(Re)claiming an educator's view of reform in schools: Whole school reform as a site of negotiation of interests

Robert Hattam, Peter McInerney, John Smyth & Michael Lawson

Paper presented at the Australia Association for Research in Education

conference, Brisbane, 1997.

In this paper we want to connect with a plethora of literature -

broadly defined as critical social research - that tackles the issue

of school reform2. This tradition might be understood as an

epistemology that "explores what it means to do empirical research in

an unjust world" _(Lather 1986, p. 257)_ and hence might be understood to

be "socially situated knowledge" _(Harding 1993, p. 50)_. An approach to

knowing that "offers a way of bringing into play the concerns and

interests and diverse voices of marginalised or oppressed groups; as

well as a way of assessing the voices of authority and influence" _(Ball

1994, p. 3)_. Alternatively, critical social science might be

understood, in the context of school reform, to be unabashedly

interested in advancing a view that "schools should be more interested

in educating young people to help create a more compassionate and

democratic society rather than serving as vocational sites for

industry" _(Goodman 1994, p. 132)_. Ball _(1994)_ offers a useful

typography of analytic perspectives employed as analytical resources in

this tradition. They are:

¥ critical policy analysis - " the task .. is to examine the moral

order of reform and the relationship of reform to existing patterns of

social inequality, bringing to bear those concepts and interpretative

devices which offer the best possibilities of insight and

understanding" (p. 3).

¥ poststructuralism - "the emphasis .. is on the discourses and texts

which come into play in the make up of social institutions and cultural

products" (p.2).

¥ critical ethnography - "generate[s] critical perspectives upon the

impact and effect of policy in local settings. Ethnography provides

access to 'situated' discourse and 'specific tactics' and precise and

tenuous' power relations operating in local settings" (p. 2). We draw

on all three perspectives in our work to make sense of the

possibilities for schools that are struggling against the grain of

marketisation. In this paper we want to propose that an educator's

sensibility if still alive in many schools, a sensibility that holds

dear a commitment to an egalitarian ideal, that schooling can make a

difference to social inequality. We see such an egalitarian

sensibility operating in schools to pursue what we now refer to as the

dialogic school - a school that takes seriously a commitment to

negotiate with it's community about what is good teaching and learning.

In this paper we want to provide a heuristic - a conceptual device for

guiding practice - for understanding an alternative to school reform

for marketisation and to outline a number of the significant aporias

that define such a struggle.

What does school reform mean in 'new times'?

We presently understand the term 'new times' as a code for naming a

rationality that might playfully be referred to as 'Howard's way' -

characterised by juxtaposing in a dangerous constellation an

uncompassionate State, fast capitalism and an instrumental reason.

Howard's way, also described as "supply-side federalism" _(Knight &

Warry 1996)_ relentlessly applies a set of somewhat simple-minded

political technologies, driven by clerks for a "predatory culture"

_(McLaren 1994)_. Within a neo-liberal state the federal government

supports deregulation by an integrated set of processes broadly named

as privatisation, marketisation, and legitimation. Privatisation

involves selling off publicly owned enterprises to entrepreneurs for

private ownership and profit. Marketisation is a strategy for those

enterprises that can't be privatised immediately. For example - public

schools, public health, public communications are still (just) beyond

the scope of the privatisation strategy but can be opened up to the

logic of market. Parts of these enterprises can be privatised, some of

the work can be 'out-sourced' and where possible the user-pays

principle is written into practice. For the purposes of this paper

though we are most interested in the methods of legitimation used by

neo-liberal governments. We see a legitimation strategy that works in

at least these three ways: promulgating 'manufactured crisis' or 'moral

panics', vigorously promoting a discourse of 'common sense' about the

inevitability of marketisation, and closing down the spaces of dissent.

Schooling, being such a significant site of social and cultural

formation is a prime target for the use of moral panics or manufactured

crisis3. The marketising of schooling requires pursuing reforms that

obviously will be resisted. If schooling is to dance to the tune of

the market then schools need to emphasise the development of skills for

work. Of course to achieve this requires overhauling commitments to a

general liberal education and the need to have an informed citizenry.

At a time when it would have been more appropriate to be concentrating

on schooling as a means of increasing Australia's 'social capital' _(Cox

1995)_ and hence developing more competent learners and active citizens,

the educational discourse is being colonised by the logic of the

competent worker . Manufacturing crises generates a discourse of

deviancy to deflect the public attention from the broader structural

questions. The deviants are the workers (especially trade unionists)

who want to be paid too much, who aren't productive enough and teachers

who don't teach the right things well enough. What does not seem to

get much mention in the official discourse though, is the

ineffectiveness of Australia's corporate management in working towards

more democratic relationships in the workplace, and the failure of

Australia's policies on unemployment.

A significant part of the legitimation strategy of neo-liberal

governments is closing down spaces for dissent. In the education and

training sectors, State governments became "managerial husks" _(Seddon

1995)_ during the years of the Keating Government and hence educational

leadership shifted to the federal arena. (We also believe this has

released some potential for educational leadership in schools but we

will get back to this point later.) The spaces for debate about policy

issues almost completely disappeared when State systems closed down

most of their Advisory and Curriculum Officer positions _(Bartlett

1994)_. Leadership positions have also been made short term tenured

positions and this too have ensured a silencing of critique from those

working in the field. Perhaps more insidiously has been the blatant

muting of social justice discourse _(Lingard & Garrick 1997)__(Luke 1997)_.

The category 'social justice' has all but disappeared. We have seen

the Disadvantaged Schools Program renamed the Commonwealth Literacy

Program and the demise of funding for the National Schools' Network.

The closing down of government sponsored spaces for debate in state

education bureaucracies has also most significantly meant an

institutional silencing of teachers' voices.

School reform in new times then needs to be understood to involve a

struggle to assert a market ideology/rationality by using technologies

of "managerialism" _(Bates 1996)_ against an educator's sensibility. It

now seems clear that educator's knowledge is ignored when developing

policy on schooling _(Taylor, Rizvi et al. 1997)_. It is not only

teachers' voices that have been marginalised. It does appear as though

recent policy development on schools has been ideologically deaf to the

best researchers in this country. Take for instance the recent debacle

about literacy standards in Australia. It might be possible to assert

that we are living in a post-positivist world in the academy _(Lather

1986)_ but certainly this in not the case in the polity. Those working

in the academy perhaps also need to take stock of what Agger refers to

as the "decline of discourse" _(Agger 1991)_ - the retreat of academics

to write almost exclusively for specialist journals. Recently,

academics as intellectuals have tended to write themselves up textual

cul-de sac's, "composing themselves in ways accessible to a few

hundred" _(Agger 1991, p. 175)_ . At a time in which the logic of the

market in concert with government is infecting even our public

institutions and civil society it seems absurd to loose courage and

retreat from a 'diagnosis of the times' to a narrow and safe politics

of the sign. In our field - the study of teaching - there has been a

tendency to become overly obsessed with tangling in theory wars and not

enough attention to the widening gap between educational policy and

educators knowledge.

In a society in which 'Horward's way' asserts its influence on public

policy and law, and more importantly, manifests in the material

conditions of our lives, the contest over the purposes of schooling

intensifies. Schooling, as a significant site of social and cultural

formation, not only offers potential for increased intrusion of the

logic of the market into the political economy, the culture, the public

sphere and the family, but also offers spaces for resistance _(Shor

1992; McLaren 1993; hooks 1994; Smyth 1995)_. Classroom practice and

hence the consciousness of teachers, might also be understood to be

contested terrain - a site of competing discourses. The term

'discourse' here refers to "different ways of structuring areas of

knowledge and social practice .... [d]iscourses do not just reflect or

represent social entities and relations, they construct or 'constitute

them .. " _(Fairclough 1992, p. 3)_ Teachers are not automatons, that

simply implement the authoritative discourse of education policy

pronouncements _(Bowe and Ball 1992; Ball 1994)_. Rather they struggle

to make sense of - and hence to unite into a coherent practice - the

inter-relationships, contradictions and profound differences between

the authoritative discourse (education policy) and their own internally

persuasive discourse.

The authoritative word demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it

our own; it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to

persuade us internally; we encounter it with its authority already

infused to it ... _(Bakhtin 1935/1981, p. 342)_

At its most sophisticated, the internally persuasive discourse of

teachers - a view about teaching and learning that we want to refer to

as an educators' sensibility - develops in an independent,

experimenting and discriminating way through ongoing rigorous

examination of what works in the material conditions of schools

_(Zeichner 1993; McTaggart 1994)_. Teachers, we believe enter their

classrooms with intent to put into practice their internally persuasive

discourse. Such intent though is forced to struggle with other

available (and competing) verbal and ideological points of view,

approaches and directions. In the contemporary scene though, teachers

are having to counteract a prevailing discourse which seeks to reduce

teaching to that of a technical enterprise based on sets of

competencies and skills, where teachers roles are largely confined to

the implementation of curricula prepared by outside experts and where

teaching is viewed as an 'art' or 'craft' rather than scholarly

practices informed by ethical frameworks.

It is clear from our case studies that many teachers and school

communities work to sustain a broader vision of teaching as an

intellectual and ethical activity where issues of educational

inequality and disadvantage are part of the fabric of teachers' work

and learning _(Connell and White 1989; Connell, White et al. 1990)_. In

such communities teachers are resisting models of training and

development which operate from a deficit view of teachers. How we

construe teachers' work establishes how we conceive of teachers'

learning. If teachers are only technicians then their learning is

simply a matter of learning the techniques. If teachers' work is

construed as being about making curriculum in response to, not only

changing social conditions, but to the needs of unique communities,

then teachers learning needs to involve making ethical choices,

negotiating with students and parents, collaborating with peers, and

being reflexive about the rigour _(Shor and Freire 1987)_ of their

classroom practice.

The school as a site of negotiation of interests

Ironically the major policy move in relation to school reform has been

towards the 'self-managing school' _(Smyth 1993; Watkins 1996)_. We say

ironically, because such a move also implies that educational

leadership has also moved to schools. Given the trajectory to

marketise schooling - to force schools to compete in a market and to

have market intrusion in the curriculum - has really only just begun,

we believe an educators' sensibility is still alive and kicking in many

public schools. We can be thankful that most of our public school

teachers make decisions about their teaching practice using an ethical

framework that has yet to be completely trampled by the logic of the

market. Accepting that hegemony can never be complete _(Apple 1981)_

means that schools need to be considered as possessing a certain,

albeit limited autonomy. What's of interest to us, is what schools do

with that autonomy - how do they struggle over purpose? In a context

of devolution some schools have managed to successfully work against

the grain of marketisation and the concomitant effects of

intensification and proletarianisation. Some schools have managed to

sustain a 'culture of innovation' _(Kress 1993)_ through applying

strategies of reform developed through such programs as the

Disadvantaged Schools Program and the National Schools Network _(Ladwig,

Currie et al. 1994)_. Taking 'whole school reform' _(Connell and White

1989)_ seriously means not only subverting the educational policy

process through a politics of 'resistance through accommodation' but of

struggling to put into practice what Fraser calls 'radical democracy'.

Put simply, the school is viewed as a site for an "actually existing

democracy" _(Fraser 1997)_ which aims to eliminate .. two different

kinds of impediments to democratic

participation. One such impediment is social inequality; the other is

the misrecognition of difference. Radical democracy on this

interpretation, is the view that democracy today requires both economic

redistribution and multicultural recognition. (pp. 173-4)

Some schools continue to struggle to enact a vision of a school as a

site of negotiation of interests. We refer to these schools as

dialogic schools _(McInerney, Smyth et al. 1997)_ or critical

collaborative communities. Teachers in such schools reject the view

that the interests of the most disenfranchised members of their school

communities have been incorporated into the policy formulations of

outside experts. Instead, such schools maintain a view that social

justice is largely worked out locally. These schools are committed to:

reforming the mainstream curriculum to improve the learning outcomes of

educationally disadvantaged students; involving parents and students in

curriculum decision making; integrating the change process in existing

school structures; and, redirecting resources to assist in the change

process. In essence whole school change is a process or a struggle to

actively involve the whole school community including groups who have

been constantly marginalised or silenced in the curriculum process and

to ensure all students are actively engaged in learning and decision

making.

What does struggling for the dialogic school mean for teachers' work

and teachers' learning?

Teachers' learning - towards the dialogic school

Being a teacher in a dialogic school involves learning in response to

either, the educational needs of their students, or else, in response

to the changing social context of schooling. For example, teachers are

learning to respond to the learning needs of an increasingly diverse

cohort of students, and/or they are learning how to incorporate new

technologies into their practice. Both reasons in the end, aim to

direct working/learning to improve the educational attainment of their

students. What is recognised in dialogic schools - a point that seems

to have alluded recent policy initiatives - is that teachers are the

most important actors in educational reform and it is their efforts

which ultimately determine the success of any moves to change schooling

practices _(1993)_. Hence representing accounts of teacher development

which bring teachers back in the centre of the frame has been a major

goal of our research. Early on in our research we concluded that

teachers' learning needed to understood as a 'social practice'. As

such teachers' learning can't be considered as a private and individual

event but always occurs within interpretive communities - such as

schools, (clusters and school systems). What's being argued here is

that schools operate as a powerful interpretative communities. What

constitutes good teaching and learning is authorised and

institutionalised at the level of the school. What possibilities

teachers have to develop their practice - to enhance teachers' learning

- then is encouraged and or constrained by the culture of the school.

Such a view means that the nature of teachers' learning is largely

determined by school culture. School culture we understand here to be

about such things as: leadership practices; school decision making

structures; school planning practices; relationships with the

community; relationships between teachers and with students; and, the

quality of the educative debates and discourses that operate in the

school. School culture being the prevailing structures, practices and

discourses through which those working and learning in schools make

sense of what's going on.

A way of understanding this idea is to imagine the nature of teachers'

learning in various geographical locations - try comparing a secondary

school in a wealthy suburb, a primary school in a community with a high

proportion of refugees from South East Asia or an Area school in a

farming community. Another comparison is between schools with

different views about curriculum reform, or school development. Try

comparing the nature of teachers' learning in a school with a vibrant

curriculum development program - based on a rigorous process of

examination of practice, with a school that is convinced the existing

curriculum is working well, even though teaching practice is rarely

examined or debated. Each school has very different culture which give

rise to different possibilities and realities for teachers' learning.

Enhancing teachers' learning in schools, we believe involves working on

the culture of the school. Ideally this means whole school reform, but

smaller less ambitious projects we believe can also make a significant

contribution to working on the culture _(Hattam, Brown et al. 1995)_.

How might we understand school cultures that enhance teachers learning?

The question might also be turned on it's head and we might also ask -

how might teachers' learning contribute to a more vibrant school

culture? At the risk of over-simplification and stereotyping it seems

to us that schools might be broadly categorised as follows -

Enter diagram here

What follows is a further elaboration of the caricature of these types

of school cultures.

"Stuck" Schools

Schools which have few of the structures and planning processes to

promote collaboration and the development of educational dialogues in

the community seem to be stuck when it comes to school reform. In such

schools restrictive practices associated with individualism, privatism

and hierarchical systems seem to shut off the possibility of teachers

working towards educational goals or visions shaped through democratic

processes in response to community needs. In the absence of community

owned processes, such schools allowÊtheir agenda to be driven from

outside and end up being trapped in their own inertia.

Collaborative schools

Other schools have developed collaborative practices and various forms

of collegiality as part of the process of advancing teachers' learning

and whole school reform. Some of the characteristic features of schools

moving towards this model include:

¥ a shared public discourses on education

¥ democratic planning practices

¥ opening up of the spaces for dialogue in the school

¥ school structures to support teachers' learning

¥ teachers play a prominent role in identifying and defining their

¥ forms of distributive leadership - not a hierarchical model of

The big questions in such communities centre on the primacy of student

learning. How is student learning best enhanced in this place? How, in

turn, is teachers' learning constituted to ensure that it contributes

to improvements in student learning? How, in turn, is teachers'

learning constituted to ensure that it contributes to improvements in

student learning? In such schools, a large number of the teachers

realise that it is important to be continually testing the adequacy of

their theories about teaching and learning. In a number of schools the

school culture supports and encourages such investigations.

Critically collaborative communities

Schools as critically collaborative communities have moved beyond the

comfort zone of collaboration to a culture of learning where teachers

confront their own teaching practices and begin to critically reflect

on issues of social justice and the broader context of teaching and

learning. We have suggested that such a community might be regarded as

a dialogic school in which parents, students and teachers are engaged

in on-going dialogues and debates about the curriculum and the purposes

of schooling. The big questions in such communities centre on the

socially situated nature of student learning. So the question - how is

student learning best enhanced in this place? is still important but is

read off against other questions such as - how might schooling make a

difference to persistent social inequalities? In such schools, a large

number of the teachers are investigating the adequacy of their theories

about teaching and learning, with a view to introducing their students

to the "representational resources" _(New London Group 1996)_ needed to

"read the word and the world" _(Freire and Macedo 1987)_ in these "new

times" _(Hall and Jacques 1990)_. The following constellation of

features _(Smyth, Hattam et al. In progress)_ could be considered to

encapsulate the critically collaborative or dialogic school:

1. Articulating the purposes of schooling: The school has a clear and

coherent educational philosophy _(Goodman 1992)_, in which the role of

the school in developing society and students is displayed in both

policy and practice.

2. Advancing a concern for social injustice _(Connell 1993)_:The pursuit

of tolerance is a hallmark of a critical appreciation of difference,

and is a distinguishing feature of the democratic school. The

demonstration of a capacity to embrace diversity and to debate its

features makes a school able to challenge and supplant dogmatic and

entrenched viewpoints.

3. Continually (re)focus on learning: All aspects of school life should

be interrogated by the question - does this enhance kid's learning?

4. A culture of innovation: The atmosphere in the classroom and the

school emphasises possibilities arising from learning, the reward that

comes from understanding what the world is like, how it came to be that

way, how things work, what could be done differently, and in what ways

everyone might share more equitably.

5. Enacting democratic forms of practice: The school organises spaces

for the interaction of all of its members; parents can attend school

council meetings; parents are invited to engage in discussion with

staff; students engage actively in discussion of school policies and

practices and carry the outcomes of these discussion to the school

decision making body where they have representation.

6. Being community-minded: Democratic schools work hard to achieve a

shared consciousness of the situated and located nature of the learning

process _(McLaren 1989)_. This involves working to be relevant to the

community around the school, and of being partisan in response to the

their struggles to live worthwhile lives.

7. Educative Leadership: This means that leadership is given a somewhat

wider definition than just referring to the Administration - leadership

is encouraged from the teachers, students and parents.

8. A discourse emphasising critical literacies: This means promoting

critical and political literacies not just functional ones that lead to

technical literacy _(Fairclough 1992)_.

IV

So far we have provided a sketch of an alternative to school reform for

marketisation - the struggle towards a dialogic school as an 'actually

existing democracy'. But this is only half the story for those of us

working within a socially-critical orientation committed to theory with

"practical intent" _(Bernstein 1978: 206)_.

Theory with practical intent seeks not only to understand the world but

also to transform it. ....... Such a vision contains two elements.

First, it entails a conception of a better world, an image of what the

world could (or should) be. The realization of this better world is

the aim of theory with practical intent. And second, it involves a

claim concerning how such a world can be realized, one predicated on

the belief that the intentional actions of social actors can play a

role in determining the dynamics and direction of change. _(Alway 1995:

2)_

In attempting to come to terms with how a dialogic school might be

realised a somewhat more nuance reading of the terrain is required than

outlined here already. We don't intend to give a lengthy treatment

here but offer some directions as to how we might consider the

complexity of struggling towards a dialogic school. A conceptual

construct that offers some potential here is 'aporia'. The Concise

Oxford defines aporia as "a perplexing difficulty" . Whilst the Oxford

Companion to Philosophy defines aporia as " the cognitive perplexity

posed by a group of individually plausible but collectively

inconsistent propositions ... and logic as such can enforce no

resolution." Perhaps an example will be instructive as a means to

introduce a number of aporias for those working in dialogic schools.

For those working within a socially-critical tradition the following

aporia is a defining feature of their project - the aporia of the

necessity to continue to work in the tradition of critique, yet the

corresponding necessity to transcend it without compromising it.

Critical social theory "is caught between a critique of categories as

fulfilling an ontological need, and it's own will to explanation, a

program which requires positive, unhistorically mediated, categories"

_(Aronowitz 1992: 297)_. Critical social theory is defined by the

perplexing difficulty of a commitment to constantly interrogate our

categories and the categories of other discourses circulating in the

public sphere and also to act upon the world to change it. What

follows is a first pass at describing some of the significant aporias

confronting those working towards the dialogic school.

1. Being a leader means being in control, whilst being democratic is

about being open to the voices of others. One way to think about this

issue is to tease out the difference between being authoritarian versus

being authoritative. The authoritarian asserts a view of the world,

whilst an educator "practicing authority with freedom" _(Shor and Freire

1987, p. 92)_ practices dialogue with others to find a more adequate way

to work the world.

2. The reality of intensification of teachers' work undermines enacting

a democratic culture in a school. We hear the cries for pre-packaged

materials and for the need to limit the meeting schedules of schools.

3. Many teachers fear that democratic relationships in the classroom

will mean standards will fall. A way forward here is to replace the

idea of standards with. The question then becomes - how do we expect

students to be engaged in rigorous learning tasks? How might we define

an educative rigour?

4. And a related point - How to engage the voices of the students

without trivialising the curriculum? Being able to bring the lives of

the students into the curriculum does not mean abandoning giving them

opportunities to engage in powerful learning processes. Neither does it

necessarily mean giving up the right to determine what is important

knowledge.

In conclusion, we hope that our research will lead to the development

of a set of materials for schools that will assist those who are

interested to work through the perplexities that confront them. As

such, we aim to develop a set of technologies or investigations that we

hope will enable teachers to work towards a school culture that

rigorously examines it's own practice.

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_

1 This paper was developed out of the Teachers' Learning Project as a

means to theorise about what's happening to teachers' learning in an

era of the devolved school The Teachers' Learning Project is an

Australian Research Council funded project involving the Department for

Education Training and Employment (DETE) and the Flinders Institute for

the Study of Teaching (FIST). The major aims of the project are to:

¥ develop a detailed account of the supportive conditions and structures

to facilitate the professional development of teachers;

¥ identify and develop strategies which can be used in schools to

promote and support teachers' learning;

¥ develop and trial materials which schools could use to enhance teacher

learning; and,

¥ evaluate the implementation of trial materials and strategies

concerned with teachers' learning.

The special focus of this research has been on teacher managed forms of

learning and to date the team has gathering descriptions of teachers'

learning at eight schools - including primary and secondary - in South

Australia. Using a case study methodology we have interviewed teachers,

parents and students, engaged in an extensive program of observation in

schools, and collected and analysed school policies and planning

documents.

What we have been attempting to understand from a research perspective

is the phenomena - teachers' learning. We have deliberately studied

schools that we believed fulfilled certain criteria. Namely - exemplify

a teacher-managed form of learning, have a focus on learning and

teaching, encompass a commitment to addressing the needs of all

students and show evidence of success or potential success in improving

learning outcomes. Perhaps to summarise, we were after schools that

were sustaining a culture in which the theory and practice of teaching

and learning were being rigorously examined by the teachers as a means

to improve the learning outcomes of all of the students in the school.

Schools in which an educators view was alive and kicking. In going

after teachers' learning in schools it has become clear that school

culture is a significant determining context. Such a view has led us

to propose a typology of schools - stuck, collaborative, and critical

collaborative. The critically collaborative or dialogic school being

seen as an ideal to be struggled for. We have began to describe what

this ideal looks like and how we might understand a trajectory towards

such a school. In moving along this trajectory a number of significant

tensions need to be worked on. Understanding these

tensions/problematics gives us a few clues about what resources might

be useful for schools - resources that enhance teachers learning.

2 Bowe R & Ball S, (1992) Reforming Education & Changing Schools: Case

Studies in Policy Sociology., London: Routledge. Ball S, (1994).

Eduaction Reform: A critical and post-structural approach., Buckingham:

Open University Press. Lingard B, Knight J & Porter P, (eds.) (1993).

Schooling Reform in Hard Times, London: Falmer. Lingard B & Porter P,

(1997). A National Approach to Schooling in Australia? Essay on the

development of national policies in schools education. Canberra: ACE.

Smyth J, (ed.) (1993). A Social Critical View of the Self-Managing

School. London: Falmer. Taylor S, Rizvi F, Lingard B, & Henry M,

(1997) Educational Policy and the Politics of Change, London: Routldge.

see also Discourse Vol 17 (3) devoted to feminsist perspectives on the

marketisation of education

3 A number of manufactured crisis have been used in the past as a

powerful concoction to legitimate the need to privilege the imperatives

of the market in devising curriculum - e.g youth are deviant _(Roman

1996)_; the Australian education and training sectors need to do more if

Australia are to be economically competitive in an international market

place; and, we have a debt crisis.