E Wayne Ross – Page 35 – Critical Theories in Education

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION—Athens, Greece (12-16 JULY 2011)

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION
ATHENS
12-16 JULY 2011

Organized by the journals:

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL POLICY EDUCATIONAL STUDIES (UK)
CULTURAL LOGIC (USA/CANADA)
KRITIKI (GREECE)
RADICAL NOTES (INDIA)

Conference and Local Organizing Committee Coordinators:
Dave Hill, (Middlesex University, UK)
Peter McLaren, (UCLA, USA)

Program details here [pdf].

International Conference on Critical Education: Keynote Speakers and Participants
Keynote Speakers
Peter McLaren (UCLA, USA), Amrohini Sahay (Hofstra University, New York, USA), Dave Hill (Middlesex University, UK), Aristides Baltas (National Technical University of Athens), Ravi Kumar (Jamia Milia Islamia University, Delhi, India), John Preston (University of East London, England), Chrysoula Papageorgiou (Secondary education).

Confirmed Participants (as on 6th Dec 2010)
Fayaz Ahmad (JMI Central University, Delhi, India), Dennis Beach and Anna-Carin Johnsson (University of Boras, Sweden), Sarah Carpenter and Shahrzad Mojab (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada), Namita Chakrabarty (University of East London, England), Domingos Leite Lima Filho (Federal Technological University of Paraná -UTFPR, Brazil), Morgan Gardner (Memorial University, Faculty of Education, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada), Sara Hauftman (Achva Academic College of Education, Israel), Steven Hales, (University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Petar Jandric (Polytechnic Graduate School in Zagreb, Croatia), Nathalia Jaramillo (Purdue University, USA), Anastasia Liasidou (European University of Cyprus), Vicki Macris (University of Alberta, Canada), Alpesh Maisuria (Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England), Spyros Themelis (Middlesex University, London, England), Gabor Pallo (Academy of Sciences, Hungary), Periklis Pavlidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Peter Perikles Trifonas (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada), Nosheen Rachel-Naseem (Middlesex University, London, England), Debbie Toope (Memorial University, Faculty of Education, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada), Paul Welsh (ChristChurch Canterbury University, England), Sara Zamir (Ben-Gurion University, Eilat, Israel)

CFP: Critical Theories In the Twenty First Century: A Conference of Transformative Pedagogies

Call for Papers

Critical Theories In the Twenty First Century: A Conference of Transformative Pedagogies

West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Conference Founders:

Curry Malott, John Elmore, and Brad Porfilio

November 18th and 19th 2011

Proposals for papers, panels, performances, workshops, and other multimedia presentations should include title(s) and names and contact information for presenter(s). The deadline for sending prooposals is August 31, 2011. The Steering Committee will email acceptance or rejection notices by September 8, 2011. The proposal formats available to the presenters are as follows:

The general purpose of the West Chester Critical Theory Conference is to promote and support critical scholarship within students, and to advance critical theory and pedagogy more generally. By “advance” we mean to expose more people to critical practices and understandings as part of the process of the development of theory. Through this focus we hope to work toward unifying and strengthening the sub-genres of critical pedagogy from Marxism, critical race theory, to critical neo-colonial studies. This goal is approached through the conferences internal pedagogy and therefore through a horizontal rather than a vertical organizing structure; by including students and classroom teachers in the critical pedagogical work dominated by professors; and by attempting to create a space where criticalists who do not usually work together can create meaningful unity, respect, and common goals. Since the dominant form of power in the twenty first century—neoliberal capitalist power—is both multicultural and global, critical pedagogy must too become more multicultural and global if it is to pose a significant challenge to it for a more democratic life after capitalism.

Because critical theory is concerned with not only understanding the world, but with transforming it, the conference is focused on not only understanding the consequences of an unjust social and economic system (i.e. corporate take-over of schools, high stakes testing and behaviorist pedagogy, micro classroom aggressions and bullying, poverty, racism, sexism, white supremacy, homophobia, perpetual war, ableism, etc.), but with transforming or dissolving their root causes (i.e. neoliberal capitalism and settler-state, Euro-centric oppression and their patriarchal, homophobic, racist, etc. hegemonies). As part of this goal the conference will hopefully provide introductory discussions and presentations on critical pedagogy and critical theory.

SUBMISSIONS
Proposal Formats
Individual Proposal: (45 minutes)
The conference committee welcomes individual paper proposals, with the understanding that those accepted will be grouped together around common or overlapping themes, Presenters will have approximately 45 minutes to present or summarize their individual papers. Individual paper submissions will be considered for panels with the same topic/theme. If you would prefer to present your paper/research individually you should consider the alternative format proposal. A 300-500 word abstract of the paper will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Symposium Proposal: (90 minutes)
Presenters are also welcomed to submit proposals for a symposium. A symposium is typically composed of a chair and discussant and three to five participants who present or summarize their papers. Each symposium is organized around a common theme. Each participant will have between 15 and 45 minutes to present their papers, depending upon the number of participants involved in the symposium. A 300-500 word abstract of the symposium will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Panel Proposal: (90 minutes)
A panel discussion is another venue available presenters. A panel discussion is typically composed of three to six participants who discuss their scholarly work within the context of a dialogue or conversation on a topic or theme related to the conference theme. Typically, each panelist is given 10-15 minutes to discuss the topic, present theoretical ideas, and/or point to relevant research. A chair should be identified who introduces the panel and frames the issues and questions being addressed. In addition to the chair, we encourage (but do not require) organizers of panels to include a discussant who responds to the comments of the panelists. Individual proposal submissions will be combined into panels with the same theme/topic. A 300-500 word abstract of the panel discussion will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Alternative Format and Special Interest Groups (90 minutes)
Alternative proposals that do not fit into the above categories, such as workshops, performances, video and multimedia presentations, and round-table dialogues, are encouraged. We also welcome proposals for the organization of special interest groups. A 150-250 word abstract of the panel discussion will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Email proposals to conference coordinators Brad Porfilio (porfilio16@aol.com) and Curry Malott (currymalott@hotmail.com) by August 31, 2011.

Rouge Forum Dispatch: Criminalized–Those with Jobs and Health Benefits

The Rouge Forum Dispatch is updated with news of schools and society here.

The Rouge Forum is the only school based organization in North America with the limited courage to link schooling, the empire’s wars, and class war at home to resistance, connecting reason to power. Do spread the word.

Those planning to be at AERA in Vancouver should check the call for papers from the Marx sig, here.

You can join the RF Facebook page here.

UK teachers strike over attacks on pensions

UK teachers strike over attacks on pensions.

Details at:

http://www.teachers.org.uk/

http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=5616

http://www.atl.org.uk/

Strikes will take place in schools, further education colleges and universities. This is action across the UK education sector on an unprecedented scale.

New book: The Phenomenon of Obama and the Agenda for Education Can Hope Audaciously Trump Neoliberalism?

The Phenomenon of Obama and the Agenda for Education
Can Hope Audaciously Trump Neoliberalism?

Edited by Paul R. Carr, Lakehead University
Bradley Porfilio, Lewis University in Romeoville, IL

A volume in the series: Critical Constructions: Studies on Education and Society. Series Editor: Curry Stephenson Malott, West Chester University

Published 2011

Who should read this book? Anyone who is touched by public education – teachers, administrators, teacher-educators, students, parents, politicians, pundits, and citizens – ought to read this book. It will speak to educators, policymakers and citizens who are concerned about the future of education and its relation to a robust, participatory democracy. The perspectives offered by a wonderfully diverse collection of contributors provide a glimpse into the complex, multilayered factors that shape, and are shaped by, institutions of schooling today. The analyses presented in this text are critical of how globalization and neoliberalism exert increasing levels of control over the public institutions meant to support the common good. Readers of this book will be well prepared to participate in the dialogue that will influence the future of public education in this nation – a dialogue that must seek the kind of change that represents hope for all students.

As for the question contained in the title of the book–Can hope audaciously trump neoliberalism?–, Carr and Porfilio develop a framework that integrates the work of the contributors, including Christine Sleeter and Dennis Carlson, who wrote the forward and afterword respectively, that problematizes how the Obama administration has presented an extremely constrained, conservative notion of change in and through education. The rhetoric has not been matched by meaningful, tangible, transformative proposals, policies and programs aimed at transformative change. There are many reasons for this, and, according to the contributors to this book, it is clear that neoliberalism is a major obstacle to stimulating the hope that so many have been hoping for. Addressing systemic inequities embedded within neoliberalism, Carr and Porfilio argue, is key to achieving the hope so brilliantly presented by Obama during the campaign that brought him to the presidency.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements. Foreword: Challenging the Empire’s Agenda for Education, Christine E. Sleeter. SECTION I: USING HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL INSIGHTS TO UNDERSTAND OBAMA’S EDUCATIONAL AGENDA. More of the Same: How Free Market-Capitalism Dominates the Economy and Education, David Hursh. Concocting Crises to Create Consent: The Importance of “The Shock Doctrine” to Understanding Current Educational Policy, Virginia Lea. Educational Hope Ignored Under Obama: The Persistent Failure of Crisis Discourse and Utopian Expectations, P. L. Thomas. Competing Definitions of Hope in Obama’s Education Marketplace: Media Representations of School Reform, Equality, and Social Justice, Rebecca A. Goldstein, Sheila Macrine, Nataly Z. Chesky, and Alexandra Perry. SECTION II: THE PERILS OF NEOLIBERAL SCHOOLING: CRITIQUING CORPORATIZED FORMS OF SCHOOLING AND A SOBER ASSESSMENT OF WHERE OBAMA IS TAKING US. Charting a New Course for Public Education Through Charter Schools: Where is Obama Taking Us? Mary Christianakis and Richard Mora. Manufactured Consent: Latino/a Themed Charter Schools, in Whose Interests? Theresa Montaño and Lynne Aoki. Whose Schools are These Anyway—American Dream or Nightmare? Countering the Corporate Takeover of Schools in California, Roberta Ahlquist. Obama, Escucha! Estamos en la Lucha! Challenging Neoliberalism in Los Angeles Schools, Theresa Montaño. Standardized Teacher Performance Assessment: Obama/Duncan’s Quick Fix for What They Think it is That Ails Us, Ann Berlak. The Political Economy of Educational Restructuring: On the Origin of Performance Pay and Obama’s “Blueprint” for Education, Mark Garrison. SECTION III: ENVISIONING NEW SCHOOLS AND A NEW SOCIAL WORLD: STORIES OF RESISTENCE, HOPE, AND TRANSFORMATION. The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Connecting Reason to Power and Power to Resistance, Rich Gibson and E. Wayne Ross. Connecting Communities and Schools: Accountability in the Post-NCLB Era, Tina Wagle and Paul Theobald. If There is Anyone Out There, Peter McLaren. Afterword: Working the Contradictions: The Obama Administration’s Educational Policy, and Democracy Will Come, Dennis Carlson. Biographies.

Videos on terrible impact of Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Message from Gilbert Gonzalez for the Mingas Network

Dear friends: Thank you once again for your patience, support, and
solidarity in our struggle against the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

The next few days and weeks will be crucial in this struggle as President
Obama has indicated he will submit the Colombia, Panama and Korea FTAs for
congressional approval after the upcoming congressional recess.

Below we have included a number of informative videos on the impact of the
FTA on Colombia. Please look at them and, if you have time, share them
with others and send them to your friends, lists, etc.

Video of Impact upon Colombian workers and small farmers

Video of Impact upon Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities

Video of Impact on Colombian Civil Society

An over-all view of the impact of the FTA: What will you do if the
Colombia Free Trade Agreement is passed?

On the Colombia FTA, and others like it, California’s Congressman Miller
has said: “The American worker can compete, but it can’t compete against
the Colombian Army, against Colombian death squads… that’s not fair
competition, but that is what it’s protected in these trade agreements.”

The House of Representatives recess will take place from June 24th to July
5th. As you share this material with friends and list members please ask
them to contact their representatives by letter, fax, email, phone, or by
personal appointment, asking them to vote against this horrible
NAFTA-clone of a treaty.

If they don’t know who their representatives are they can find out by
going to:

http://whoismyrepresentative.com/

The Mingas Network will be glad to provide you with more information about
the specific impacts of the Colombia FTA and the reason the proposed White
House “Action Plan” does not right all that is wrong with the treaty. Just
send us a message.

Thank you again for your support, and your patience.

Sincerely yours,

Gilbert Gonzalez

for The Mingas Network*

The Mingas Network is a group of individuals from across the United
States, Canada and Colombia who are concerned with improving labor
conditions, promoting sovereignty and strengthening democracy and in
Colombia. We are united in our support for social movements and our
rejection of all acts of violence in Colombia, regardless of their source.

CFP: Marxian Analysis of Society, Schools, and Education (SIG of AERA)

American Educational Research Association
2012 Annual Meeting – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Friday, April 13 – Tuesday, April 17, 2012**

***Marxian Analysis of Society, School and Education SIG***

***CALL FOR PAPERS*** [pdf]

*Why Marxism? Whose Marxism? Let’s Begin from the Beginning.*

*Rethink Class, Race and Gender Inequalities and Education*

The current global momentum is a profound paradox. On one hand, our era has
been witnessing huge and dramatic transformations propelled by the biotech
movement including genetic and biotechnological discoveries, as well
as, theelectronic revolution of communications and informationboth of
which have had a huge impact on the way knowledge has been produced
and reproduced. Despite such progress, on the other hand, global societies
have been experiencing, among other things, the shocking exacerbation (and
in some cases the return) of horrendous social evils, namely, the return of
slavery, legitimization of human genocide, new pandemics, the return of high
vulnerability to old sicknesses that seemed to have been eradicated and now
appear to be linked to new pandemics like HIV/AIDS, and naturalization of
war, the domestication of revolting social inequalities (cf. Sousa Santos,
2005), the need of a more predatory capitalism to sustain neoliberal
capitalism, the emergence of a new economy propelled by the need to fight
terror(ism) (cf. Giroux, 2011). Despite the fact that we never had a society
that produced as much knowledge as today’s society, the fact is such
production not only has been incapable of building a fairer and just
society, but also as it has just served to increase and multiply social
inequality. Such shocking paradoxes bring to the fore the vitality of
(neo)Marxist analyses, as the ‘most rigorous, comprehensive critique of
capitalism ever to be launched’ (Eagleton, 2011). The 2012 Marxian Analysis
of Society, School and Education SIG program asks scholars and educators
around the globe, profoundly committed with the struggle for social and
cognitive justice, to rethinking not only class, race, and gender
inequalities and education, but also if the reinvigoration of the
(neo)Marxist analyses and contributions to society and education implies the
need to ‘begin from the beginning’ (Zizek, 2009). We asked scholars to
critically address questions such as why (neo)Marxism and whose (neo)Marxism
is a key to rethink and understand the current global disruption of
capitalism and its implications of the daily live of teachers and students.

Recent articles recommended by Historians Against the War

“War? Bloodlust? What’s a Scholar to Do?”
By William Loren Katz, CommonDreams.org, posted June 8

“With Ollanta Humala’s Win, Peru Joins Latin America’s Left Turn”
By Greg Grandin, The Nation blog, posted June 7
The author teaches Latin American history at New York University

“Netanyahu’s Speech and Congressional Democrats’ Embrace of Extremism”
By Stephen Zunes, Truthout.com, posted June 3

“Our New Iraq-Afghanistan War National Holiday”
By David Swanson, War Is a Crime.org, posted May 29

“How America Screws Its Soldiers”
By Andrew J. Bacevich, The Daily Beast, posted May 28
The author teaches history and international relations at Boston University.

“Netanyahu’s Border War”
By Shlomo Ben Ami, Truthout.org, posted May 28
The author is a history PhD and a former Israeli foreign minister.

“Parallel States: A New Vision for Peace”
By Mark LeVine and Mathias Mossberg, Aljazeera, posted May 28
Mark LeVine teaches history at the University of California, Irvine.

“Washington’s Weapon of Choice”
By Sherry Wolff, SocialistWorker.org, posted May 24

“Deception and Diplomacy: The US, Japan, and Okinawa”
By Gavan McCormack, Asia-Pacific Journal, posted May 23
Makes extensive use of documents released by Wikileaks

Results don’t matter in Obama’s “Race to the Top”

The New York Times reports today on Montgomery County (MD) Schools’ highly regarded teacher evaluation system. The district’s Peer Assistance and Review program is not acceptable under Obama’s “Race to the Top” plan, because it does not make student test scores the key factor in teacher evaluation.

The program uses several hundred senior teachers to mentor both newcomers and struggling veterans. If the mentoring doesn’t work, the PAR panel — made up of eight teachers and eight principals — can vote to fire the teacher. And PAR has resulted in 500 teachers leaving their jobs over the past 11 years.

Despite a successful professional development approach to teacher evaluation as well as evidence of student learning success in the district, the program will be ditched for a new statewide scheme, which is not yet developed, but meets the Obama’s demand that all aspects of schools be marketized.

Unfortunately, federal dollars from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program are not going where Dr. Weast [Montgomery County Superintendent] and the PAR program need to go. Montgomery County schools were entitled to $12 million from Race to the Top, but Dr. Weast said he would not take the money because the grant required districts to include students’ state test results as a measure of teacher quality. “We don’t believe the tests are reliable,” he said. “You don’t want to turn your system into a test factory.”

Race to the Top aims to spur student growth by improving teacher quality, which is exactly what Montgomery County is doing. Sad to say, the district is getting the right results the wrong way [i.e., not the neoliberal way, linking test scores to teacher evaluation to federal bribes].

It does not seem to matter that 84 percent of Montgomery County students go on to college and that 63 percent earn degrees there — the very variables that President Obama has said should be the true measure of academic success. It does not seem to matter that 2.5 percent of all black children in America who pass an Advanced Placement test live in Montgomery County, more than five times its share of the nation’s black population.