NEOLIBERALISM, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AND WALTER’S MALADIES
Public schools have always been at the center of neoliberalism’s project to create rational individuals who can compete in the marketplace along with refashioning the ways in which Western democracies function. Under Keynesian welfare policies, social injustices and inequalities are reduced through the intervention of government-sponsored social programs and the redistribution of resources and power within society. Under neoliberal post-welfare policies, social injustices and inequalities are the result of individual inadequacies, which cannot be solved by increasing individual dependency on social welfare, but rather by requiring individuals to become fully productive members of the workforce. Since employability and economic productivity are the main goals, there is less of a concern with producing a liberally well-rounded and civic-minded person through the educational system. Education serves the instrumental goal of developing the required skills and knowledge for a person to become an economically productive member of the workforce. David Hursh (2005) maintains that neoliberal governments seek both to reduce the overall public funding of education while at the same time reorganizing it to fit the needs of the economy. Neoliberal critics blame schools for society’s injustices and inequalities, while at the same time supporting taxation and reduction in social spending policies that exacerbate these inequalities. One recurring argument among these critics is to blame public schools for not providing enough skilled and well-educated workers for industry and the economy. This claim allows these critics to shift the responsibility for economic inequality away from corporations and politicians, and place it squarely on the educational system. Since public schools are the root cause for most social problems, educational reform efforts seem politically neutral, publically acceptable, and inevitable for the good of society (Hursh).
Hursh says that these educational reforms have been characterized by efforts to standardize the curriculum, to implement standardized testing to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable, to increase school choice and to privatize the public educational funding provision. Many social critics have pointed out the contradiction between these neoliberal reforms that promote competition and innovation between schools while at the same time limiting innovation through standardized curriculum and assessment requirements. Under George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the state serves as the central regulator of education markets through its increased intervention in state education through curricular standards, testing, and funding. Public schools are no longer controlled at the local level, but rather through local decisions based on requirements of state and federal governments (Hursh).
With the state’s persistent intervention into local schools, many teachers feel constrained in their classrooms and wary of introducing any new teaching methods that may interfere with the continual practice of preparing students for standardized tests. These tests have become the instrumental measure of a teacher’s performance and a determinant in teacher promotion and retention. Teachers, for the most part, are restricted to teaching the standard curriculum and preparing their students for standardized evaluations. Henry Giroux (2010) points out that when educational reform neglects to connect learning to the public spheres of politics, critical thinking, and democracy, “it loses its hold on preparing young people for a democratic future and condemns them to a world where the only values that matter are individual acquisition, unchecked materialism, economic growth, and a winner-take-all mentality” (368). Under these reforms, the teacher’s role as an active, creative thinker is greatly diminished as they find themselves reduced to being mere cogs in a machine driven by an inflexible system of standardized testing and curriculum. It is not surprising that most teachers will feel undervalued and demoralized by these intrusive neoliberal educational reform and accountability efforts.
An early scene of Walter shows him struggling in vain to motivate a class of seemingly disinterested and bored high school students to the wonders of chemistry. Earlier in the same pilot episode (1/20/08), we see the early-rising Walt staring at a plaque on the wall of his home awarded to him in 1985 for his contribution to research that led to the Nobel Prize in chemistry. One can surmise that because he is married and has a son with cerebral palsy, he gave up the lucrative, entreprenuerial field of scientific research in favor of the security of a teaching position. As a school teacher, Walt is part of a public institution probably most derided by neoliberal critics as incompetent, ineffective, and an implicit threat to individual freedom, even democracy. Neoliberal ideologues often scorn the civil servants who work for public institutions. And, while politicians and civic leaders frequently laud the importance of school teachers in our society, at the same time they reduce funding to school districts and favor privately-run charter schools. The reality for most teachers, especially for those living in the American Southwest, is a career marked by low-pay and limited job benefits. Walt has to work a part-time job as a cashier at a car wash after school and on the weekends to support his family. When one of the car wash employees does not show up for his shift, Walt’s boss presses him to fill in by washing cars. Walt is humiliated when two of his students laugh, take pictures, and poke fun at the sight of Mr. White washing their car.
Walt is a tired, unhappy, overworked, and emasculated middle-aged man. Skyler (Anna Gunn), his pregnant wife, switches out his breakfast bacon for veggie bacon to lower his cholesterol, repeatedly reminds him to do home chores, tells him to stand up to his boss at the car wash about not working late, and chides him for being late for his surprise fiftieth birthday party. At the party, Walt is further emasculated by his bombastic brother-in-law Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), who is a DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) agent and supervisor, is showing off his Glock 22 handgun to Walt’s son. Hank hands the gun to a hesitant Walt and then comments about the absurdity of the sight with Walt holding a firearm. Hank, who clearly relishes the attention he receives at being a federal agent, interrupts Walt’s party to view himself being interviewed on a television news story concerning a DEA bust of a meth lab in which agents seized over seven-hundred thousand dollars in cash. Hank, noting Walt’s interest in the bust, offers him a ride-along during their next drug bust. He follows up his offer with a hearty laugh saying that Walt needs to put a little excitement in his stale life. Following the party, Walt’s emasculation is culminated in bed when Skyler both sexually satisfies him as a personal birthday present while at the same time attending to her bid on an item from an Internet auction site on her laptop. In the bedroom, Walt is as passive as he is in his life. He appears patient and grateful to receive the sexual attention, even if it is obligatory, from his preoccupied wife. The pilot episode suggests that Walt is suffering from a personal crisis of masculinity and that it is likely linked to his regret in not taking the risks of becoming a research scientist combined with his dependence on the staid security of a low-paying public sector job.