E Wayne Ross – Page 50 – Critical Theories in Education

Rouge Forum News #15

The latest issue of the Rouge Forum News is available here as a pdf.

Adam Renner, editor of the Rouge Forum News, previews the issue below:

FROM THE EDITOR

In its more than decade of existence, the Rouge Forum has attempted to contribute to the conversation on social justice within national organizations, in union halls, in K-12 schools, in colleges/universities, at work places, and in community organizations. It has attempted to bring a reasoned analysis to contemporary issues using an historical lens, a sense of the total, and, often, pedagogical strategies. It has produced an appreciable amount of scholarship among its members—sometimes award winning scholarship—and has among its membership winners of academic freedom awards.

Undoubtedly, the Rouge Forum has become a relevant voice for social justice, particularly related to education. We hope to amplify that voice and continue to develop its relevance in the days to come. Recent events, tethered to their historical predecessors, indicate there is little time to dither.

One of the best things about the Rouge Forum, particularly those who have been able to take part in conferences and joint actions, is the sense of community. My partner and I remarked a few years ago at the conference in Detroit that we felt like we were home. We were among comrades who, while we didn’t agree on everything, seemed to have a congruent idea that things need to change and a relatively common idea of what that might look like. We could at least outline the picture.

Times together, such as these, assure us we are not crazy—that another world is not only necessary, but possible. Our work is continuing to figure out how we support one another, how we can have a voice in our particular locations, and how we craft and apply a vision of what is more just, more human, and right. Community. Voice. Vision. Connect reason to power, as Rich would say. Go.

And in that go-ing, we need sustenance for the journey—sustenance in the form of community and consciousness (ever-deepening, ever-evolving), but also hope. The hope I/we suggest is not naïve hope. It is hope grounded in struggle, connected to others. It is hope that is participatory. It becomes the essence of who we are. It is a politics of prefiguration that suggests if we want democracy and we want justice, then our actions, to the extent possible, will need to bear these out. It is to understand the journey/struggle not as precise, but as punctuations of imperfections, of hypocrisies that bring us back to the start, such that we can begin again.

This idea of the politics of prefiguration is espoused by a thoughtful theorist on hope: Rebecca Solnit. Her text, Hope in the Dark, pushed me to find hope in the struggle—in fact, catapulting me into that struggle. Solnit has enlivened that sense again in her recent essay in TomDispatch entitled Learning how to Count to 350. Re-citing a history of action in the streets and reasons to hope (in the face of all the reasons to despair), Solnit suggests, “To survive the coming era, we need to re-imagine what constitutes wealth and well-being and what constitutes poverty.” Considering the dismal performance of communism in the 20th century (often more totalitarian and capitalist than liberatory) and the fact that global capitalism was brought to its knees last year, she suggests we’ve got work to do to (re)imagine the world.

And, we—that is, people of conscience—must occupy that void. Else, something else will. The steel-toed rhythm can be heard goose-stepping just inside the ear’s horizon. I submit we’ll need to step into that space sooner than later.

I’ll see you at the barricades.

We’ll have to resist what is more than likely coming next—find a voice, speak truth to power, take to the streets, take over a building. Escalate. Extending Rich’s metaphor from earlier work, we lambs look good to the wolves who regroup in the penthouses of their nearby woods (whose fuel is nearly spent) and in the corporate board rooms overlooking ever-drying creeks (more parts pollution than potable). They’re finished buying what we have, as how much more cheaply can our labor power be had? Now, they plan to just take it.

And, they will use a god to convince you they are right. They will call on him, attempting to scheme us into doing the same (a little deposit of flesh now, and your children’s flesh, for an eternity of made-up bed time stories, “Now I Iay me down to sleep….”).

I’ll keep my soul, whatever is left of it, thank you very much.

I’m looking, instead, for what Solnit calls a moment of creation—moments for which democracy, social justice, creativity, freedom, take one step forward.

Solnit is good at flipping the script, looking at the underside of the paper and seeing the scribbling of possibility. What she submits is an alternative read to the corporate media prophets (or is that profits?). We would do well to listen. Hers is not a naïve re-rendering or postmodern apologetics. My take is that Solnit’s proposition is grounded in the real. The alteration takes into account the work that is being done, often diminished by our popular discourse and corporate media. This alternative understanding helps us realize that others are struggling, voices are shouting, a history of resistance leads us to this moment of possibility.

Revolutionary praxis remains our guide: the simultaneity and dialectic of self change and the changing of society.

We should understand what it’s going to take for that moment of creation. Those moments: when we realize the politics of divide and conquer have gotten the best of us (color/class/gender/sexuality-coded inequalities); when we realize that we that we are killing others (bought and paid for bombs with our signature on them), killing babies, mothers, difference with our own babies barely able to know differently in capital’s schools (the militarization of schools); when we realize that our knowledge has been regulated by corporate interests to keep us docile and ignorant (high-stakes testing) in order to prepare us for jobs we will more than likely hate (alienation) so we will seek pleasure in (fetishize) commodities, that is, things, and our social relations will be mediated by reality TV and video games.

Try Wendell Berry’s recent poem on for size at your upcoming holiday celebration to bring the above into sharp relief. You may not be invited back (which may or may not be a bad thing…)

When we recognize these issues as material reality, a moment will emerge. A moment (consciousness grounded in the real) that must lead to another moment (courage to change) in which we will need to figure out how to live differently (protest, resistance, occupation, freedom schools, sustainable living, new solidarities). Moments in which we own our labor power: the free development of each creates the conditions for the free development of all, since we will all recognize our interdependence and the strength of our difference.

More than likely, these moments will blur–because the barricades will not only be in the streets, but they will be in our work places, in our schools, in our churches, in our homes, in our community centers. Consciousness will merge with courage will merge with consciousness will merge with a more materialist understanding of reality, which will lead to how we can re-imagine wealth, well-being and poverty in the coming era.

We must. The wolves are hungry.

But, the lambs are plentiful. And, we will realize that we far outnumber the wolves when conscious because we will see and do differently.

When we see differently, we won’t be divided so easily. When we see differently, we won’t abide by mystical explanations of injustice; we will see it for what it is. When we see differently, we’ll stop looking at the deadness of the center and instead explore the possibility at the periphery. When we see differently we won’t believe the mythology of national holidays intended to white-wash history and to, more importantly, mark the beginning of a new holiday season of debt and guilt built by the capitalists. Just look on the rez. How did Thanksgiving work out for those who welcomed the newcomers? Can we call it what it is, please: a celebration of genocide. And, we are still killing them (see the December, 2009, Harper’s Magazine article about life on the modern reservation). Christmas could use an RF News issue all its own…

When we see differently, we will note the possibility of solidarity born in moments of creation where we understand richness as fullness (of life and community), in the bread broken amidst laughter AND tears, in the totality discovered, in one more sunrise.

The Rouge Forum seeks this fullness.

Struggle. We must. Eyes open. Spirit fully engaged. Hands ready for the work.

See you at the barricades…

…On the way to the barricades, might I recommend a choral reading of this quarter’s Rouge Forum News? Our 15th issue has another exciting line-up of essays, which are broken up by other provocative reading: poems by Gina Stiens and Colin Ross, Rouge Forum broadsides, an editorial from Paul Moore, and art from Bryan Reinholdt. I’d recommend making posters of it. And T-shirts.

We have two featured essays in this issue, one from Wayne Ross, which takes up the issue of patriotism, the other, a timely piece from Mary Barrett, Maria Hornung, Amber Kelly, and Katy Sutton, which looks at the possibility of medicine as a human right.
In our section on war and militarism, Travis Barrett reports on three aspects of institutionalized oppression, and what we might do about it, and Matt Archibald analyzes zero-tolerance, neoliberal ideology, and the growing militarism of our society.

In our schooling and curriculum section, Rich Gibson sets us straight on the way to analyze/critique the current takeover of US schooling by the elite; Nancye McCrary, Doug Selwyn, and I chronicle various approaches we’ve taken at our universities to promote democracy; and Delana Hill applies Paulo Freire and dialogical action directly to her classroom.

As always, we look forward to your feedback, either directly (arenner@bellarmine.edu) or at our blog: www.therougeforum.blogspot.com.

Adam Renner
Louisville, KY

Fight Back Against Budget Cuts At California Colleges And Universities

Fight Back Against Budget Cuts At California Colleges And Universities

The Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association supports the California students, faculty and campus workers who are fighting against budget cuts, fee increases, furloughs, and firings. We encourage all MLA members to support the Californians’ fightback.

This year California cut more than $800 million from the University of California (UC) statewide budget, $500 million from the California State University (CSU) system, and $700 million from California Community Colleges (CCC). University and college administrators reacted by eliminating programs and support services, reducing enrollments, offering fewer courses, cutting staff and faculty salaries via furloughs, and laying off hundreds of instructors and non-academic campus workers. To make matters worse, UC and CSU have hiked their fees by 32%, placing the cost of attending college out of reach for many students from low and middle income families. As a result of California’s downsizing of higher education, CSU will cut its enrollment by 40,000 students over the next two years, and CCC will force out a whopping 250,000 students. Working-class families, already facing a 12.2% unemployment rate in California, will be the hardest hit. Since September 24 of this year, thousands of students, workers and faculty have organized teach-ins, rallies, demonstrations, marches, walkouts, strikes and occupations to stop the cuts. Even though university administrators claim that students have the right to “free speech,” protesters at various campuses have been beaten by the police and arrested..

The California budget cuts?and the fee increases at four-year schools?smack of racism because students of color will feeel the effects of these cuts the most. But the cutbacks are also racist in a more devastating political sense. Tragically, while CSU will reduce enrollment by 40,000 students next year, the state has approved AB 900, a law that allocates $7.7 billion to add 40,000 new beds for prison inmates?on top of the $12 billion a year the state spends on prison operating costs. By 2012 California will spend more on prisons than it does on education. There is a direct correlation between the lack of educational opportunities and imprisonment: 18-to-24-year-old male high school dropouts have an incarceration rate 31 times that of males who graduate from a four-year college. And California’s prison inmates are overwhelmingly Black and Latino. Every dollar cut from higher education increases the likelihood of young men of color being siphoned away from higher education and toward a racist prison system.

The financial problems of colleges and universities are directly linked to US capitalism’s current economic crisis?the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. With the collapse of the banking system last year, predatory banks and speculators wiped out vast amounts of capital, including capital used to sustain colleges and universities. While the federal government has spent billions to bailout banks and corporations, it has invested only a pittance on bailing out schools and colleges. In an exposé of capitalist greed, the California Budget Project has shown that California’s 1993 tax cuts benefiting corporations and the wealthy cost the state $11.7 billion in 2005-6 and $12 billion in 2007-2008. Had the state continued taxing at rates equal to those fifteen years ago, there would be no budget crisis in California—or at least it would be far less severe. What’s more, the economic crisis is bound up in a larger global crisis involving imperialist occupations and war. The US spends close to a trillion dollars a year on wars to dominate oil production and pipelines in the Middle East and Central Asia. Obama’s recent escalation of the wars in Afghanistan-Pakistan (at $30 billion and counting) and the continued occupation of Iraq make clear that this president plans to continue Bush’s policy of overspending endlessly on wars.

The struggle against budget cuts at UC, CSU and CCC is a political struggle: a fight against the decision of the state to make students, faculty and workers pay for the profit losses of capitalist corporations. MLA members should support the movement of students, faculty and workers in California because their fight is our fight. We support a second federal stimulus bill to fund higher education nationwide. We support Californians’ fight to abolish racist prisons and increase state funds for higher education: “No cutbacks! No fee increases! No furloughs! No firings!” We don’t want pie in the sky. We want to restore the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education in which public colleges were free for all and which guaranteed a place for all California students who wanted to go.

Rouge Forum Update: An Injury to One is an Injury to All: Detroit and Much More!

http://www.richgibson.com/blog/

Dear Friends,

Check the link above but note that Detroit may be the next centerpiece for education struggles soon. The Detroit Federation of Teachers bosses signed a tentative agreement (TA) with the Broad Foundation’s Detroit Financial Manager, Bob Bobb who now runs the system, that offers DPS $500 a month from each teacher’s check, or $10,000 a year, to be paid back as a no-interest loan when the teacher quits the system.

With about 7000 school workers in DPS (not all classroom teachers), paying the dun for 2 1/2 years of the 3 year contract, that’s a $105 million no-interest loan to a school system that claimed it needed about $40 million in concessions from the school workers. More, DPS claims its on the brink of bankruptcy, which would likely dissolve the debt to educators.

The TA also includes huge give-backs in insurances (eliminating Blue Cross), merit pay, teachers evaluating teachers, and worse.

The contract language is murky on what looks like a union bracero program, selling the labor of members to DPS with a specious promise of repayment on the “loan,” (blackmail for a job). The TA is here: http://mi.aft.org/dft231/ although in the past members have complained about not being told of the full measure of TA’s.

In a meeting of about 2500 of the DFT members at Cobo Hall on Sunday, most rank and filers agreed that 90% plus rose to oppose the TA that was bargained behind their backs, involving the top national leadership of the AFT, like President Randi Weingarten.

No group of organized educators has been on strike in the last decade more than DFT rank and filers who led a huge wildcat strike, against their union, against the law, and against the employer—and they made gains.

But today the DFT is relatively isolated. The union leadership stayed silent in the face of massive corruption and incompetence that infected nearly every aspect of Detroit school life. Citizens turned against the system as a whole.

When Broad’s Bobb arrived, citizens applauded as he rooted out the more obvious small time crooks in the system, but he left aside the contractors who looted the public by stealing millions in no-bid contract during the five year period of the Takeover Board, when the governor wiped out the elected board and replaced them with, mostly, suburban auto execs from the failing Big Three. The Takeover Board left DPS at least $40 million in debt.

Now, there are at least 10 newly built schools that sit empty and stripped of everything of value, schools that were built in the Takeover period–in a system that loses 12,000 students a year.

Bobb “won” a new $500 million bond issue to build more new schools by a 2/3 majority this fall, indicating his newly won clout, and his ability to syphon off more money from a system that claims it will build new schools, but demands blackmail payments from teachers. Bobb has already pulled out millions on no-bid offers to cronies in Broad related companies.

The DFT’s sellout Tentative Agreement will appear in urban bargaining tables everywhere next year, if DPS gets away with this. An injury to one really will go before an injury to all.

Every expression of solidarity in opposition to this TA will matter. More, suburban MEA members need to unite with the DFT rank and file, join with parents and kids to create enough educational civil strife that drives the DFT bosses back to the bargaining table, forces them to report out a TA that makes gains, not concessions.

No union is ideologically or structurally prepared to take on the battles ahead–why we formed the Rouge Forum a decade ago. When they say “Cutback,” We say “Fight Back!”

There is MUCH MORE on the blog linked here.

Good luck to us, every one.

Racial Gaps in Bowl Teams’ Academic Performance

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida reports that large racial gaps remain in the academic performance of football players who will appear in bowl games this year. Among the findings on 67 teams (with one still to be determined):

57 colleges (up from 56 in 2008‐9) or 85 percent had graduation success rates of 66 percent or higher for white football players, which was more than 2.8 times the number of colleges with equivalent rates for African‐American football athletes.
21 colleges (up from 19 in 2008‐9) or 31 percent graduated less than 50 percent of their African‐American football athletes, while only two colleges graduated less than 50 percent of their white players.
Seven colleges (up from five in 2008‐9) or 10 percent graduated less than 40 percent of their African‐American football student‐athletes, while no college graduated less than 40 percent of their white football players.
14 schools (up from 12 schools in 2008‐09) or 21 percent had graduation success rates for African‐American football student‐athletes that were at least 30 percent lower than their rates for white football student‐athletes.
35 schools (up from 29 schools in 2008‐09) or 52 percent had graduation success rates for African‐American football student‐athletes that were at least 20 percent lower than their rates for white football student‐athletes.

Four schools had graduation success rates for African‐American football student‐athletes that exceeded their rates for white football student‐athletes: Connecticut (five percent higher), Troy (seven percent higher), Southern Miss (eight percent higher), and Rutgers (four percent higher). That was down from five schools in the 2008‐09 study.

Only Texas Tech and Troy had overall graduation success rates for football players that were better than the overall student‐athletes’ GSR. Only Cincinnati and Connecticut had equivalent graduation success rates between the football players and overall student‐athletes.

TIDES Director Richard Lapchick highlighted that, “If there were a national championship based on graduation success rates among bowl teams, Navy and Northwestern would have played for the National Championship. Both teams graduated at least 92 percent of all football student‐athletes and at least 83 percent of African‐American football student‐athletes. If there were a national championship based on APR [NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate] scores, Stanford and Air Force would battle each other with APR scores of 984 and 983, respectively.”

Why liberals kill and other links to articles recommended by Historians Against the War

Links to Recent Articles of Interest

“Obama’s Folly”
By Andrew Bacevich, War in Context website, from the Los Angeles Times, December 3

“The President Has Drawn the Wrong Lessons From His Understanding of the History of War”
Interview with Andrew Bacevich on Democracy Now, posted December 2

“Obama’s Surge: Has the President Been Misled by the Iraq Analogy?”
By Juan Cole, Salon.com. posted December 1
A detailed analysis of circumstances that gave the Iraq “surge” the appearance of success, and of how circumstances in Afghanistan are different.

“Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires”
By Zoltan Grossman, AfterDowningStreet.com, posted December 2

“Afghanistan Fact Sheet: The Numbers Behind the Troop Increase”
By the National Priorities Project, posted December 1

“A Better Way to Kill? Human Terrain Systems, Anthropologists and the War in Afghanistan”
By David Price, CounterPunch.org, posted December 1

“It’s Obama’s War Now”
By Gary Leupp, CounterPunch.org, posted November 30
The author teaches history at Tufts University; despite its title, the article is mainly historical.

“The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan Through CIA Eyes: Lessons for the United States Today”
By Bennett Ramberg, Huffington Post, posted November 24

Bill Moyers’ Journal, November 20 – on escalation in Vietnam
Public Broadcasting System, November 20
On Lyndon Johnson’s decision making on Vietnam in the mid-1960s, using excerpts from President Johnson’s taped phone conversations with top advisors. The video of this program can be accessed here.

“Why Liberals Kill”
By Thad Russell, The Daily Beast, posted October 17
a broad-brush analysis of the liberal foreign policy tradition from a libertarian conservative perspective

Suggestions for inclusion in these lists are welcome: they can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com. Members of the working group for this project are Matt Bokovoy, Carolyn (Rusti) Eisenberg, Jim O’Brien, Maia Ramnath, and Sarah Shields

Rouge Forum Update: Sky Falling Fast; Resistance Rising Too!

Full update here: Rouge Forum Update: Sky Falling Fast; Resistance Rising Too!

Dear Friends,

There have been at least 16 occupations seeking to rescue education from the ruling classes in California this month, and more to come. UC Irvine next. Germany, Austria, and France also witnessed fight-backs coming from united students and workers.

To date, the only organized school voice in the US that recognizes the current crises as class war is the Rouge Forum–which may speak well for us, or not so well for others who, so far, hold onto wisps of unfounded hope made up of the shreds of democracy and citizenship in the USA.

The direct action occupations and the defenders outside the buildings up the ante for thought and action in schools and in the streets, demonstrating the violence behind capitalist democracy; overcoming the alienated notion that people other than us will save us.

See the Rouge Forum blog linked above for a more complete update.

Good luck to us, every one,
r

As UC Berkeley Investigates Police Brutality Against Students Protesting Fee Hikes, a Report From Inside the Takeover of Wheeler Hall

Call for manuscripts: The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research

Call for Manuscripts: Special Section of Critical Education

The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research

Special Section Guest Editor:
Abraham P. DeLeon
University of Texas at San Antonio

Critical Education is seeking manuscripts that address the question of the nonhuman animal in educational research, theory and praxis. Examining the representations of nonhuman animals provides opportunities to explore ideology, discourse, and the ways in which the construction of nonhumans mirrors the representation of the human Other in contemporary and historical contexts. Schools are filled with social practices concerning nonhuman animals, whether that is the food served in the cafeteria, dissection in Science classrooms, or representations in textbooks. Linked to an agenda of social justice that has emerged in the educational literature over the past decade, the treatment of nonhuman animals needs to be addressed by critical theorists in education that seek to change structures of oppression for all of life on this planet. Traditional representations of the animal persist (unfettered desire, wild, barbaric, brutish, and savage), despite the fact that we know little outside of Western empirical science. To be animal then is to be wild and something apart from supposedly human traits of rationality, language, and logic. In turn, this allows highly exploitive and torturous industries to emerge and flourish that exploit nonhumans. However, ruptures existed that threw into question what it meant to be human, such as the case of wild people and feral children. As the category of human is often reified in educational scholarship unquestioningly, this provides a unique opportunity to deconstruct these categories and their exclusionary functions.

The recent literature surrounding eco-pedagogy and critical animal studies (Andrzejewski, et. al., 2009; Best, 2009; Bowers, 2001; Kahn, 2008; Martusewicz & Edmundson, 2005; Riley-Taylor, 2002) and the cultural politics of nature (Shukin, 2009) begs us to examine how the question of the animal is tied to the larger project of educational theory and practice. Published over a series of issues, this section will allow scholars to explore what this means for education. Some possible topics can include:

Have schools largely ignored nonhuman animals in historical and contemporary contexts? If so, why and in what specific ways?
How is the cafeteria implicated in relationships of domination over the nonhuman body?
What do intersecting oppressions (racism, speciesism, classism, sexism) mean for educational theory and practice?
Do anthropocentric ideologies emerge in educational, theory, practice, or policy? How does anthropomorphism emerge in traditional forms of curriculum or textbooks?
What have been the roles of nonhuman animals in schools historically?
How can critical educational theory respond to the paradox of the “animal”?

The guest editor seeks theoretical, conceptual, and qualitative papers addressing the central theme and any work submitted will be peer-reviewed.

Nonhuman animals need to be accounted for within the broader educational literature and this special section allows scholars to explore this important and timely topic.

Any questions can be directed to Dr. Abraham DeLeon, University of Texas at San Antonio, abraham.deleon@utsa.edu.

_________________________________

Critical Education is an international peer-reviewed journal, which seeks manuscripts that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices.

Please see, http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/index for more information and submission information.

Workplace #16 Academic Knowledge, Labor, and Neoliberalism

The Editors of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor are pleased to announce the release of Workplace #16—”Academic Knowledge, Labor, and Neoliberalism.”

Check it out at: http://www.workplace-gsc.com

Table of Contents

Articles
Knowledge Production and the Superexploitation of Contingent Academic Labor
Bruno Gulli

The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Connecting Reason to Power and Power to Resistance
Rich Gibson, E. Wayne Ross

The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education: The Eli and Edith Broad Foundation
Kenneth Saltman

Feature Articles
Theses on College and University Administration: A Critical Perspective
John F. Welsh

The Status Degradation Ceremony: The Phenomenology of Social Control in Higher Education
John F. Welsh

Book Reviews
Review of The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities
Desi Bradley

Authentic Bona fide Democrats Must Go Beyond Liberalism, Capitalism, and Imperialism: A Review of Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform
Richard A. Brosio

Review of Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools
Prentice Chandler

Review of Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism
Abraham P. Deleon

Review of Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University: Poetry, Politics, and the Profession
Leah Schweitzer

Review of Rhetoric and Resistance in the Corporate Academy
Lisa Tremain

Read the Workplace Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/workplace/
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