Category Archives: Social Studies

New book: Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education

Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education
New Perspectives for Social Studies Education

Edited by:
Abraham P. DeLeon
University of Texas, San Antonio, USA
and
E. Wayne Ross
University of British Columbia, Canada

Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education: New Perspectives for Social Studies Education begins with the assertion that there are emergent and provocative theories and practices that should be part of the discourse on social studies education in the 21st century. Anarchist, eco-activist, anti-capitalist, and other radical perspectives, such as disability studies and critical race theory, are explored as viable alternatives in responding to current neo-conservative and neo-liberal educational policies shaping social studies curriculum and teaching.

Despite the interdisciplinary nature the field and a historical commitment to investigating fundamental social issues such as democracy, human rights, and social justice, social studies theory and practice tends to be steeped in a reproductive framework, celebrating and sustaining the status quo, encouraging passive acceptance of current social realities and historical constructions, rather than a critical examination of alternatives. These tendencies have been reinforced by education policies such as No Child Left Behind, which have narrowly defined ways of knowing as rooted in empirical science and apolitical forms of comprehension.

This book comes at a pivotal moment for radical teaching and for critical pedagogy, bringing the radical debate occurring in social sciences and in activist circles—where global protests have demonstrated the success that radical actions can have in resisting rigid state hierarchies and oppressive regimes worldwide—to social studies education.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement: Through Collaboration, All Things are Possible

Introduction: On the Edge of History: Towards a New Vision of Social Studies Education
Abraham P. DeLeon and E. Wayne Ross

1. Anarchism, Sabotage, and the Spirit of Revolt: Injecting the Social Studies with Anarchist Potentialities
Abraham P. DeLeon

2. Embattled Pedagogies: Deconstructing Terror from a Transnational Feminist Disability Studies Perspective
Nirmala Erevelles

3. Ecojustice, Community-based Learning, and Social Studies Education
Rebecca A. Martusewicz and Gary R. Schnakenberg

4. Why have School?: An Inquiry through Dialectical Materialism
Rich Gibson

5. Gumbo and Menudo and the Scraps of Citizenship: Interest Convergence and Citizen-making for African Americans and Mexican Americans in U.S. Education
Anthony Brown and Luis Urrieta, Jr.

6. “The Concrete Inversion of Life”: Guy Debord, the Spectacle, and Critical Social Studies Education
Kevin D. Vinson, E. Wayne Ross and Melissa B. Wilson

7. Critically Examining the Past and the “Society of the Spectacle”: Social Studies Education as a Site of Critique, Resistance, and Transformation
Brad J. Porfilio and Michael Watz

8. The Long Emergency: Educating for Democracy and Sustainability during Our Global Crisis
David Hursh

9. Building Democracy through Education: Human Rights and Civic Engagement
William T. Armaline

10. Critical Reflection in the Classroom: Consciousness, Praxis, and Relative Autonomy in Social Studies Education
Wayne Au

11. The Radical and Theoretical in Social Studies
Stephen C. Fleury

Download PDF of book Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2 here.

Links to Recent Articles of Interest—Historians Against the War

Links to Recent Articles of Interest

“The Tragedy of Obama’s Middle East Policy”
By Ussama Makdisi, Informed Comment blog, posted September 22
The author teaches history at Rice University

“One and a Half Cheers for American Decline”
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, posted September 21

“Bradley Manning: An American Hero”
By Marjorie Cohn, CommonDreams.org, posted September 20
Makes comparison with the Pentagon Papers release

“Historian: U.S. Islamophobia Worse Now”
CNN video interview with Simon Schama, posted on History News Network September 14
Simon Schama teaches history at Columbia University.

“Here Come the True Believers: The Great Muslim Scare”
By Lawrence Davidson, CounterPunch, posted September 16
The author teaches history at West Chester University

“Why Peaceniks Should Care About the Afghanistan Study Group Report”
By Robert Weissman, Z-Net, posted September 11

“Hillary Clinton’s ‘American Moment’ Was Nothing But American Blather”
By Andrew Bacevich, The New Republic, posted September 13
The author teaches history and international relations at Boston University.

“The Great Pakistani Deluge Never Happened: Don’t Tune In, It’s Not Important”
By Juan Cole, TomDispatch.com, posted September 9
The author teaches Middle East history at the University of Michigan.

“The Ghost of Munich: America’s Appeasement Complex”
By Fredrik Logevall and Kenneth Osgood, World Affairs Journal, posted September 9

“They used to Burn Catholic Churches, now they Burn Mosques”
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, posted September 9

Critical Education launches new series: A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation.

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/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.

This issue launches the Critical Education article series “A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation”, edited by Adam Renner and Doug Selwyn.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,

Sandra Mathison, Co-Editor
E. Wayne Ross, Co-Editor
Critical Education

Critical Education
Vol 1, No 7 (2010)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/18

Articles
——–
A Return to Educational Apartheid?
Adam Renner, Doug Selwyn

Abstract: Series co-editors Renner and Selwyn introduce a special series of articles focusing on the articulation of race, schools, and segregation. Each of the articles in this series will analyze the extent to which schooling may or may not be returning to a state of educational apartheid.

A Separate Education: The Segregation of American Students and Teachers
Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

Abstract: Despite the obvious connection between the two, student and teacher segregation are rarely examined together. To help fill that gap, this essay explores what is known about the extent of interracial exposure for students and teachers in U.S. public schools. This article reviews evidence underscoring the paramount importance of school integration. A description of the legal landscape governing desegregation follows, as well as a discussion of why current patterns of racial isolation persist. The essay next describes the demographics and segregation of today’s students and teachers. In particular, the essay focuses on the growing segregation of students of color, the lingering isolation of white students, and the ways in which the overwhelmingly white teaching force reinforces patterns of student segregation. We close with a discussion of the implications of these trends.

Latest from Historians Against the War

To members and friends of Historians Against the War,

Here are some notes, followed by our latest more-or-less biweekly listing of recent articles of interest.

1. Two authors who have frequently been featured in our listings of “articles of interest” have come out with new books this summer. Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich’s latest book is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War (Metropolitan Books), and Tom Engelhardt’s new book, based on his “TomDispatch” e-mailings (see two articles cited below) is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books).

2. Tom Hayden has initiated an online petition supporting WikiLeaks at http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38165.html. The preamble says, “We believe that WikiLeaks and those whistleblowers who declassify documents in a time of secret war should be welcomed as defenders of democracy, not demonized as criminals. We support their First Amendment rights and welcome their continued disobedience in response to a long train of official deception.”

BC Liberals speaking with forked-tongue, again. This time when it comes to “advocacy”

The Vancouver School Board is not giving in to the demands of the BC Ministry of Education to shut up and make $17 million dollars in budget cuts that will result in closed schools, cancelled programs, and teacher layoffs.

The board says it has balanced its budget, as required by law, but to do so it had to make brutal cuts to education programs because its budget of about $480 million is not sufficient to cover rising costs, including salaries, pensions and MSP payments. It estimates its shortfall is about $17 million. But Wenezenki-Yolland concluded the board has sufficient resources to deliver a quality education program but has wasted money through poor governance, a lack of strategic planning and missed opportunities. She suggested several actions to improve the bottom line — including raising rents, cancelling non-core services such as junior kindergarten and closing schools — but Bacchus said the board was already considering such actions.

One of the primary criticisms levelled at the VSB in the Comptroller General’s report is that trustees spend too much time, energy, and resources on “advocacy,” that is lobbying the government for increased funding that will improve teaching and learning conditions in Vancouver schools. The Comptroller General and Minister of Education want the trustees to make “cost containment” their number one priority.

Fiscal responsibility and advocating for adequate funding is not an “either/or” choice. VSB chair Patti Bacchus and the majority of trustees understand this. But as this piece in the Vancouver Courier makes clear, the ministry wants the trustees to act like bureaucrats and just do what they’re told. For some reason government (and at least a couple of the trustees) think there’s no place for advocacy or “politics” in education. That’s either an extremely naive or disingenuous understanding of what democracy is all about, as Paul Shaker and I point out in our comments to the the Courier.

So, BC Liberals castigate the VSB trustees for doing what many promised in their election campaigns—advocating for the district by resisting chronic underfunding of the education system and downloading of costs. While at the same time BC Liberals spend billions of taxpayer dollars on propaganda about how their neoliberal economic policies (that allow a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit) are good for the rest of us. There’s more than a little irony in the decision by Elections BC that the government’s HST propaganda violates the law.

VSB v. BC Ministry of Education or how neoliberalism operates in your own backyard

“Think globally and act locally” may be trite catchphrase, but thinking globally can give us insight into the current feud between the Vancouver School Board and the Ministry of Education.

Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the VSB criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. [Download the special advisor’s report here.]

What kind of governing principles demand “cost containment” as the prime concern of those charged with meeting the educational needs of our children? It’s called neoliberal globalization. It is the prevailing economic paradigm in today’s world and references something everyone is familiar with—policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit.

The main points of neoliberalism will sound familiar to anyone who has paid attention to provincial government decisions on B.C. Rail or the HST:

Rule of the market, that is, liberating free enterprise from any restrictions imposed by government, no matter the social damage that results;
Cutting public expenditures for social services;
Reduction of government regulation that might diminish profits;
Privatization, selling government-owned enterprises to private investors; and
Concepts of “the public good” or “community” are eliminated, replaced with “individual responsibility.”

The structure of the provincial funding model for education follows from these basic tenets.

The VSB, indeed all school boards and other social services in the province, are now subject to the rule of the market, thus justifying “cost containment” as the first priority of those mandated to deliver education to the public. In this context, education is treated like any other commodity. Free market competition is viewed as the route to assure a quality product. And “efficiency” or “cost containment” is prized.

In B.C., government retains its authority over public education, but no longer undertakes the responsibility of assuring the educational well-being of the public. Instead, this responsibility is devolved to individual school boards.

It is no accident that when the province appointed the special advisor to examine the Vancouver board’s budget processes, it specifically excluded the key issue raised by the trustees and every other school board in the province, the structure of the provincial funding model for education.

School boards are now expected to become part of the market by relegating the educational needs of their communities and making the financial bottom-line the first priority. The recent trend in B.C. educational policy makes this point clear. School districts have been encouraged to create business companies to sell the Dogwood diploma overseas. Lack of provincial funding has forced school and district PACs into extensive funding-raising, accounting for almost 2 per cent of district operating budgets province-wide. International student tuitions are such a major source of income growth for some school districts that government has assigned a deputy minister to coordinate the sale of B.C. education internationally.

And now the special advisor’s report recommends that the VSB close schools, cancel programs, fire teachers, and raise rental rates on non-profit organizations that provide services, such as after-school care, which are in short supply.

The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in B.C. reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs.

[For an informative overview of how neoliberal globalization works in schools see: Schuetze, H. G., et al., (2010). Globalization, neoliberalism and schools: The Canadian story. In C. A. Torres, L. Olmos, R. Van Heertum (Eds.), Educating the global citizen: Globalization, education reform, and the politics of equity and inclusion. Oak Park, IL: Bentham eBooks. Ross, E. W., & Gibson, R. (2007). Neoliberalism and education reform. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.]

Anarchism in the academy

Education Review has just published Cory Maly’s review of Contemporary Anarchist Studies edited by Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, and Deric Shannon.

I highly recommend the book and Maly’s review, which frames the book quite well in relation to current issues and debates on education reform. I used parts of Contemporary Anarchist Studies in my curriculum theory seminar this past year and was really pleased by the depth of debate and discussion it stimulated.

Obviously anarchism is gaining some traction among a small, but growing circle of education scholars. As evidenced by this book and several new or recently announced projects including:

Critical Education‘s series on “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research”, which is edited by Abe DeLeon has published two articles in the past several months, with more in works.

DeLeon is also guest editing a special issue of Educational Studies titled “Anarchism…is a living force with our life…”: Anarchism, Education, and New Possibilities. Download the call for papers here.

And, Robert Haworth (U of Wisconsin, La Crosse) has recently circulated a call for chapter proposals to be included in the book, Anarchist Pedagogies to be published by PM Press

This edited book calls on international scholars (15 single authored or collectively authored chapters) in anarchist studies to critically reflect on historical and contemporary experimentations in anarchist pedagogies. Scholarly efforts will focus on what we have learned from past anarchist experiences and current transformative learning environments — where individuals are engaged in collective, participatory, voluntary and mutual efforts that contest global capitalist structures.

The edited collection responds to the need to reflect on anarchist pedagogies and will highlight three major themes. Authors in the first section will be encouraged to focus on historical discussions surrounding anarchism and education. The authors will give introspective critiques of historical practices, including theories of teaching and learning and alternatives to compulsory public schools. Authors in the second section will construct philosophical and theoretical frameworks evolving from contemporary anarchists, particularly through individuals participating in cooperatives, independent media collectives, infoshops, political zines, open source projects, DIY, direct action networks and other autonomous and cultural spaces.