No Child Left Behind and the Spectacle of Failing Schools: The Mythology of Contemporary School Reform

This article discusses what David Berliner (2005) has called the perverse “spectacle of fear” (208) surrounding issues of teacher quality and accountability in contemporary school reform. Drawing principally on the critical semiotics of Roland Barthes' essay, “The World of Wrestling” (1957), it examines the way that this spectacle works to undermine public education and explicates the powerful mythology behind it. The article then concludes with some suggestions on how this destructive “spectacle of fear” might potentially be disrupted using the agencies of Deweyan “strong democracy”.