ABSTRACT
Since its inception, public school in the United States has actively contributed to the reproduction of the society’s socioeconomic and political hierarchy, with its deeply ingrained inequities. The primary goals of public school have been to socialize students through an organizational process Gramsci termed “hegemony” into becoming docile, patriotic citizens who would serve the nationstate, and to prepare young people to fit in to the corporate, global economy (Spring, 2008). Hegemony results in our agreeing to certain dominant ideas, values, and beliefs that have the consequence of reproducing asymmetrical power relationships. Indeed, we come to internalize these ideas, values, and beliefs to such an extent that we see them as “normal,” or “common sense” (Boggs, 1976, p. 39). Hegemonic narratives convince those of us who benefit from dominant institutional and cultural arrangements and those of us who are oppressed by them that these arrangements are “natural.”
