Contradicting the Contrarians: The Rhetoric of the Neoconservative Right in Social Studies Education
tion, a conservative think tank, published a volume of essays, Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? (Leming, Ellington, and Porter-Magee 2003), written by critics within social studies who call themselves the “contrarians.” This particular work is, as we argue, an example of neoconservative rhetoric taking aim at schools, teachers, students, and schools of education in the United States. Their tract is an example of the “conservative restoration” (Apple 2003; Aronowitz and Giroux 1993) in an educational context. In this essay, we analyze portions of Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong? in terms of the rhetorical argumentation engaged in by think tanks and scholars of the neoconservative Right. Explicitly in opposition to the ideology at work in the Fordham Foundation and their text, we attempt to present a response as a counter-move to the contrarians in the hopes of articulating a broader tactic against the forces of cultural production employed by the Right. In joining the responses collected in this issue of The Social Studies, ours is a response taking issue with the rhetorical tools used against scholars in education and the larger projects of multiculturalism and cultural studies. It is a response offering an understanding of how the contrarian articulation works and perhaps where it comes from politically; and, ours is also a curricular response that continues the interpretive curriculum conversations that are maddening at times, but ever so important. Such a response relies on a keen understanding of the arguments levied against the “lunatics,” as these contrarians call the social studies scholars who, they claim, have taken over the “asylum,” as they call our system of education; and it will benefit curriculum theorists and scholars in education who would protest. It is our hope that this essay might ignite and enrich a curricular conversation (Grumet 1989/1999) with a variety of scholars in pursuit of future responses and rearticulation of the arguments laid bare by the contrarians. It is also our hope and intent to answer the call by Aronowitz and Giroux for radical educators “to match neo-conservative politics with a corresponding set of visions and strategies” (1993, 223).