Tag Archives: Critical Education

Special co-published issues of Cultural Logic, Works & Days focus on “Education for Revolution”

Posted on July 7, 2013 by | Leave a comment

The journals Cultural Logic and Works & Days are collaborating to co-publish special issues on “Marxism and Education: International Perspectives on Education for Revolution.”

The issue will be published this fall, in print, by Works & Days. Cultural Logic will then publish an expanded online version—including several additional articles, including pieces on Greece, India, and Turkey—in 2014.

Rich Gibson and E. Wayne Ross, co-editors of the special issue, describe the context and focus of the issue as:

The core issue of our time is the reality of the promise of perpetual war and escalating color-coded inequality met by the potential of a mass, activist, class-conscious movement to transform both daily life and the system of capitalism itself. In this context, schools in the empires of the world are the centripetal organizing points of much of life. While the claim of capitalist schooling is, in the classics, education, “leading out,” the reality is that schools are segregated illusion factories, in some cases human munition factories. Rather than leading out, they encapsulate.

Mainstream educational and social research typically ignores, disconnects, the ineluctable relationships of what is in fact capitalist schooling, class war, imperialist war, and the development of varying forms of corporate states around the world.

At issue, of course, is: What to do?

The long view, either in philosophy or social practice is revolution as things must change, and they will.

Connecting the long view to what must also be a long slog necessarily involves a careful look at existing local, national, and international conditions; working out tactics and strategies that all can understand, none taken apart from a grand strategy of equality and justice.

“Marxism and Education: Education for Revolution” will be the second collaborative publishing project between Cultural Logic and Works & Days. In 2012, the journals co-published the special issue “Culture and Crisis,” edited by Cultural Logic co-editor Joseph G. Ramsey) in print and online versions.

Table of Contents for Marxism and Education: International Perspectives on Education for Revolution

Marxist Sociology of Education and the Problem of Naturalism: An Historical Sketch
Grant Banfield, Flinders University of South Australia

The Illegitimacy of Student Debt
David J. Blacker, University of Delaware

A Tale of Two Cities – and States
Richard A. Brosio, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Schooling For Capitalism or Education for Twenty-First Century Socialism?
Mike Cole, University of East London

Barbarism Rising: Detroit, Michigan, and the International War of the Rich on the Poor
Rich Gibson, San Diego State University

Reimagining Solidarity: Hip-Hop as Revolutionary Pedagogy
Julie A. Gorlewski, State University of New York, New Paltz
Brad J. Porfilio, Lewis University

The Pedagogy of Excess
Deborah P. Kelsh, The College of Saint Rose

Contesting Production: Youth Participatory Action Research in the Struggle to Produce Knowledge
Brian D. Lozenski, University of Minnesota
Zachary A. Casey, University of Minnesota
Shannon K. McManimon, University of Minnesota

Undermining Capitalist Pedagogy: Takiji Kobayashi’s Tōseikatsusha and the Ideology of the World Literature Paradigm
John Maerhofer, Roger Williams University

Class Consciousness and Teacher Education: The Socialist Challenge and The Historical Context
Curry Stephenson Malott, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Insurgent Pedagogies and Dangerous Citizenship
E. Wayne Ross, The University of British Columbia

Learning to be Fast Capitalists on a Flat World
Timothy Patrick Shannon, The Ohio State University
Patrick Shannon, Penn State University

Hacking Away at the Corporate Octopus
Alan J. Singer, Hofstra University

SDS, The 1960s, and Educating for Revolution
Alan J. Spector, Purdue University, Calumet

About the Co-editors:
Rich Gibson is emeritis professor of social studies in the College of Education at San Diego State University. He worked as a foundry worker, an ambulance driver, a pot and pan washer, fence painter, soda jerk, bank teller, surveyor’s assistant, assembly line chaser, a teacher, a social worker, organizer and bargaining agent for National Education Association, TA, and as a professor at Wayne State University. With about ten other people, he helped to found what is now the largest local in the UAW, local 6000, not auto-workers, but state employees.

E. Wayne Ross is professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia and a former secondary social studies (Grades 8 to 12) and day care teacher in North Carolina and Georgia. He has taught at Ohio State University, State University of New York, and the University of Louisville. Ross is a member of the Institute for Critical Education Studies at UBC and co-editor of Critical Education and Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor.

Gibson and Ross are co-editors of Neoliberalism and Education Reform (Hampton Press) and are co-founders of The Rouge Forum, a group of K-12 and university education workers, parents, community people, and students, engaged in fighting for a democratic and egalitarian society. Find out more about The Rouge Forum conferences here and here.

About Cultural Logic:
Cultural Logic—which has been on-line since 1997—is an open access, non-profit, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal that publishes essays, interviews, poetry, reviews (books, films, other media), etc. by writers working within the Marxist tradition.

CL co-editors are: David Siar (Winston-Salem State University), Gregory Meyerson (North Carolina A & T University), James Neilson (North Carolina A & T University), Martha Gimenez, (University of Colorado), Rich Gibson (San Diego State University), E. Wayne Ross, (University of British Columbia), Joe Ramsey (Quincy College)

About Works & Days:
Works & Days provides a scholarly forum for the exploration of problems in cultural studies, pedagogy, and institutional critique, especially as they are impacted by the global economic crisis of late capitalism. Whereas most scholarly journals publish groups of relatively unrelated essays, each volume of Works & Days focuses on a specific issue, and contributors are encouraged to share their work with each other.

Recent special issues of the Works & Days journal have focused on the effect of globalization on women and the environment, the attacks on academic freedom, the privatization of higher education under neoliberal capitalism, the increasing exploitation of part-time, temporary faculty, the shift from print to electronic media, and the politics of knowledge.

Works & Days is edited by David B. Downing (Indiana University of Pennsylvania).

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Student speech in school yearbooks censored, again

Posted on June 24, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Student’s yearbook from Springvalley Middle School in Kelowna

Do student comments fame or defame school yearbooks? Apparently, they defame the great works of literature. Thanks to quick-footed censorship, some middle school students’ yearbooks now read like heavily redacted wikileaks documents. In fact, last week one yearbook was leaked to the CBC, which covered the story.

CBC Radio West, June 21, 2013– Konar Sanderson just graduated from Springvalley Middle School in Kelowna. On Tuesday, he received his yearbook. But later that day, Konar says he was forced to black out some of the comments his friends signed in his yearbook. [CBC West host] Rebecca [Sandbergen] spoke with Konar and his stepfather, Tom Metz. Listen to the interview: CBC Radio West

Defenders of student speech in school yearbooks will recall a similar incident at a BC secondary school in June 2010: “A Vancouver Island principal is defending a decision to cut a Grade 10 student out of the high school yearbook because of what he said about her in his write-up. Staff at Lake Trail Secondary School used scissors to chop Brandon Armstrong’s picture and comments from about 150 copies of the annual, saving only a single intact copy for Brandon himself.”  Read More: CBC June 16, 2010

The yearbook teacher “said after trying to black-out and white-out the comment unsuccessfully, it was decided that cutting Armstrong’s entry out of every yearbook was the only reasonable option left. Armstrong’s picture also had to go because of its proximity to the text, she said.”

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Administration, BC Education, Free speech, K-12 issues, Student Speech, Students

Tagged , , ,

New articles from Critical Education

Posted on June 19, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Please note that the Institute for Critical Education Studies‘ (ICES) flagship journal, Critical Education, has just published its latest issue. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit the journal to review articles and items of interest.

  • Pedagogy and Privilege: The Challenges and Possibilities of Teaching Critically About Racism
    Ken Montgomery
  • Race and Fear of the ‘Other’ in Common Sense Revolution Reforms
    Laura Elizabeth Pinto
  • The Struggle for Critical Teacher Education: How Accreditation Practices Privilege Efficiency Over Criticality and Compliance over Negotiation
    Jean Ann Foley
  • Race and Fear of the ‘Other’ in Common Sense Revolution Reforms
    Laura Elizabeth Pinto
  • The Relationship of Teacher Use of Critical Sociocultural Practices with Student Achievement
    Annela Teemant & Charles S. Hausman
  • Coring the Social Studies within Corporate Education Reform: The Common Core State Standards, Social Justice, and the Politics of Knowledge in U.S. Schools
    Wayne Au
  • Catch-22 and the Paradox of Teaching in the Age of Accountability
    Christopher Leahey

We encourage you to consider Critical Education and Workplace for publishing and circulating your research.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,

Sandra Mathison
Stephen Petrina
E. Wayne Ross

Institute for Critical Education Studies

 

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Critical Education, Research, Student Movement, Students, Teachers

Tagged , , ,

Evaluating Education: Great Schools Project v Fraser Institute

Posted on June 18, 2013 by | Leave a comment

A great example of how fact becomes fiction, and in return how fiction becomes fact, a process critical theorists generally call reification, is the Fraser Institute’s annual ranking of schools in British Columbia. Yesterday, on 17 June 2013, the Fraser Institute published its rankings of secondary schools in BC. The Fraser Institute’s annual School Report Card is based on a single indicator in BC– “results of the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) exams in Grades 4 and 7 and provincial exams in Grades 10, 11, and 12.”

Fact becomes fiction: Individual students’ test scores on the controversial and hotly contested (by the BCTF, ICES, etc) FSA exams are aggregated and turned into a rating along a scale from 1 (worst) to 10 (best). A fiction of the quality of a school is generated out of the fact of individual students’ test scores.

Fiction becomes fact: The individual schools are then rank ordered, pitting school against school to capture the competitive nature of education, at the school level, in BC. The fiction of quality is represented as fact within the annual research-based School Report Card. The Fraser Institute exploits a fairly easy, common process.

Of course, there are many alternatives for evaluating education or judging the quality of schools. One of the most comprehensive alternatives has been taken up by the Great School Project, headed up by a group of experienced, insightful educators and researchers.

The purpose of the Great Schools Project is to develop methods to assess schools that support students, communities, and the public education system, so that we can provide the best education possible for every child—so that we have a useful answer to that Mum’s questions: How is our school doing? How well is our school meeting the needs of my child? It’s also an attempt to live up to our responsibility to move beyond simply criticizing — to make concrete proposals we believe will improve the public education system for kids.

Working methodically to offer productive ways of judging quality, the Great Schools Project has offered a set of Principles that ought to be at the base of any evaluation system.

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in BC Education, Critical Education, Equity, Ethics, Government, K-12 issues, Organizing, Research, Students, Testing, Unions

Tagged , , , , , ,

Henry Giroux: The Educational Deficit and the War on Youth

Posted on June 18, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Truthout Interview with Henry Giroux

Truthout contributor, director of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project and Board member Henry Giroux responded on June 10, 2013, to questions concerning varieties of pedagogy and fundamentalism, markets, and the prospects for public schools raised by his latest book: America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth

Leslie Thatcher for Truthout: Didn’t teachers open themselves up for attack when they used the agency acquired through strong teachers’ unions in the service of self-interest rather than modeling critical pedagogy? And hasn’t that begun to change? How would you contrast the real versus the ostensible goals of education “reformers”? What has to happen now? And concretely, what must each of us do?

The narrative about the contemporary assault on public schools doesn’t begin with the failings of public schools. One can’t even talk about them in such monolithic terms; some are outstanding and some are a disgrace, which is largely the result of a funding structure that has always been deeply unequal. But a critical understanding of the current war on public and higher education might begin in the seventies when right-wing billionaires and ideologues decided that the biggest problem with public schools was not that they were failing – but that they were public. The so-called new “reformers” are really radicals who want to transform the entire structure of public and higher education to serve elite, corporate and military interests. The project that informs their understanding of education is anti-humanistic, unjust, iniquitous and authoritarian in its attack on all things public, which also includes public servants such as teachers and especially teachers’ unions. The so-called new “reformers” are thoroughly ideological, politicized and market-driven missionaries who camouflage their intentions and their interests by advancing elements of a progressive discourse to push their deeply conservative agenda. Terms like “freedom,” “choice,” “equity” and “democracy” are emptied of meaningful content and bandied about in order to promote the neoliberal script of privatization, standardization, high stakes testing, commodification and unchecked competition. The new reformers are reactionaries who assume the posture of committed, avant garde patron saints of educational renewal. But in reality they are a new breed of philanthro-capitalists looking to dictate the educational experiences of entire generations of students – their aptitudes, their competencies, their consciousness, their aspirations – and make a lot of money at the same time. They are as disingenuous as they are backward looking. The new “reformers” are, in reality, pushing an old right-wing attack on schools and teachers. According to them, teachers are the problem because they lack accountability and unions promote a self-interested bureaucracy. Underlying this claim is a refusal to address how larger structural issues such as racism, income inequality and exploding poverty impact on school failings or how they should be reformed in light of these forces. Fixing public education is reduced to bashing teachers, unions, public servants, and funneling taxpayer money “away from the public school system’s priorities (hiring teachers, training teachers, reducing class size, etc.) and into the private sector (replacing teachers with computers, replacing public schools with privately run charter schools, etc.).”(7) The alleged new “reformers” are in reality a mix of conservative billionaires, hedge fund managers, bankers and right-wing ideologues that constitute an anti-public education movement that has produced “just another get-rich-quick scheme shrouded in the veneer of altruism.”(8)

Unlike current “reformers,” those who advocate egalitarian reforms – who promote education as the practice of freedom – are well aware that if public schools are going to improve, they have to be defined and appropriately funded. Such schools should serve as laboratories of democracy, critical and accommodating spaces where young people have access to the expertise, skills and experience that both deepen their understanding of history, the arts, sciences – of humanistic traditions and archives in general – and the new world of advanced technologies, digital communications and screen culture. The acquisition and mastery of such diverse technologies, knowledge and skills are important not only so young people can find meaningful work but also so they can determine judiciously and rigorously their appropriate and inappropriate uses. In short, so they can rise to the level of critical and engaged citizens of the world.

Public schools must be defended as public goods that benefit not just individual children and their parents but an entire society. Critical reformers must also fight to protect teacher autonomy, struggle for equitable modes of financing, and recognize that any talk about improving schools under conditions of alleged austerity has to include an analysis of the failed domestic war on drugs and the wars abroad and the devastating effects they have had on such basic social services by diverting funds from public schools and increasingly criminalizing the behavior of low-income white and poor minority students. True reformers have to fight against the neoliberal onslaught on teachers, unions, curricula, diverse modes of accountability, and reclaim democratic values and civic education as crucial for creating quality public schools. The most important starting point for creating genuine educational reform is the necessity of acknowledging that the crisis of education cannot be separated from the war on youth, the rise of the neoliberal state, the war on terrorism, and the ongoing financialization and militarization of the entire society. To not understand these basic connections is to misrecognize the real drivers in shaping currently proposed changes and misdiagnose meaningful educational reform. Those market and corporate forces that now undermine public education in the name of fixing it have little to do with democracy and critical teaching and learning, except to weaken both as part of a larger corporate restructuring and militarization of public education as a securitized, profit-based entity. Battling against those forces clearly puts one on the side of genuine educational reform.

In strategic terms what would this mean? In my view, genuine educational reform should begin with rejecting the financing of schools through local taxes, which is fundamentally out of step with the funding models for public education in every other advanced, industrialized nation. Moreover, the struggle over the proper funding of public education should coincide with the struggle for smaller schools and classes, more resources, and more full time quality teachers – which would also entail a robust commitment to critical and comprehensive teacher education and so a rejection of its current debased state. Schooling is a public necessity that is as important as national defense and should be funded as such. Secondly, all attempts at the privatization and corporatization of schools must be rejected so as to make education truly public and widely accessible, removed from those who see it largely as another source of profits harnessed to corporate power. Schools must be defined as democratic public spheres and not simply as sites whose worth is determined by the morally truncated, narrow instrumental standards of measurable utility. Teachers need to work under conditions that provide them with the autonomy that enables them to take risks, be creative, and draw upon a range of educational approaches and pedagogies. Schools must be defined as sites of political and moral practice deeply involved in the production of democratic agents. Moreover, matters of vision, agency, and support should be connected to the struggle against those pedagogies of repression that reduce teaching to the imperatives of standardization and testing. We need modes of pedagogy that enliven the imagination, create thoughtful and curious students, incorporate an ethic of civic responsibility, and teach the practice of freedom. That means connecting pedagogy to the histories, experiences, and narratives that young people bring to any learning situation – the very educative contexts denied by the standardization juggernaut. Pedagogy should not mimic economic models with their reductionist worship of method, stripped of any sense of morality or social context. Instead, pedagogy should provide the conditions for students to invest in robust and critical forms of self and social agency. Pedagogy is not a neutral method, but a deeply political practice that is always connected to the acquisition of agency, a practice that demands that educators be vigilant about what identities are being produced under what conditions and for what purposes.

Critical educators, in concert with concerned citizens, need to raise the bar so as to demand modes of education in which teachers are knowledgeable and reflexive, function as agents of civic education, and create pedagogies that are provocative and illuminating in their ability to get students to come to terms with their own power as individual and social agents. Any viable mode of critical pedagogy must treat young people with respect and enable them to develop their own voice and sense of agency, and do so in an environment that is thoughtful, critical, humane and challenging. In the end, I think it is reasonable to argue, as I do in this book, that education at all levels is the fundamental precondition that makes democratic politics possible, provides a space where meaningful histories, voices and cultural differences can flourish, and enables students to grow intellectually and morally, reflect critically about their relationship with others, and interrogate thoughtfully their relationship with the broader society and the larger world. I make no apologies in arguing that the project that informs this book furthers the attempt to establish a connection between learning and social change, educate young people to be able to translate private troubles into broader social considerations, and create the pedagogical conditions for the development of a formative culture that expands and deepens the possibilities of a democratic society. The Education Deficit and the War on Youth is a call for educators and others to organize collectively both within and outside of schools to further develop the ideas, values and institutions necessary to sustain a world where justice prevails and individual and collective consciousness does not fall asleep.

Read More: Truthout

7. David Sirota, “It’s No Coincidence that the Public Education and Poverty Crises are Happening at the Same Time,” AlterNet (June 3, 2013). Online:http://www.alternet.org/education/us-department-education-releases-study-schools-and-poverty-rate

8. Ibid., David Sirota, “It’s No Coincidence that the Public Education and Poverty Crises are Happening at the Same Time.”

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Critical Education, Equity, Ethics, Government, Organizing, Privatization, Research, Student Movement, Students, Teachers, Unions, Working condition

Tagged , , , , ,

BC Teachers Federation scores landmark victory in academic freedom and freedom of expression #bcpoli

Posted on May 27, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Well, it turns out that Dr. Seuss’s initial impression during the war that you can’t achieve a substantial victory out of turtles turns out to be wrong! This past week, after 3 years or a decade, depending how its measured, the BC Teachers’ Federation scored one of the most substantial court victories in academic and intellectual freedom for teachers in the last thirty years. The victory provides a substantial defense of educators’ civil liberties and free expression, critical education methods of instruction. And what’s more, it is a significant victory for students’ rights to critical content in the schools.

On 21 May, the BC Court of Appeal released its decision on the BCTF v. BC Public School Employers’ Association (BCPSEA) / Board of Education of School District No. 5.  The case concerned “the extent to which teachers’ expression of political views on education issues in public schools is protected freedom of expression under s. 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:”

The political expressions in issue were messages critical of specific government education policies, contained on posters posted on classroom doors and school bulletin boards, and on buttons worn by teachers. Pursuant to a directive from the school district that political posters and information should not be displayed in school hallways, classrooms, or on school grounds, some principals told teachers to stop displaying the posters and wearing the buttons.

This case dates specifically to January 2009, when campaign materials, such as posters and buttons, were circulated by the BCTF to teachers across the province. On 23 April 2009, the Director of Instruction and HR from School District No. 5 (Southeast Kootenay) forwarded a directive principals in the district advising them that the BCTF’s political materials had no place on school grounds other than the staff room. On 1 May 2009, the Cranbrook and Fernie Teachers’ Association forwarded a note to the Director advising that it disagreed with the 23 April directive.  Following a grievance filed by the BCTF, an arbitrator heard the case in March 2010 and denied the grievance, awarding in favour of the BCPSEA in October 2011.

The BCTF appealed the decision. Within Tuesday’s BC Court of Appeal decision is some of the strongest language for a defense of academic freedom for teachers and critical education methods:

There was no evidence in this case of any actual or potential harm to students from being exposed to the materials about educational issues, nor any facts from which an inference of harm could be drawn. On the contrary, Canadian jurisprudence, including Munroe, stands for the principle that open communication and debate about public, political issues is a hallmark of the free and democratic society the Charter is designed to protect. Children live in this diverse and multi-cultural society, and exposing them to diverse societal views and opinions is an important part of their educational experience.

Simply put, “the law supports the exercise by teachers of their right of free expression in schools.”

Court of Appeal Justice Hinkson provides a caveat:

I see no reason why students should receive less protection from the monopolization of the discourse of a societal issue than adults who are subjected to a flood of discourse on an electoral issue by proponents of one side to that issue. In the case of the students, the monopolization on the issue may deprive them of their right to be educated in a school system that is free from bias.

Where the issue upon which teachers choose to exercise their rights to free speech is a political one, their rights must be balanced against the rights of their students to an education that is free from bias. That brings into play, as it did in Harper, the concern that if a group is able to monopolize its message on any issue, competing views will be deprived of a reasonable opportunity to be heard…. However, the proportionality aspects of s. 1 of the Charter reserve for another case the evidence required to establish and the point at which teachers’ rights of freedom of expression in schools must yield to the rights of students to be educated in a school system that is free from bias.

This landmark decision  will certainly be put to test, as the case more generally dates back to over a decade of to-and-fro decisions over academic freedom for BC teachers and their right to free expression. Indeed, one of the best case studies of political speech and symbolic speech is that of the BCTF v. the BC Ministry of Education and BCPSEA from about 2002 to this present decision. Throughout this decade, BC teachers have progressively and systematically tested their rights to political and symbolic speech: posters on school bulletin boards, black arm bands, buttons, letters to parents, t-shirts, bumper stickers on cars in the school parking lot, and wearing black clothes.

“Your Majesty, please… I don’t like to complain,
But down here below, we are feeling great pain.
I know, up on top you are seeing great sights,
But down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.”

In April 2012, amidst another round of disputed bargaining practices and the government’s imposition of the controversial Bill 22, teachers raised questions: “A Prince Rupert elementary teacher has been told a quote from Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle is a political statement that should not be displayed or worn on clothing in her classroom. The teacher included the quote in material she brought to a meeting with management after she received a notice relating to union material visible in her car on school property.”

Eight teachers in the Prince Rupert district received letters warning of “discipline for displaying political messages.” Joanna Larson, president of the Prince Rupert District Teachers’ local said “the administration doesn’t want students to see the messages.” “We feel very censored here right now. We have feelings that our rights to freedom of expression have been violated.”

To accent the 11th anniversary of BC government’s oppressive bills 27 and 28, which prevented the teachers from bargaining on issue such as class size, the BCTF and teachers organized a protest for January 28, 2013– a “Dark Day for Education” and “Wear Black Day.” Teachers wore black in their classrooms while the BCPSEA cautioned that “regardless of the colour of attire worn, teachers should not engage students in discussion about their political views.” Some teachers in Prince Rupert responded with new black t-shirts, this time remediating Shakespeare and quoting section 2(b) from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But three teachers  were told to remove or cover the shirts.

The BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) weighed in on 4 February 2013 by forwarding a letter to the Prince Rupert School Board and arguing that the ban was unconstitutional: “The school district’s decision to ban free speech about free speech reminds us of a badly-written comedy sketch. But this isn’t an Air Farce skit, it’s a troubling violation of teachers’ constitutional right to free expression,” said Lindsay Lyster, President of the BCCLA. “The School District has an obligation to respect free speech, and there is no lawful justification for the District to ban these t-shirts.”

Of course, quoting or paraphrasing one’s civil liberties in defiance has been part and parcel of protests throughout the past 300 years. And arguably one of the best political works in the Dr. Seuss catalog, Yertle the Turtle has for five decades been used for purposes of instruction in the classroom and symbolic and political speech, inside and out. Notoriously, the Red Hot Chili Peppers first rocked their expressive version of Yertle the Turtle in 1985. Most recently leading up to the Prince Rupert teacher’s utilization of parts of the text, Yertle the Turtle was used in the protests at the Wisconsin legislature in 2011 and the Occupy movement beginning in September 2011.

ICES colleague E. Wayne Ross recently articulated the necessity of “dangerous citizenship”— “critical citizenship, or social justice oriented citizenship” and civil liberties citizenship— in opposition to liberal notions of “good citizenship” that somehow pass for education in the schools. “There is a misguided and unfortunate tendency in our society to believe that  activities that strengthen or maintain the status quo are neutral or at least non-political,” Wayne observes, “while activities that critique or challenge the status quo are ‘political’ and inappropriate.”

A breath of fresh air, Tuesday’s decision from the BC Court of Appeal changes the tide for teachers. BCTF President Susan Lambert was buoyed by the decision, noting that

it’s about the right of teachers to express their concerns about the working conditions that they teach in and the learning conditions the students are taught in… It’s very important that we as a society encourage teachers to express their views and that we take those views seriously…. You don’t discuss and encourage critical thinking in children by shielding them from diverse views.

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Academic freedom, BC Education, Civil Liberties, Ethics, Free speech, Government, K-12 issues, Legal issues, Protests, Strikes & Labor, Students, Teachers, Unions, Working condition

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Vancouver elementary teachers association endorse NDP in BC election #BCPoli

Posted on May 1, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Given the BC Liberals history of underfunding public education, promoting corporate intrusion, and undermining of collective bargaining, the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers’ Association (VESTA) are  lobbying the BCTF to endorse the NDP leading up to the May 14 election.

“The change has been brought about by what we consider to be a decade… long attack on public education through government policy, strips of collective agreements, legislation,” said Gerry Kent, VESTA president.

“While (the BCTF is) not endorsing a political party, I think it’s clear that it’s time that maybe we do. Especially in light of the current budget that the Liberals propose, there doesn’t seem to be any help to remedy the difficulties that are affecting public education, which in our view have been put in place by the Liberal government.”

Listen to Media Mornings podcast of VESTA President Gerry Kent

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in BC Education, Budgets & Funding, Government, Organizing, Students, Teachers, Unions

Tagged , , , , ,

Race and Fear of the ‘Other’ in Common Sense Revolution Reforms (Critical Education 4.2)

Posted on February 14, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Critical Education
Vol 4, No 2 (2013)

Table of Contents
Article

Race and Fear of the ‘Other’ in Common Sense Revolution Reforms
Laura Elizabeth Pinto
Niagara University

Abstract

During the 1990s, Ontario experienced significant social policy reform under the Progressive-Conservative government’s controversial, but straightforward, platform called the Common Sense Revolution (CSR), promising to solve Ontario’s economic problems with lower taxes, smaller government and pro-business policies intended to create jobs. The ideological framing led to policy direction which dismantled existing provincial policies and institutions designed to promote equity. This paper begins by providing evidence to support how the CSR functioned as racist across a broad swath of policy areas, through ideology and coded language, structure and program cuts, and processes. Based on interviews with sixteen policy actors, the paper reveals how the provincial curriculum policy formulation process overtly overlooked and dismantled anti-racism and social justice in curriculum policy.

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Tagged , , , , , ,

Henry A. Giroux | The War Against Teachers as Public Intellectuals in Dark Times

Posted on December 20, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Truth-Out December 17, 2012. The tragic deaths of 26 people shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., included 20 young children and six educators. Many more children might have been killed or injured had it not been for the brave and decisive actions of the teachers in the school.  The mainstream media was quick to call them heroes, and there is little doubt that what they did under horrific circumstances reveals not only how important educators are in shielding children from imminent threat, but also how demanding their roles have become in preparing them to negotiate a world that is becoming more precarious, more dangerous – and infinitely more divisive.   Teachers are one of the most important resources a nation has for providing the skills, values and knowledge that prepare young people for productive citizenship – but more than this, to give sanctuary to their dreams and aspirations for a future of hope, dignity and justice. It is indeed ironic, in the unfolding nightmare in Newtown, that only in the midst of such a shocking tragedy are teachers celebrated in ways that justly acknowledge – albeit briefly and inadequately – the vital role they play every day in both protecting and educating our children.  What is repressed in these jarring historical moments is that teachers have been under vicious and sustained attack by right-wing conservatives, religious fundamentalists, and centrist democrats since the beginning of the 1980s. Depicted as the new “welfare queens,” their labor and their care has been instrumentalized and infantilized; [1] they have been fired en masse under calls for austerity; they have seen rollbacks in their pensions, and have been derided because they teach in so-called “government schools.”  Public school teachers too readily and far too pervasively have been relegated to zones of humiliation and denigration.  The importance of what teachers actually do, the crucial and highly differentiated nature of the work they perform and their value as guardians, role models and trustees only appears in the midst of such a tragic event. If the United States is to prevent its slide into a deeply violent and anti-democratic state, it will, among other things, be required fundamentally to rethink not merely the relationship between education and democracy, but also the very nature of teaching, the role of teachers as engaged citizens and public intellectuals and the relationship between teaching and social responsibility.  This essay makes one small contribution to that effort.

The War Against Public School Teachers

Right-wing fundamentalists and corporate ideologues are not just waging a war against the rights of unions, workers, students, women, the disabled, low-income groups and poor minorities, but also against those public spheres that provide a vocabulary for connecting values, desires, identities, social relations and institutions to the discourse of social responsibility, ethics, and democracy, if not thinking itself.  Neoliberalism, or unbridled free-market fundamentalism, employs modes of governance, discipline and regulation that are totalizing in their insistence that all aspects of social life be determined, shaped and weighted through market-driven measures.[2] Neoliberalism is not merely an economic doctrine that prioritizes buying and selling, makes the supermarket and mall the temples of public life and defines the obligations of citizenship in strictly consumerist terms. It is also a mode of pedagogy and set of social arrangements that uses education to win consent, produce consumer-based notions of agency and militarize reason in the service of war, profits, power and violence while simultaneously instrumentalizing all forms of knowledge.

The increasing militarization of reason and growing expansion of forms of militarized discipline are most visible in policies currently promoted by wealthy conservative foundations such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute along with the high-profile presence and advocacy of corporate reform spokespersons such as Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee and billionaire financers such as Michael Milken.[3] As Ken Saltman, Diane Ravitch, Alex Means and others have pointed out, wealthy billionaires such as Bill Gates are financing educational reforms that promote privatization, de-professionalization, online classes, and high-stakes testing, while at the same time impugning the character and autonomy of teachers and the unions that support them.[4] Consequently, public school teachers have become the new class of government-dependent moochers and the disparaged culture of Wall Street has emerged as the only model or resource from which to develop theories of educational leadership and reform.[5] The same people who gave us the economic recession of 2008, lost billions in corrupt trading practices, and sold fraudulent mortgages to millions of homeowners have ironically become sources of wisdom and insight regarding how young people should be educated.

Read More: Truth-Out: Henry A. Giroux | The War Against Teachers as Public Intellectuals in Dark Times

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Ethics, K-12 issues, Students, Teachers, Violence

Tagged , , ,

Workplace #21 Launched: “In/stability, In/security & In/visibility: Tensions at Work for Tenured & Tenure Stream Faculty in the Neoliberal Academy”

Posted on November 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

We are extremely pleased to announce the launch of Workplace Issue #21, “In/stability, In/security & In/visibility: Tensions at Work for Tenured & Tenure Stream Faculty in the Neoliberal Academy” at http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/issue/view/182389

This Special Issue was Guest Edited by Kaela Jubas and Colleen Kawalilak and features a rich array of articles by Kaela and Colleen along with Michelle K. McGinn, Sarah A. Robert, Dawn Johnston, Lisa Stowe, and Sean Murray.

In/stability, In/security & In/visibility provides invaluable insights into the challenges and struggles of intellectuals coping with everyday demands
that at times feel relentless. As the co-Editors describe the Issue:

A tapestry of themes emerged… There were expressions of frustration, confusion, self-doubt, and disenchantment at having to work with competing agendas and priorities, both personal and institutional. Authors also spoke to how, even in challenging times and places, it is possible to find and create opportunities to survive and thrive, individually and collectively.

Narratives and findings therein will resonate with most if not all of us. We encourage you to review the Table of Contents and articles of interest.

Workplace and Critical Education are hosted by the Institute for Critical Education Studies (https://blogs.ubc.ca/ices/), and we invite you to submit manuscripts or propose special issues. We also remind you to follow our Workplace blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/workplace/) and Twitter @icesubc for breaking news and updates.

Thanks for the continuing interest in Workplace,

Stephen Petrina & E. Wayne Ross, co-Editors
Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
Institute for Critical Education Studies
https://blogs.ubc.ca/ices/
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
No 21 (2012): In/stability, In/security, In/visibility: Tensions at Work for Tenured & Tenure Stream Faculty in the Neoliberal Academy
Table of Contents
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/issue/view/182389

Articles

In/stability, In/security & In/visibility: Tensions at Work for Tenured &

  • Tenure Stream Faculty in the Neoliberal Academy (Kaela Jubas, Colleen Kawalilak)
  • Navigating the Neoliberal Terrain: Elder Faculty Speak Out (Colleen Kawalilak)
  • Being Academic Researchers: Navigating Pleasures and Pains in the Current Canadian Context (Michelle K. McGinn)
  • On Being a New Academic in the New Academy: Impacts of Neoliberalism on Work and Life of a Junior Faculty Member (Kaela Jubas)
  • “You Must Say Good-Bye At The School Door:” Reflections On The Tense And Contentious Practices Of An Educational Researcher-Mother In A Neoliberal Moment (Sarah A. Robert)
  • If It’s Day 15, This Must Be San Sebastian: Reflections on the Academic Labour of Short Term Travel Study Programs (Dawn Johnston, Lisa Stowe)
  • Teaching and Tenure in the Vocationalized University (Sean Murray)

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Equity, Ethics, Faculty, Research

Tagged , ,

Against Obedience by Susan Ohanian

Posted on October 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled. We invite you to review the
Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,

Stephen Petrina
Sandra Mathison
E. Wayne Ross
Co-Editors, Critical Education
Institute for Critical Education Studies
University of British Columbia

Critical Education
Vol 3, No 9 (2012)
Table of Contents
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/182380

Articles
——–
Against Obedience
Susan Ohanian

Abstract

This article was originally delivered as the Second Annual Adam Renner Education for Social Justice Lecture at the Rouge Forum’s Occupy Educaton! Class Conscious Pedagogies and Social Change Conference held at Miami University in Oxford, OH, June 22-24, 2012. Starting with a personal journey in learning that political activism isn’t as scary as many teachers believe, the article highlights the highly political nature of press coverage of Race to the Top and the Common Core State Standards initiative, zeroing in on the quisling nature of teacher union and professional organization antics to keep a seat at the political table. Questioning the silence on critical issues of higher education providers of educational products to consumers—aka professors—the author insists that whining isn’t the same as doing. The article concludes with several points on how educators can take action.

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in K-12 issues, Teachers, Unions

Tagged ,

New issue of Critical Education launched: Embracing Change: Reflection on Practice in Immigrant Communities

Posted on August 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to read articles and items of interest.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,

Sandra Mathison
Stephen Petrina
E. Wayne Ross
Co-Editors, Critical Education
Institute for Critical Education Studies
University of British Columbia

Critical Education
Vol 3, No 7 (2012)
Table of Contents
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/182260

Articles
——–
Embracing Change: Reflection on Practice in Immigrant Communities
Gresilda Anne Tilley-Lubbs, Jennifer McCloud

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

New Issue of Workplace Launched

Posted on August 1, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor has just published Issue #20, “The New Academic Manners, Managers, and Spaces.”  This issue includes key conceptual and empirical analyses of

  • the creation and avoidance of unions in academic and business workplaces (Vincent Serravallo)
  • the new critiquette, impartial response to Bruno Latour and Jacques Ranciere’s critique of critique (Stephen Petrina)
  • the two-culture model of the modern university in full light of the crystal, neural university (Sean Sturm, Stephen Turner)
  • alternative narratives of accountability in response to neo-liberal practices of government (Sandra Mathison)
  • vertical versus horizontal structures of governance (Rune Kvist Olsen)
  • teachers in nomadic spaces and Deleuzian approaches to curricular practice (Tobey Steeves)

We invite you to review the Table of Contents for Issue #20 for articles and items of interest. Thanks for the continuing interest in Workplace (we welcome new manuscripts here and Critical Education),

Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES)
Workplace Blog

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Academic freedom, Administration, BC Education, Faculty, Free speech, Governance, Organizing, Research, Strikes & Labor, Students, Teachers, Unions

Tagged , , , ,

CFP: Liberalism in Educational Policy, Practice, and Discourse

Posted on July 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Call for Papers

Special Theme Issue of Critical Education
Theme: Liberalism in Educational Policy, Practice, and Discourse

Guest Editors:
Angelina E. Castagno & Sabina Vaught

Despite current scholarly attention to the ways neoliberalism characterizes much of our contemporary socio-political context, liberalism still profoundly informs power dynamics within schools, community organizations, and other educational contexts. While neoliberalism focuses on markets, choice, and efficiency, classical liberalism centers notions of the individual, equality, democracy, and meritocracy. These are enduring notions with significant ideological attachments, as well as institutional and policy-based manifestations within school settings. Although the concept of liberalism has somewhat shifting boundaries in response to larger social, political, and economic changes, there remain these powerful central elements (see, for example, Cochran, 1999; Dawson, 2003; Locke, 1690; Mill, 1869; Olson, 2004; Starr, 2008). This special issue seeks to examine how these liberal tenets shape power dynamics around race, gender, class, and sexuality in school policy, practice, and law.

We suggest that liberalism’s power in schooling operates from its axis of individualism. At the heart of liberalism is the notion of the individual and individual rights. In liberal thought, individuals provide the foundation for laws and societal norms, and institutions exist primarily to further the goals, desires, and needs of individuals. An individual’s rights are of utmost importance under a liberal framework, so rights such as freedom of speech, thought, conscience, and lifestyle are viewed as fundamental and worth protecting at almost any cost. Equality of opportunity is another liberal mainstay. Value is placed on ensuring that individuals have equal access to various opportunities in society. However, liberalism is not concerned with ensuring equality of outcome since it is assumed that individuals can reasonably decide if and how to capitalize on opportunities presented to them. Moreover, liberalism generally opposes too much government regulation, but this can be a point of contention since government involvement is sometimes required to ensure the stability of other core liberal values. These tenets allow liberalism to both mask and reproduce power imbalances. As such, liberalism informs power mechanisms by which educational policies, practices, and discourses are shaped.

With liberalism as an analytic construct through which to view schooling, we seek papers for this special issue that might address the following broad questions:

  • How is liberalism taken up, engaged, and employed in various educational contexts to reproduce power along axes of race, gender, sexuality, and class?
  • To what extent does the liberal identity and agenda drive educational efforts and movements, and to what effect?
  • What are the implications of liberalism on schools? On youth? On policy? On curriculum? On pedagogy? On activism? On reform efforts?

Through these analyses, we hope to map the multiple ways liberalism impacts schooling in order to disrupt power inequities that remain pervasive and elusive when viewed strictly through a neoliberal framework. Drawing on critical theory, Critical Race Theory, Tribal Critical Theory, Red Pedagogies, gender and feminist studies, and other related theoretical traditions, this special issue will bring together articles that advance a critical conversation about liberalism, individualism, and power within U.S. schools.

To submit a manuscript for consideration in this special issue of Critical Education, and for author submission guidelines, please visit (www.criticaleducation.org). For any inquiries related to this special issue, please e-mail the guest editors at liberalismineducation@gmail.com. For full consideration, complete manuscripts of no more than 5,000 words, including references, should be submitted by January 15, 2013. We strongly encourage submissions from advanced doctoral students and junior scholars.

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in CFPs

Tagged , ,

Consumers or Critical Citizens? Financial Literacy Education and Freedom–New Issue of Critical Education

Posted on July 15, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Critical Education
Vol 3 No 6
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/182350

Consumers or Critical Citizens? Financial Literacy Education and Freedom
Chris Arthur
Toronto District School Board
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Abstract

Given the recent and ongoing economic crisis and high levels of consumer debt, the teaching of financial literacy in elementary and secondary schools has received widespread support. Too often, however, financial literacy education policy documents promote the individualization of economic risk and privilege the autonomy of the consumer or consumer-citizen over that of the critical citizen. This article argues for the necessity of a critical financial literacy education aimed at supporting critical citizens by providing a Marxist critique of the dominant liberal and neoliberal notions of freedom and responsibility reproduced in financial literacy education policy documents. The choice highlighted here is not between financial illiteracy and financial literacy but between accommodating oneself to neoliberal capitalism’s needs so as to remain in perpetual competition with others or understanding and collectively altering an economic system that promotes alienation, insecurity and exploitation.

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Research

Tagged , , ,

Critical Education Vol 3, No 5: ‘Critical Thinking’ And State Mandated Testing: The Collision Of State Rhetoric And Teacher Beliefs

Posted on June 15, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled.

We invite you to review the Table of Contents below and then visit our web site to read articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 3, No 5 (2012)
Table of Contents
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/182244

Articles
——–
‘Critical Thinking’ And State Mandated Testing: The Collision Of State Rhetoric And Teacher Beliefs
Melissa Freeman, University of Georgia
Sandra Mathison, University of British Columbia
Kristen Wilcox, University at Albany, SUNY

Abstract

Based on case studies of two school districts in New York State, the authors analyze the contradictory and hegemonic discourse of critical thinking proffered in State curriculum standards and as manifest in state mandated student assessments. Using Gramsci’s (1971) notion of hegemony, the analysis illustrates that dominant groups (such as state administrators or federal policy makers) gain and maintain dominance by projecting their own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it (such as teachers) accept it as ‘common sense’ and ‘natural.’ The ways in which this hegemonic relationship is created and sustained, and it’s consequences, are illustrated in the way teachers make sense of fundamentally contradictory rhetoric and lived practice.

Keywords
Hegemony; Accountability; Critical Thinking

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in K-12 issues, Research

Tagged , , ,

Critical Education partners with VI Congress of the Mediterranean Society of Comparative Education

Posted on May 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Critical Education will be a partner journal with the VI Congress of the Mediterranean Society of Comparative Education, which will be held Hammame, Tunisia October 1-3, 2012.

For more information about the conference visit the website or contact:

Jelmam Yassine Ph.D
Assistant Professor
National Engineering School of Tunis
GSM : 00 216 98202093
Skype : jelmam.yassine
Mail : yassine.jelmam@yahoo.fr

Hrairi Sameh – GSM : 00 216 98656444

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Conferences

Tagged , ,

Critical Education: “Water is a Right: A Critique of Curricular Materials and Learning Experiences in Schools Sponsored by the Transnational Water Utility Service Industry”

Posted on March 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Critical Education has just released a new issue, featuring the article “Water is a Right: A Critique of Curricular Materials and Learning Experiences in Schools Sponsored by the Transnational Water Utility Service Industry” by J. Hall.

Critical Education 3(3), 2012
Water is a Right: A Critique of Curricular Materials and Learning Experiences in Schools Sponsored by the Transnational Water Utility Service Industryd
J. Hall

Abstract

There is no longer an infinite supply of fresh water on the planet. In large part, the global water crisis is a result of large-scale, destructive, industrial “innovations.” In just fifteen years, two-thirds of the people on the planet will feel the impact of the diminishment of safe drinking water. Given the global water crisis, the focus is this analysis is on the transnational water utility service industry as well as the larger shift from the notion of drinking water as a public right to a commodity to be privately owned and sold on the global marketplace. I discuss the very different ways these corporations are entering communities in the Southern compared to the Northern hemisphere, including attempts to re-brand their image after public failures. I then consider the particular strategies these conglomerates use to seep into cities and towns in the North. Emphasis is placed on how this sector of the water industry is becoming involved in schooling through sponsoring curricular materials and activities. I also provide initial analysis of the messages distributed in a sample of such materials and activities intended for K-12 students. While literature exists that explores curricular materials in schools provided by transnational corporations involved in direct control of natural resources, surprisingly, the privatization of the world’s fresh water supply receives little attention in both education-based scholarship and media.

Email, RSS Follow
Email

Leave a comment

Posted in Research

Tagged , ,