The local and the national in a diverse county: Objectification as a social and policy process

The rich diversity of suburban Washington DC's ethnic and linguistic communities flourish side by side with some of the most powerful homogenizing forces in the United States: National Bureau of Standards, National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Education. This concern on accommodating centralized standards – not only in education, but also many areas of the economy, politics and bureaucracy – is such a pervasive feature of the activities of workers in the region that when researchers at GWU approached the MCPS system middle school science program about possible collaboration to see if curriculum units that were organized according to national standards would work in a diverse school system there was interest by the county public school system. The process of “objectification” is an important way in which diversity and standards are reconciled in local contexts. These processes of objectification are relevant to at least three areas of educational concern: (1) No Child Left Behind (2) Science Achievement and Curriculum (3) Teacher Training.