Category Archives: Uncategorized

Video Interview: “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for history education in a neoliberal world”

In November 2022, I had the honour giving the keynote address at the National Meeting of Researchers in History Teaching (XIII Encontro Nacional de Pesquisadores do Ensino de História – XIII-ENPEH) organized by the Brazilian Association of History Teaching (Associação de Ensino de História – ABEH).

Subsequently, the talk — “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for historical education in a neoliberal world” — was published as a chapter in the book Os presentes do Ensino de História: (re)construções em novas bases  / The gifts of History Teaching: (re)constructions on new bases,  edited by Luis Cerri (State University of Ponta Grossa) and Juliana Alves Andrade (Federal University of Pernambuco).

Below is a a link to a video interview that was conducted last month with my Brazilian colleagues including professors Cerri and Andrade and the president of ABEH, Prof. Maria Lima (Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul). The interview covers quite a bit of territory including the politics of  history and social studies education and their role in construction of a more democratic society, critical teaching and the dangers it entails, plus organizing and action for educational and social change.

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UBC Apartheid Investment database

The UBC Social Justice Centre is an AMS UBC Resource Group dedicated to research, outreach, & action on social justice issues. The SJC has recently reported an analysis of UBC investments in a document titled UBC Apartheid Investment Data Base. Thanks to the SJC for providing this revealing analysis of university investments in the war machine that current waging war in Gaza. The following is a reproduction of the report as presented @ubcwarinvestments

In 2022, The University of British Columbia invested a total of CAD$66,550, 168 in firms that are active agents in 1) the illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank, and/or 2) the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The following tables, ordered by industry, display information about these companies. This includes their name, the specific role they play in maintaining the occupation and/or participating in the genocide, and the amount of UBC endowment money they receive.

The data presented in this report were obtained from the 2022 UBC Investment Management Trust’s (IMANT) “Holdings Disclosure Report.” To determine which of these complicit companies were invested in by UBC, the report was cross-referenced with a 2020 United Nations Human Rights Council database of business enterprises that build, maintain, and legitimize illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The list also includes firms widely understood to be complicit in violations of Palestinian human rights-the numerous weapons manufacturing companies that UBC invests in, which supply arms to the Israeli military, are included in this latter section.

As UBC lists the endowment holdings in percentages, the dollar amount was estimated by using overall value of the endowment, although the dates of the holdings disclosure report do not fully match up with the reporting dates for the endowment fund value. The value of the endowment fund was reported to be $2.09 billion on March 31st, 2023 while the holdings disclosure was reported on December 31st, 2022. It should still be a decent estimate though assuming each fund grew somewhat evenly over the three months. For comparison, the value of the fund on March 31st, 2022 was $2.06 billion.

Download database: UBC apartheid investments

Gaza and the Growing Attack on Social Justice Teaching

Gaza and the Growing Attack on Social Justice Teaching

By the editors of Rethinking Schools

Illustrator: Lincoln Agnew

Twenty-two million public school students, almost half of all children going to public schools, now live in states that have enacted restrictions on anti-racist teaching.

As a result, a 2023 RAND Corporation survey found that nearly two-thirds of teachers in the United States decided to limit discussions about political and social issues in their classrooms. The combination of repressive laws, takeovers of school boards, and firing or disciplining anti-racist and LGBTQ-inclusive educators has been a successful strategy for the right — causing teachers across the country to leave the profession and encouraging many who have stayed to avoid “controversial” topics.

Israel’s war on Gaza and the simultaneous crackdown on dissent has given another boost to the forces of repression. As this editorial went to print, Israel was starving Gazans by blocking food and aid while preparing a ground invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, previously labeled a “safe zone” to which the Israeli military had pushed more than 1.5 million Palestinians. The death toll in Gaza reached more than 31,000 — more than 13,000 of whom are children. Indeed, in November, when the death toll was much lower, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned Gaza was becoming “a graveyard for children.” Other U.N. officials — another demographic Israel’s bombardment has killed at alarming rates — have described conditions as “the worst ever” humanitarian crisis, a “living nightmare,” which is “absolutely unprecedented and staggering.”

At the beginning of March, almost all schools in Gaza, more than 70 percent of which “have sustained damage,” were being used as shelters for the 1.7 million internally displaced people. (For more on the attack on children and education, see ”Israel’s War on Gaza Is Also a War on History, Education, and Children”) The healthcare system was near total collapse with only 12 out of 36 hospitals “partially functional,” overwhelmed and unable to provide basic medicine and care.

On Jan. 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that there is a “real and imminent risk” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and, despite falling short of demanding Israel suspend its military operations, ordered six provisional measures to “prevent irreparable harm” to Palestinians. The case against Israel, brought by South Africa, documents an unfolding genocide against the Palestinian people, including “intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population, civilian objects and buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected; torture; the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare; and other war crimes and crimes against humanity.” It includes more than a dozen public admissions from Israeli political and military leaders like that of security cabinet member Avi Dichter that Israel is “rolling out the Gaza Nakba” — referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and seizure of land in 1948.

Yet despite the mounting evidence, and despite being taken to federal court for its failure to prevent this unfolding genocide, the Biden administration refuses to even place conditions on the more than $10 million in aid the United States provides Israel daily. Indeed when Israel, shortly after the ICJ ruling and without evidence, accused 12 U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff of being involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the Biden administration immediately announced that it would cut aid to UNRWA — the largest humanitarian aid organization in Gaza. The United States is now funding genocide while simultaneously defunding those attempting to prevent it.

Educators of conscience everywhere should be — and are — discussing this in the classroom. But teachers who attempt this difficult task have been met with increasing repression. Even showing support for Palestinians online has been cause for disciplinary action.

Four teachers in Montgomery County, Maryland, were placed on administrative leave for public expressions of support for Palestinians. A charter school in Los Angeles fired two 1st-grade teachers and placed their principal on leave after one teacher revealed on Instagram they had taught a “lesson on the genocide in Palestine.” School authorities placed another 1st-grade teacher in Palm Beach, Florida, on administrative leave after she sent a letter to her district’s leadership asking them to “publicly recognize the Palestinian community” in their communications about the crisis. The Decatur, Georgia, school district suspended their equity coordinator for sharing “Resources for Learning & Actions to Support Gaza.”

Fueled at the highest levels of government, this is part of a broader crackdown on those who speak up for Palestinian rights. After a congressional hearing where mostly Republican lawmakers grilled the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania for five hours about Palestinian rights activism on their campuses and falsely equated that activism with antisemitism, two of the three presidents — including Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first Black president — resigned. Four universities — Columbia, Brandeis, George Washington, and Rutgers — have suspended campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine. The campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace was also suspended at Columbia. In Arizona, Tom Horne, the same state superintendent who led the campaign to shut down Tucson’s exemplary Mexican American Studies program, urged school districts to bar student clubs like Amnesty International and UNICEF because they “generate antisemitism among impressionable young people.”

This suppression of dissent — largely focused on educational institutions — is part of the broader wave of restricting social justice teaching. Like the educators removed for teaching about racial justice or creating safe and welcoming spaces for LGBTQ+ youth, many of the teachers accused of antisemitism are veteran educators with long histories of fighting racism and oppression.

Although antisemitism is certainly on the rise alongside a resurgence of white nationalism — most infamously on display in 2017 as demonstrators chanted “Jews will not replace us!” at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville — this white supremacist antisemitism is not what these anti-racist educators are being disciplined for. Indeed, many of the loudest voices equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism are encouraging the white supremacist resurgence. Take for example Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who led the House inquisition against university presidents. She previously ran campaign ads parroting the white supremacist “great replacement” theory: the idea that elite politicians are attempting to replace white Americans and their influence with non-white immigrants. “Radical Democrats” are planning a “PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” claimed her ad, “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” She also slammed New York’s plan to reopen schools after the COVID-19 pandemic — a plan that mentions racism four times in 263 pages — as “using COVID funds to force the radical and racist critical race theory agenda on our children.”

When Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard, Christopher Rufo, the architect of the conservative assault on anti-racist teaching, celebrated on Twitter, now rebranded as X. He wrote, “SCALPED.” In referring to the practice of white colonists who collected gruesome trophies as they sought to exterminate Native Americans, Rufo was claiming Gay’s resignation as a victory for the movement he helped initiate.

These racist pundits and politicians are escalating their suppression of anti-racist voices by mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitism. Not only does this ignore the Jews across the country who have been at the forefront of the movement for a cease-fire, it also dangerously ties the fate of the Jewish diaspora to the war crimes of the Israeli government — strengthening real antisemitism. This harmful conflation is fueled by statements like President Biden’s at a White House Hanukkah event where he said, “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who is safe.” And it is also powered by school administrators who recklessly label teachers antisemitic and discipline them for attempts to teach about Palestine.

At an online forum titled “Fighting Antisemitism Through the Lens of Collective Liberation,” Jewish Voice for Peace Action Political Director Beth Miller explained,

All of these resolutions, these hearings, these speeches, this language coming out of the highest-ranking folks in our government, what it is doing is actively endangering Jewish communities and it is actively endangering Palestinian communities and excusing and fueling the ongoing genocide against Palestinians. Because to be clear: There is rising antisemitism in this country and it’s scary. And there is rising anti-Palestinian racism in this country and it is scary. And what Congress is doing is fueling both of them at the exact same time.

It is not the educators attempting to discuss the crisis in Gaza in their classrooms who endanger Jewish and Palestinian students — but those silencing these discussions and in doing so, preventing a deeper understanding that lifts up a diverse range of Jewish and Palestinian voices, and includes a critical look at what is — and what is not — antisemitism. (See “No, Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism” introducing a new lesson to bring these discussions into the classroom.)

Despite how frightening it can feel as social justice educators at this moment, the more we let our fear silence us the more we allow this campaign of terror to win and creeping fascism to take hold. Instead, we should understand and take hope in the reason this backlash has grown in intensity: More people than ever are refusing to stay quiet in the face of racism and injustice. As author Naomi Klein — whose excellent chapters on the diverse Jewish intellectual tradition in her new book Doppelganger are now publicly available online — stated in a recent webinar when asked about the repression of critics of Israel, “The thing is that they cannot silence as many people as are speaking up right now. This is just in my view, one of those courage moments. Stick with it. It’s working. That’s why you’re getting so much propaganda thrown at you.” Indeed, the larger backlash against social justice teaching is an effort to roll back the many gains made during and after the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising — where an unprecedented number of people took to the streets for racial justice.

So while being a social justice teacher right now can feel isolating, we are not alone. In December, several Rethinking Schools editors went to the National Council for the Social Studies conference and attended Amanda Najib’s session on Palestine. With standing room only, it was one of the most well-attended sessions at the conference. A growing number of teacher union locals from Seattle to Chicago to Massachusetts have called for a cease-fire. Despite intense repression, nearly 100 teachers signed up to participate in the Oakland, California, educators teach-in for Palestine. (See “What We Learned from Our ‘Oakland to Gaza’ K–12 Teach-In”) On Jan. 20, more than 90 teachers spent the day learning about and discussing how to teach about Palestine at a conference in Oakland put on by the Middle East Children’s Alliance. Our Zinn Education Project continues to average about 1,000 new registrants every month. It is clear there continues to be a growing hunger for social justice curriculum.

It’s more important than ever to build networks of solidarity and mutual aid — spaces where we can share how we are teaching about difficult topics like Gaza, where we can build a curriculum to challenge the dominant narrative that what is happening in Palestine began on Oct. 7, where we can defend one another in the face of repression. That is the task before us: to knit together and strengthen the networks of teachers, parents, and students that can take bold action and muster the defiance necessary to break through the backlash.

And we should draw courage from an understanding that any risks we face do not compare to the risks faced by those under Israel’s bombs — made in the U.S.A. As Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, killed in an Israeli airstrike along with six members of his family on Dec. 7, powerfully pleaded:

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story . . .
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.

EDCP Seminar | Jan 2023 | A Pedagogy of Insurgency in Troubling Times | Dr. Wayne Au

Mark your calendar for UBC Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar with Dr. Wayne Au (University of Washington, Bothell).

Dr. Au will be speaking on “A Pedagogy of Insurgency in Troubling Times” on January 27, 2023, 12:30PM – 2:00PM via Zoom.

For Zoom details, please email edcp.educ@ubc.ca

Dr. Au’s seminar talk is titled “A Pedagogy of Insurgency in Troubling Times: The Imperative of Teaching and Organizing for Educational and Social Justice”. Teachers are on the frontline of ongoing social, economic, and community health crises. Using the organizing for racial justice done by teachers in Seattle, WA, in this talk Dr. Wayne Au will discuss how teacher actions represent a kind of pedagogy of insurgency that is required when social contradictions reach a particular level. While not all-powerful, it is important to recognize that this kind of pedagogy can have significant local impact as well as offer symbolic inspiration for teacher organizing at the national and international levels.

Dr. Au is a former public high school social studies teacher and is now Dean and Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is a long-time editor for the social justice teaching magazine, Rethinking Schools, and his work focuses on both academic and public scholarship about high-stakes testing, neoliberal education policy, teaching for social justice, critical pedagogy, and anti-racist education.

Author or editor of over 100 publications, his recent co-edited books include Insurgent Social Studies: Scholar-Educators Disrupting Erasure and Marginality (2022), Rethinking Ethnic Studies (2019) and Teaching for Black Lives (2018). His most recent authored books include the second edition of Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality (2022) and A Marxist Education (2018).

Dr. Au was honored with the UWB Distinguished Teaching Award in 2015, presented the William H. Watkins award for scholar activism from the Society of Professors of Education in 2017, and recognized with the Distinguished K-12 Educational Leader Award from the Evergreen State College MiT program in 2019.

 

Why “Indigenizing” Curriculum and ‘Pedagogy’ is Vital for Our Survival: An Interactive Engagement with Four Arrows

Date:             Friday, September 28, 2018
Venue:          Scarfe Room 1130
Time:             12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Title:              Why “Indigenizing” Curriculum and ‘Pedagogy’ is Vital for Our Survival:
                         An Interactive Engagement with Four Arrows
Speaker:       Four Arrows (Wahinkpe Topa), aka Don Trent Jacobs
                          Professor, Fielding Graduate University, USA

Light refreshments and informal conversation at noon.  The Lecture commences at 12:30 pm.

There is no need to RSVP.  Everyone is welcome!

Abstract
This presentation will clarify the various meanings, goals, concerns and potential outcomes relating to school-wide efforts to “teach” the relevance of Indigenous worldview, knowledge and perspectives. This includes giving support to sovereignty while exposing settler hegemony. Ideas on foundational ways to transform learning accordingly are also introduced.

Bio
Four Arrows (Wahinkpe Topa), aka Don Trent Jacobs, Ed.D., formerly Dean of Education at Oglala Lakota College, is currently a professor in the School of Leadership Studies at Fielding Graduate University. Selected by AERO as one of 27 visionaries in education, he is the author of 21 books including Point of Departure: Returning to Our Authentic Worldview for Education and Survival (IAP, 2016); Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education (Peter Lang, 2014); and The Authentic Dissertation (Routledge, 2008). Four Arrow is also the subject of a book about his life and activism entitled, Fearless Engagement by R. Michael Fisher (Peter Lang, 2018).

(Un)Learning Anthropocentrism: An Ecocritical Framework for Teaching to Resist Human-Supremacy in Curriculum and Pedagogy

UBC Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy
2016-2017 Seminar Series

(Un)Learning Anthropocentrism: An Ecocritical Framework for Teaching to Resist Human-Supremacy in Curriculum and Pedagogy

John Lupinacci, PhD
Cultural Studies & Social Thought in Education
College of Education
Washington State University

October 28, 20106
12:30-2:00pm
Scarfe 1214 

Abstract
In this talk, I will call attention to—and critically question—the epoch now referred to as the Anthropocene in relationship to Western industrial assumptions rooted in the understanding of human-beings as separate from and superior to all other life-forms and the environments upon which they depend. Drawing from an ecocritical framework in education, I emphasize that because anthropocentrism is cultural rather than inherently natural, it is amenable to social change. As a scholar-activist educator, I take the position that (un)learning anthropocentrism as radical change is imperative in light of environmental degradation, climate change, and the multitude of social and ecological problems that follow as a consequence. The stakes are high and the capacity of the planet for sustaining life depends upon future generations learning to live in harmony and at peace with the diverse ecosystems within which they reside. More than a critique of anthropocentrism, I work to challenge this worldview and seek ways of engaging educators and educational researchers in doing the same. Drawing from ecocritical projects in education—including critical animal studies, anarchism, and ecofeminism—while recognizing centuries of wisdom in indigenous epistemologies, this talk shares a pedagogical process aimed at helping educators to recognize an anthropocentric worldview, to examine how this worldview is implicated in maintaining human (and male, white, able-bodied) supremacy, and to rethink anthropocentrism in favor of ecological alternatives that are socially just and encompass all living systems.

Bio
John Lupinacci is an Assistant Professor at Washington State University. He conducts research and teaches in the Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education (CSSTE) program using an approach that advocates for the development of scholar-activist educators. His ecocritical work in education is interdisciplinary and draws from critical social theory through anarchist philosophy, critical animal studies, new materialism, and queer-ecofeminist philosophy while recognizing that many of these Western frameworks are entangled with colonial cultures and thus ought not take precedence over—or appropriate—diverse indigenous knowledges. Drawing heavily from critical conceptions of environmental education, Dr. Lupinacci’s research focuses on how people—specifically educators, educational leaders, and educational researchers—learn to both identify and examine destructive habits of Western industrial human culture and how those habits are taught and learned in schools. His experiences as a high school teacher, an outdoor environmental educator, and a community activist-artist-scholar all contribute to his research, teaching, and development of interdisciplinary research projects open to the (im)possibilities of unexpected spaces with(in) education and educational research.

Download poster [PDF]

 

Seminar: Challenges and Tensions in Curriculum Management: Theory and Practice

Challenges and Tensions in Curriculum Management: Theory and Practice

Public Seminar Sponsored by
Institute for Critical Education Studies

July 13, 2016
12:00pm
Scarfe 2108
2125 Main Mall
University of British Columbia

Carolina Castro, Héctor Gómez, and Fernando Murillo, co-authors in the recently published book Desafíos y Tensiones en la Gestión Curricular: Teoría y Práctica [Challenges and Tensions in Curriculum Management: Theory and Practice] in Chile, will present their contributions to the discussion of curriculum design, development and implementation in the contexts of schools and higher education.

The book, co–edited by Gómez and Castro, gives voice to a variety of perspectives and experiences in schools and higher education. In this regard the authors ask: How is curriculum managed? Who is involved in the process and how? What authority do curriculum managers have, and how is power distributed in order to influence and make decisions on the curriculum? What effective spaces for innovation exist? How are perennial and new issues considered in the management of curriculum?


Screen Shot 2016-07-04 at 6.11.50 PMCurriculum Design and the Teaching Role: An Outstanding Relationship. Reflections From Research at a Hospital-Based School
Carolina Castro

Bachelor in Education – Primary School Teacher, Master of Arts in Education and Curriculum. Head of the Curriculum Unit at Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez in Santiago, Chile.

Screen Shot 2016-07-04 at 6.12.04 PMProfessional Formation Beyond the Know-How: Considerations and Challenges for a Post-Competence Curriculum Management
Fernando M. Murillo

Bachelor in Education – TEFL, Master of Arts in Education and Curriculum, UBC PhD student in Curriculum Studies

Screen Shot 2016-07-04 at 6.12.16 PMTeacher Education in Chile: Curriculum design and its Complex Discourses.
Héctor Gómez

Bachelor in Education – Teacher of History and Social Sciences, Master of Arts in Education and Curriculum, UBC PhD Student in Curriculum Studies

DESAFIOS Y TENSIONES.jpg