Paper short abstract:

Through an ethnographic case study, my paper shows how in crisis contexts such as Detroit, the privatization of the public school system, presented as a natural consequence of the economic emergency, is depoliticized by framing parents as the key factor of chidren's success in school.

Paper long abstract:

With a long-term debt of more than eighteen billion dollars, Detroit is the largest american city to have ever declared its bankruptcy. Its economic collapse led to what Agamben (2005) defined a "state of exception", where questions of citizenship and individual rights are diminished, superseded and rejected in the process of claiming an extension of power by the government.

Following the everyday life of Teresa and her son Cisco between September 2011 and December 2013, I focus on the educational reforms implemented in Detroit, stressing both their rhetoric and their consequences. Crafted on the school reforms tested in New Orleans after the Katrina hurricane, the educational model applied in Detroit relies on the privatization of public schools. Through the story of Cisco, diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) at the age of 8, I highlight some of the negative consequences of this "charter school model", especially of parents of children with "special needs". These children, unwelcome to charter schools, are put in the increasingly crowded classrooms of the public school system with less access to the services they would need. Using a paternalistic language, these reforms remove their long-term results from the public debate framing the academic achievements of Detroit's students in moral terms as a matter of parental involvement. The "intensive parenting" they advocate for can thus be seen as an ideology (in its marxist meaning) that conceals the contradictions between the appearance and essence of society, serving the economic interests behind the privatization of schools.