessons and worksheets. The CLU became very structured, detail-ing the objectives, the equipment needed, and the lesson plan for eachday.The plan specified that 6 days were to be spent in the classroom, mostlylistening to the commercial tape recordings and completing the worksheets.Three days were to be spent in the Computer Lab-two for interactingwith instructional software and one for writing a computer program. Aunit test was planned for the last day and after the test a film about thesocial implications of computers would complete the Unit. Due to the bulkof all the worksheets and equipment, the curriculum was usually rolledaround from room to room on a cart.In many ways, the curriculum-on-a-cart may be viewed as an efficient,practical and sensible solution to the several "givens" within the school.What occurred inside the classrooms, however, documents how the realitiesof teachers' lives inside and outside of the school and what is happeningto the job of teaching carries with it contradictions that are very serious.

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Apple and JungckA Curriculum-on-a-Cart

Students and teachers expressed enthusiasm about the 2-week computerunit because it represented something new and popular. There were fiveteachers teaching a total of 11heterogeneously grouped seventh-grademathclasses and, as we noted, due to the time pressures the CLU was notprepared and ready to go until time to begin teaching the Unit. The femaleteachers had little or no time to preview the Unit. In essence, they ex-perienced it as they taught it.In all classes the Unit began with some enthusiasm and two filmstripsand two worksheets. Students were shown a filmstrip which focused onthe history and development of computers and were given a timeline ofevents for note-taking. The content emphasized dates of events such asthe invention of the transistor and computer terminology. There was littleclass discussion because the filmstrips took the whole period. Homeworkconsisted of a WordSearch worksheet with hidden names of computerparts.Togive a sense of daily activity, let us focus on Day 5. The daily routinethat occurred on Day 5 was representative of all days in which worksheetsand tape recordings were predominant. Day 5 is distinct, however, in thatit represents a mid-point in the CLUand events on this day illustrate howthe routine use of tape recordings and worksheets were beginning to havean impact on the teachers' and students' initial enthusiasm for the Unit,on the teachers' sense of skill, and on the intensification of their work.

Day 5As the students come into class today, one boy shouts out, "Arewe goingto the Lab today?" The teacher answers, "We've got those sheets againand the tapes.... " Invariably when hearing that it was a worksheet daystudents would start to grumble, one ratherloudly, "that man's dejected,""I hate this, this is boring," "Do we have to do this all the time?," "I can-not stand this class," "This isn't computer class, this is worksheets . . whatdo we learn, nothing. . .how to push a button" (referring to the taperecorder). One student turned to one of us and, referringto the worksheets,complained, "We know this stuff already, maybe not these fancywords.. .but we know this stuff." Although the students complainedabout the tapes and the worksheets, they did not disrupt the class routine,They came into class, made a number of inquiries and remarks, took theirseats, and cooperated with the teachers. Their attitudes were for the mostpart ignored or made light of by the teachers, who appeared to regarda certain amount of negativism and complaining as typical adolescentbehavior in school.The first daily procedure in every class was the distribution ofworksheets, which took about 10 minutes because there were so manyof them. Teachers usually passed around a stapler and this became the240



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Teaching, Technology, and Genderoccasion forindividual ntertainment sstudentsdawdledwithit,withheldit fromthe next student,slidit on the floorandgenerallyused it to attractattention and delay beginning the worksheets.The teachersbegan the lesson by turningon the firsttape-recordedlesson for the students.Aman's voice readthe captionedinformationonthe worksheetsand studentswere to follow along.He thenexplainedhowto complete the worksheet and said, "Now turn off the tape and com-plete the worksheet." Teacherswho, given the immense workload ofpaperwork,used thistime to do independentwork at theirdesks,frequent-ly missed this directiveand the studentswould shout, "Turnoff the tape."Aftera few minutes the teacherwould turnthe recorder backon andthenarratorwould read the answerswhile studentswere supposed to cor-rect their worksheet. As the Unit progressedmany students would justwait for the answersto be read andwould fill in theirpapersat thattime.Afteraworksheetwascompletedthenarratorwould thensay"Ifyou wantto continue... ," which was aninvitationto go on to thenext worksheet.Thisinvitation nvariablymet with responsessuch as "butwe don't!"Oneteacherin a sing-songvoice said, "Oh we do, we do." Afterone of thefirstclasses,this teachersaid "Idon't thinkthis was a good day, the kidsdidn't really get much out of this ...." This was a surprising remark atfirst because the students had been very attentive, completed theworksheets, and the day hadprogressedaccordingto the lesson plan. Itexpressed,however, the teacher's ntuitivesense thatthismaterial, scon-veyed through the tapes, was not very effective.Asthe taperecorderdronedon, students oundmanyquietandunob-trusivediversions.Studentswould comb theirhair,clean dirtfrom theirsneakers,daydream,doodle, andchip pencils. Onegirlworkedallperiodgetting a piece of candy that was wrapped in crinklypaper out of herpocket, unwrapped, and into her mouth all unnoticed. These activitieswere generallyquietandprivateandstudents n allclassesduring his Unitwereoutwardlyveryorderly.Thesediversionswere rarelydisruptive.Mostof thestudents,however,wereveryquietandcompletedtheirworksheets.Mr.Miller aidthat the MathDepartmenthad the reputationof beingquite strict and the seventh graders,still new to the school, might be alittleintimidatedby it. Thestudentswere alsorepeatedly old that(a)afterthis Unitthe teacherswere going to determinewhich studentswould betransferred o an eighth-grademath class, and (b) they should completeand keep theirworksheetsbecausethey would be able to use them dur-ing the unittest.Formanythepossibilityof beingadvancedto the eighth-grademathclass-determined by theirbehavior,theiraccumulated radesincluding their test score on this Unit, and a math achievement test-contributedto their good behaviorduring this unit.Teachersalso passed the time during the tape-recorded essons invariousways. Some would correct papersfrom other classesand catch

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Apple and Jungckup on the seemingly endless backlog of routine paperwork. At first thesetaped lessons seemed to be more tolerated, probably because they gaveteachers some extra preparation time, which in this school was limitedto only 45 minutes a day. But by Day 5, it appeared that even the opportu-nity to catch up on other work was not totally absorbing. One teacherpaced around the room, stared at a poster for 5 minutes, stared out thewindow and finally stopped near one of us and said, "I'm so sick of thesetapes!" One teacher dozed during a tape. On Day 5, as most days, theteacher's main role was to distribute the worksheets and manage the taperecorder. If all the daily tapes and worksheets were used and completedas specified on the Lesson Plan, then there was little or no time for ques-tions or discussions. In all classes, other than supervising the use anddistribution of the instructional materials, the teachers had little to do asthe tapes and worksheets established the content and form of the lesson.However, teachers did not always sit passively by and watch; theyintervened in the planned lessons. Mr. Miller turned off the tape one dayto explain a concept. He later told one of us, "We have to discuss andclarify some, smooth the rough edges of these worksheets." However,because of this interruption, he never did get back on schedule and com-plete the taped lesson. Ms. Wilson lost a day due to a school assemblyand tried to consolidate 2 days by "talking through" some of the lessonsherself. "We have to catch up today, so we can go to Lab tomorrow."They couldn't catch up, however, and ended up skipping some tapes. Ms.Linder stopped a lesson to clarify a mathematical formula, the inclusionof which irritated her because, as she later said, "If I had seen the lessonfirst... I would have taken that out, seventh graders don't know that, itshouldn't be in there." On Day 6 she modified the flow chart assignmentby requesting her students to write a flow chart on a topic of "theirchoice"which she later explained to one of us would be "more interesting forthe students."Mr. Nelson explained that computers are "dumb" because they per-form on the basis of how they are programmed and cannot reason or usecommon sense. He gave several examples of the kinds of errors that havebeen made by computers such as astronomical billing errors that mosthumans would immediately recognize as erroneous but which of coursea computer could not. Nelson frequently supplemented the lessons in orderto increase student interest and understanding. While he too strove tomaintain the schedule, he was sufficiently knowledgeable to supplementand enrich the daily lessons.Mr. Miller took time one day to illustrate the difference between 13and 16 sector disks. The computer program selected for use in the Labwas on a 13 sector disk. Therefore, the students would have to go throughsome extra procedures in the Lab the next day and he wanted them tounderstand why. The point was not that this explanation about sectors242



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Teaching, Technology, and Genderwas important, but that Mr. Miller's explanation represented an attemptto demystify the computer, to help the students understand why the com-puter responded the way it did. In fact, it was the "mystical" aura of thecomputer that the general goals of the CLU were attempting to avoid.Teachers unfamiliar with computers, of course, could not explain thesekinds of things; and the male teachers did more of this than the femaleteachers did. In the other classes, the sector incompatibility was not ex-plained and the students were just told to "first use this disk, then usethe program disk."The male teachers did more explaining in class than did the otherteachers, primarily because they were more knowledgeable about com-puters and familiar with the CLU. However, they too were committed tofollowing the lesson plans, and their diversions to "smooth out the roughedges" invariably lost them time. Completing daily lesson plans was im-portant to all the teachers because (a) the daily lessons were too long tomake up the next day, (b) the schedule for the Computer Lab and the com-pletion of the Unit were fixed, (c) some lessons were sequential in nature,and (d) the final Unit test was correlated to the information on the tapesand filmstrips. Therefore, the time that it would take teachers to explainthe "whys" of computers was inevitably brief or not taken at all. To takethe time would jeopardize the completion of the 2-week Unit.Two points are important here. One is that while the teachers didto varying degrees stop the tapes and clarify, explain or enrich the lessons,none attempted to (a) eliminate a lesson, (b) change the nature of thelessons, or (c) change the CLU. The second point is that, in the contextof a pressured and crowded curriculum and an intensified labor process,when teachers did interject discussions they invariably fell behindschedule. This made the pace of the Unit even faster as they later triedto catch up. Thus, teachers felt that they had to maintain the schedulebecause the Unit was a requirement for which they and the students wereresponsible. Therefore the completion of the CLU became highly depen-dent on following the Unit plans, and this instrumental goal usually tookprecedence over teacher- or student-originated activities, even whenteachers became more than a little uncomfortable. Knowledge that andlow level knowledge how dominated almost "naturally" in this situation.

Computer Lab Days: Hands-On?The 3 days in which the students met in the Computer Lab were quitea contrast to the classroom days because the students were using the com-puters. On Day 3 the students were to select and use programs from aspecially prepared demonstration disk. The general enthusiasm was damp-ened only by the fact that the students had to work in groups of threeor four to a computer; and in the 45-minute class period each individualdid not get very much hands-on computer time.

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Apple and JungckOn Days 3 and 9 the plan was to have half the class work with theteacher at one computer using a simulation program, while the rest of theclass shared the six remaining computers and were to complete a Labworksheet and write their own programs, mainly because given theirworkload the teachers did not have time to give them individual help.Ms. Linder recognized this and later said that she did not like this lessonplan because, by working with the large group on the simulation game,she was not able to circulate and help those students who were tryingto write programs.The Computer Lab days were by far the most favored by studentsand were planned to provide hands-on experiences. Yet, since there were

only seven computers to be shared, students had to work in groups oftwo, or on Day 3 in groups of three and four. Because periods were 45minutes long, most students spent more time observing computer use thanactually using a computer. Many educators claim that it is preferable tohave students work in pairs rather than individually at a computer becauseit promotes peer interaction and learni'ng.We do not wish to reject thatclaim. However, in this study when groups became larger than two theyusually became dysfunctional because individual interest waned as studentswere unable to sit and observe comfortably around the small computers.Invariably, some students would sit and engage in unrelated conversationswhile waiting for their turn which some never got. Therefore, actual hands-on computer time was very limited.Even with this, however, students were in the Laband were general-ly enthusiastic about being there. If their computer use was more vicariousthan actual, they were at least observing computers. The Computer Labdays were active and exploratory in nature and this provided a major con-trast to the classroom days.The Final Unit Test

The CLU final test on the 10th day was a short-answer summary of theworksheets, tapes and filmstrips. The students could use their notes andworksheets to complete the test which was composed of matching, listing,and fill-in-the-blank short answer items such as the following:Name three ways of putting information on printoutsThe first computer was built in Philadelphia and wasnamedPut the outcome of each program on the output line.

Reflecting on the relatively reductive nature of the test, Mr. Nelson saidthat he questioned whether the test really measured what was most im-portant. Ms. Linder did not really like the test: "I felt that the final test244



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Teaching, Technology, and Gendercould be better, some of the items were ambiguous and all the vocabularystressed at the beginning was too technical."

Ms. Kane felt that there should have been a review sheet of the "reallyimportant things" rather than having the students study and use all theirnotes during the test. Ms. Wilson said that the students "did well" on thetest and the other teachers referred to the test scores as acceptable. Ingeneral, the teachers did not seem to place much emphasis on the testor its results, although the students, who had been repeatedly warned that"this unit will be tested and your score will count in your quarter grade,"did seem to take it seriously and worked carefully on the test.Teachers' Reconstructions

In later interviews and a departmental meeting teachers talked about howthey felt about the Unit. Mr. Nelson, one of the developers, said "I felthamstrung, I would probably do things differently, but I felt that I hadto pilot it." Since Mr. Nelson had computer expertise, he was not as de-pendent on the CLU, and he, more than most, expanded the daily lessonplans.Interestingly, use of the prepared CLU was not felt by all the teachersto be a required or even likely practice in the next years. Mr. Nelson didnot feel further pressure to use the Unit in the future and he explainedthat it now exists as a "resource for those who want it" and that as longas the objectives are "covered" it didn't have to be done the same in everyclass. This is consistent with everyday practice in the Math Department,where all the teachers use the same standard textbook and cover the same

objectives, so, as Mr. Miller said, "you know that each student has beenexposed to the same things."However, it is important to state that many of the teachers may in-deed still choose to continue to use the curriculum-on-a-cart in its cur-rent form, even though they recognize that it is minimizing their abilityto affect the curriculum and that they are relatively "hamstrung." As notedearlier, the CLUprovided some "extra" time that teachers could and diduse to catch up on routine paperwork and planning. For instance, whenMs. Kane was asked how she felt about the use of the tapes she said:

Wellitwasgood... Imeannaturallytgot boringandmonotonous,but I would just tune out duringthose times. I used that time towork on a new Unit, or on [some school committee work], andI'ddo otherthingsduring hosetapes.I'dtrynot to show boredomto the kids, but I reallydidn't mind it, after all it was only for 2weeks. And duringthattime I didn'thave to prepare,everythingwas prepared... and I didn't have papersto correct duringthat2weeks...If I'd change things next year, I'd lecturemore but I'dstill use a lot of those tapes, maybe not all, but a lot of them.245



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Apple and JungckWe cannot understand this response unless we situate it into the realityof teachers' workloads. Ms. Kane taught five seventh-grade math classesin a row and, while she acknowledged that these tapes were boring forher, she essentially took advantage of these 2 weeks to gain time and relievethe pressures of keeping up with the planning and grading for five mathclasses. She was aware of the fact that the Unit marginalized her own cur-riculum autonomy, but she did not overtly resist her designated role init. Instead, she interpreted and used the Unit to compensate for her other-wise intense routine. She recognized the CLU for what it was; she usedthe extra time that it gave her and she was not negative in assessing herrole in the Unit.Her colleague, Ms. Linder, also referred to the intensity of work andsaid that she didn't like the daily teaching schedule because, "There areno breaks in the day, no time to correct papers, plan....You don't get toknow the students as individuals ....I have a seating chart." Therefore,a unit that was all prepackaged, ready-to-go, and included few assignmentsto be corrected, provided some benefits to teachers whose normal routineis far more labor-intensive.For some teachers, a curriculum that separated conception fromexecution can sometimes then seem to be a benefit, not a loss. In addi-tion to providing some time for teachers, the Unit also was seen to pro-vide the pedagogical support and information about computers that Ms.Wilson, a first-yearteacher who was unfamiliarwith computers, interpretedas helpful. Ms. Wilson said that the tapes helped her because she learnedabout computers along with the students and anticipated using the samelessons again, although she would "branchout" as she becomes more com-puter literate. Teaching a unit for which she was unprepared was in-timidating, and she welcomed the prepared Unit in which she could turn

on the tape recorder and use worksheets. When asked about how sheviewed the content of the Unit, she said, "I think it covered the impor-tant things... but I really don't know much about computers youknow... "26 Ms. Wilson, in general, was positive in her assessment of theUnit.Even though all the teachers had equally intensive schedules, theydid not all interpret the form of the CLU in terms of benefits. For exam-

26. This response, with all its contradictions, is similarhistorically to the calls by teachersin the later part of the nineteenth century for the provision of standardized textbooks. Manyteachers, especially young women, rightly felt exploited by low pay, poor working condi-tions, and an expanding curriculum for which they felt either ill prepared to teach or, moreusually, had insufficient time to prepare quality lessons for. The standardized text was oneway to solve parts of this dilemma, even though it may actually have undercut some of theiremerging autonomy at the same time. Some elements of this story are told in MartaDanylewyczand Alison Prentice, "Teachers, Gender, and Bureaucratizing School Systems in NineteenthCentury Montreal and Toronto," History of Education Quarterly 24 (Spring 1984): 75-100.246



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Teaching, Technology, and Genderpie, Ms. Linder was more than a little distressed by the form of the Unitas well as some of the content. Her main objection was that she preferredto plan her own curriculum. She said:

You didn't have to be a teacherto teach thisUnit.Justturn on andoff tapes ... I would have done things a little different. I haveenoughcomputerbackgroundo havedone some thingsdifferentlyif I had had time to prepare t.... I was dependent on theirplan,tapes and worksheets .... I kept asking to see the Unit, but it wasn'tdone and I was told, "Don't worry, there isn't much to do, justtapes."But I didn't like those 2 weeks at all, I know when I wasout those days,the sub would be able to do it, she justhadto turnon the tape recorder.These comments are echoed in other places and by other teachers,though perhaps not as strongly. To varying degrees, most felt somethingwas being lost by relying too heavily on the-curriculum-on-a-cart. Yet by-and-large, the teachers accepted these 2 weeks as they were originallyplanned and did not markedly alter the standardized curriculum. How canwe understand this?Gender and the Intensification of Teaching

The rhetoric of computer literacy often turns out to be largely that-rhetoric. Even given the meritorious aims of the staff and the school districtand even given the extensive amount of work put in by teachers, the cur-riculum is reduced once again to worksheets, an impersonal prepackagedstyle, and fact-based tests.A good deal of this can only be fully understood if we place theseattempts at curriculum reform back into what we have called the fiscalcrisis of the state. School systems are often caught between two competinggoals-that of accumulation and legitimation. They must both support aneconomy, especially when it is in crisis, and at the same time maintaintheir legitimacy with a wide range of different groups. The fiscal crisismakes it nearly impossible for schools to have sufficient resources to meetall of the goals they say they will meet; yet not to at least try to meet amultitude of varied goals means that an educational system will lose itslegitimacy in the eyes of the "public." Given this, many goals will simplybe symbolic. They will serve as a political rhetoric to communicate to thepublic that schools are in fact doing what concerned groups want themto do.Yet they will not be totally rhetorical. Many teachers will be commit-ted to the goals, believing that they are worth meeting and worth spend-ing the exceptional amounts of additional time trying to take themseriously. These teachers will exploit themselves, working even harderin underfunded and intensified conditions to overcome the contradictorypressures they will be under. At the same time, however, the additional

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Apple and Jungckworkload will create a situation in which fully meeting these goals willbe impossible.This school developed a Computer LiteracyUnit under the same con-ditions and with the same intentions that many schools are currentlydeveloping similar curricula. Computer-knowledgeable teachers, amplecomputers and adequate time, and scheduling flexibility are more likewishes than realities in most school districts. Mr. Nelson and Mr. Millerworked intensively for over a month to develop a curriculum that wouldprovide introductory experiences for all the seventh graders. The CLUthey developed was significant because it exemplified how the processof transforming a very general goal like computer literacy into a specificcurriculum was mediated by the given organizational factors andresources-both human and material-typifying the school, and by thegender divisions that organized it, a point to which we shall return in amoment.It was apparent that the structure of the CLU and its implementationschedule, as well as the heavy load of teaching and paperwork that theseteachers had, made it difficult for teachers to contribute more to the Unitthan brief and occasional additions and clarifications to its content. Acanned or prepackaged curriculum did emerge. Yet, it was valued by someteachers as a practical and sensible solution to the problem of curriculumtime, resources, and "skills."

Certainly the major condition here was that of curriculum planningtime, both in the immediate and long-term sense. In this school, only thetwo male teachers were technically prepared to teach the Unit. Becausethe Unit had to be completed within the first 10 weeks of school, the otherteachers did not have time to prepare themselves to develop the new cur-riculum for their classes. Paying two teachers to develop the Unit for thedepartment was the district's way of compensating individual teachers fortheir lack of curriculum-preparation time. However, lack of comprehen-sive curriculum planning time is characteristic of the structure of mostschools. Thus, the curriculum-on-a-cart solution tends to be a generalizedresponse to the demands of new curriculum projects in many schools,especially because other responses would require more money, somethingwe cannot expect in times of the fiscal crisis of the state.This practice compensates teachers for their lack of time by providingthem with prepackaged curricula rather than changing the basic condi-tions under which inadequate preparation time exists. In the immediatecontext, some teachers may interpret this as helpful and appreciate it asa resource. But in the broader context, it deprives teachers of a vital com-ponent of the curriculum process. Over time, these short-term compen-satory practices function as deprivations because they limit the intellec-tual and emotional scope of teachers' work. This deprivation was specifi-cally recognized and articulated by Ms. Linder in her quote at the end of248



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Teaching, Technology, and Genderthe previous section. As an experienced teacher who was very anxiousto resume her full responsibilities, she expressed her feelings of aliena-tion and unimportance when she said, "You don't have to be a teacherto teach this Unit," and went on to say that she wasn't worried when shewas absent and a substitute had to teach her seventh-grade class duringthe Unit. Her skills and her curriculum responsibilities had been usurpedand this angered her. Thus, while in the immediate context the availabil-ity of the curriculum-on-a-cartwas positively interpreted by some teachers,in the long term this form of curriculum functions to compensate for andnot to alleviate the problem for which it was viewed as a solution, thatof time and "expertise."The condition of time must be examined in gender terms here. It wasthe women, not the men, in the Math Department who were seen as lessprepared to teach about computers and they were the ones most depen-dent on the availability of the CLU. Typically, the source of computerliteracy for in-service teachers is either through college and universitycourses, school district courses, or independent study, all options that takeconsiderable time outside of school. Both Mr. Miller and Mr. Nelson hadtaken a substantial number of university courses on computers in educa-tion. Given the gendered specificities of domestic labor, many women,such as those with child care and household responsibilities like Ms. Linderor women who are single parents, may have considerably less out of schooltime to take additional coursework and prepare new curricula. Therefore,when a new curriculum such as computer literacy is required, womenteachers may be more dependent on using the ready-made curriculummaterials than most male teachers. Intensification here does lead to an in-creasing reliance on "outside experts." An understanding of the largerstructuring of patriarchalrelations, then, is essential if we are to fully com-prehend both why the curriculum was produced the way it was and whatits effects actually were.It is absolutely crucial to say, however, that at the same time, the com-mitments to environments that embody an ethic of caring andconnectedness-commitments that as Gilligan and others have shown areso much of a part of women's daily experiences and are so critical in aneducation worthy of its name-may actually provide the resources forcountering such rationalized curricular models.27 The sense of loss, of anabsence of community, the struggle to personalize and reduce anonym-ity, all this enables one to restore the collective memory of difference.

27. See, for example, Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 1982): For a general discussion of the issue of gender and experience, see R.W.Connell, Gender and Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987) and Leslie Roman,LindaChristian-Smith,and ElizabethEllsworth, eds., Becoming Feminine (Philadelphia:FalmerPress, 1988).249



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Apple and JungckThe women teachers here may have some of the most important resourcesfor resistance in the long run.These points about the gendered realities of the female teachers aresignificant in another way. It would be all too easy to blame the womenin this setting for basically following the curriculum-on-a-cart and, hence,ultimately partly participating in the degradation of their own labor anda reductive that-based curriculum. This, we believe, would be a majorerror.

As a number of commentators have suggested, the real lives of manyfemale teachers, when seen close up, are complicated by the fact that oneoften returns home exhausted after being in the intensified setting of theclassroom only to then face the emotional and physical demands ofhousework, cooking, childcare, and so on. Since many female teachersare already doing two jobs, their caution and "lack of enthusiasm" towardadditional work is anything but a simplistic response to "innovation."Rather it is a realistic strategy for dealing with the complications in theobjective reality they daily face.28We need to remember that doing nothing is a form of action itself.Though it is not always the result of a set of conscious decisions, it canhave serious consequences.29 Female teachers, like all workers, may overt-ly resist intensification and the loss of their autonomy and skills. At othertimes, from the outside it may seem as if they are passively accepting aseparation of conception from execution or the deskilling of their jobs.However, as we know from an immense amount of research, most in-dividuals on their jobs will attempt to take even the most alienating ex-periences and turn them to their own advantage, if only to maintain con-trol over their own labor to simply keep from being alienated andbored,30 or as in this case to solve other equally real problems broughtabout by the conditions of fiscal scarcity, overwork, bureaucratic realities,and external constraints. Teachers are never dupes, never simply thepassive puppets that structural models would have us believe. Theiragency, their actions in concrete situations such as these, may have con-tradictory results. They may have elements of "good sense" and "badsense" in tension as they construct their responses to a crisis in theeconomy, in authority relations, and in education. Yet, the fact that they

28. Sandra Acker, "Teachers, Gender and Resistance," British Journal of Sociology ofEducation 9 (Number 3 1988): 314. See also, Apple, Teachers and Texts.29. Acker, "Teachers, Gender and Resistance," 307.30. For a review of some of this literature, see Apple, Education and Power, 66-90and Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).

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Teaching, Technology, and Genderdo construct these responses once again shows the very possibility of dif-ference. In a time when the right would like to commodify education31and to turn our schools into factories once again, that possibility is of nosmall importance. These constructions are not preordained. They can bereconstructed in ways that will allow us to join with teachers to challengethe redefinitions of skills and power that are currently going on. Too muchis at stake if we don't.

31. Apple, Teachers and Texts, 128-149; and Apple, "Redefining Equality." For a moregeneral theoretical discussion of the process of commodification and what conceptualresources might be necessary to understand it in all its complexity, see the dense but impor-tant book by Philip Wexler, Social Analysis and Education (New York; Routledge, 1988).251

curriculum issues an education

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