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This article appears in Cities Are Now, the Winter 2015 issue of YES! Magazine.

The school as factory was a predominant metaphor for education in the middle of the last century. Schools were to churn out young people ready for roles as workers and consumers. In current debates, the laboratory is the model, with successful education defined as controlling variables to produce desired outcomes.

In Educating for Insurgency: The Roles of Young People in Schools of Poverty, Jay Gillen, a Baltimore public school teacher, vividly shows the limitations of both models. In each, authorities define successful outcomes in ways that reduce learning to a matter of obedience. By contrast, Gillen says we can address the 鈥渕ammoth failure鈥� of education reform by trying to understand 鈥渨hat actually happens鈥� in school, as opposed to 鈥渨hat the dominant ideology says should happen.鈥�

Rather than blaming students or their teachers, Gillen says, we stand a better chance if we begin by acknowledging that young people are 鈥渙ften effective in developing and advancing their plans autonomously.鈥� If schools reproduce inequality, the needs and interests of students in poverty are not met, and they resist.

These insights informed Gillen鈥檚 work with the Baltimore Algebra Project, which uses math literacy as a way to teach and encourage political organizing. Its immediate aim is to show students that efforts to learn math do serve their interests. One measure of success: Students use math skills developed in Algebra Project classrooms to teach other students. In the past 10 years, their student-run tutoring co-op has earned more than $2 million.

Gillen encourages teachers, and administrators to rethink what it means to be 鈥渄isobedient鈥� in today鈥檚 鈥渇ailing鈥� schools.

The Baltimore Algebra Project鈥檚 ultimate goal is to serve as a kind of 鈥渕ini-society鈥� in which students address systemic educational problems. Students begin by putting demands on themselves鈥攃ome on time, pay attention, put effort into learning. Then they can make credible demands on their peers, the 鈥渂eginning of political action.鈥� Thus prepared, students go beyond the classroom to make demands on the larger society. Through this process they experience a 鈥渞eversal in the direction of authority,鈥� which allows them to envision truly democratic schools and workplaces.

Angry, sullen, and boisterous, adolescents are clearly theatrical. But, Gillen observes, theater is never to be interpreted literally. It is symbolic action. He identifies 鈥減ervasive literalism鈥� as a fundamental problem in today鈥檚 schools. Adults typically misconstrue adolescent resistance, and fail to recognize the implicit politics of students鈥� behavior.

This insight leads to Gillen鈥檚 proposition that we consider the development of relationships in drama as a model for student-teacher interaction. In drama, the creation of obstacles鈥攊ncluding indirection, allusion, and disguises鈥攁ids communication across differences, as he shows with examples from Shakespeare. Adapting these insights to classroom interaction, Gillen observes that students鈥� behavior often exhibits extreme sensitivity to the 鈥渃omplications of social difference鈥� and the 鈥渆mbarrassments of caste.鈥�

Given freedom to address difference and inequality, young people 鈥渟tep into history,鈥� a concept that links the Baltimore Algebra Project with the organizing tradition of Bob Moses and Ella Baker. Gillen presents the Algebra Project鈥檚 students as the latest in an ongoing freedom struggle tracing back to fugitive slaves and to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the civil rights era. Across generations, young people have refused passive roles, engaged in acts of resistance that pressured societal hierarchies, and accomplished significant increases in freedom.

鈥淚t鈥檚 an open question,鈥� Bob Moses writes in the book鈥檚 foreword, 鈥渨hether our country is mature enough to have an honest understanding about the past and present public school education of its youth.鈥� By providing a classroom-tested framework in which to understand the historical antecedents and political implications of young people鈥檚 resistance to injustice, Gillen encourages teachers, administrators, and pundits to rethink what it means to be 鈥渄isobedient鈥� in today鈥檚 鈥渇ailing鈥� schools.