Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 15: Howley A Review of Dorn's Creating the Dropout

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6 September 1996

Sherman Dorn

sfxj9x@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us

Aimee Howley's review of my book Creating the Dropout focuses on my social constructivist perspective on dropping out. She says, quite accurately, that I have not placed myself in the now burgeoning literature on deconstruction except by my own analysis. I plead no contest, with one caveat: Howley's claim that I am avoiding theoretical writing refers to deconstruction methodology, not my discussion of dropping out itself. Howley does not discuss that in as much detail, and I trust her recommendation to read the book implies I have done THAT job at least adequately.

The following, then, is a personal gloss on deconstruction and the social construction of dropping out.

Howley's most pointed criticism (at least to me) is noting that my description of the dropout literature of the 1960s as "irrational" implies the existence of some rational description. Again, I agree that that phrasing is a bit crude. I would be more accurate in saying that Daniel Schreiber and others promoting the idea of a "dropout problem" implied they were being rational and, by their own standards, were inconsistent in that claim.

Howley also asserts that I have tried to place myself outside the social construction of issues by implying some best construction of dropping out, especially in the final chapter where I suggest that viewing dropping out as an issue of inequities as an alternative. I make no explicit claim of being objective, nor do I think of myself as such. What I find as a legitimate use of deconstruction -- and of my book -- is in pointing out alternatives to the dominant social construction of an issue. The larger argument of the book, stated on page four, is that we have chosen the wrong way of viewing dropping out. Faced with two options, I prefer seeing education as a right of citizenship, not primarily as a tool of socialization. Stating my preference among historical options -- and staking a claim to the EXISTENCE of those options -- is not tantamount to claiming objectivity. It is claiming that we have the will to choose a particular social construction among feasible options.

Here, Howley and I part company on the value of deconstruction. If the social construction of issues is not at least partly voluntary (and what else would you call it when the Ford Foundation subsidizes a deliberate campaign to call attention to a "dropout problem"?), then what is the point of deconstruction? I know that Howley would not suggest that we wallow in the despair of being pawns in a giant chess game beyond our imagining. Yet, in the review, she implies that the social construction of issues is dominated by social and material conflicts beyond the agency of individuals involved in creating that social construction. I disagree. Philadelphia civil rights workers knew well their disagreements with a public school system that systematically discounted the aspirations and abilities of African-American children. The Children's Defense Fund was deliberately criticizing how Southern schools had responded to desegregation when it labeled as "pushout" the thousands of African-American students suspended in newly-integrated schools. They were silenced, relatively speaking, but they were not ignorant, and neither should we be of their existence.

I also disagree with Howley's implication that we all need to label ourselves at some point when we deconstruct. Deconstruction as a methodology will succeed only when we no longer have to apologize, genuflect, and label our work "THIS IS DISCOURSE ON DISCOURSE" as we do so. Howley's own recognition of what I have done suggests that my more narrow discussion of the literature on social construction in the introduction, as well as the entire book, was sufficient for her to pigeonhole part of my methodology. If others are able to deconstruct me, and I can only disagree with them as far as I do with Howley, then I'll stand by my book as a legitimate use of deconstruction.