E Wayne Ross – Page 68 – Critical Theories in Education

Rouge Forum Update

Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee had a refreshing, terrific, meeting in Detroit. The discussion focused, in part, on what to do as the sky falls. The long term answer, I think, is to build a mass base of class conscious people prepared to make sacrifices over time, educated to do grand strategy (equality and freedom on a distant horizon), strategy (who holds power here, and how can, instead, masses of people hold power?) and tactics (what shall we do for, say, twelve months?). You’ll see the specific results of the meeting in the next two weeks. That is the short term answer but perhaps the shorter term answer is to send out a longer Rouge Forum Update. Apologies, but the sky is falling…..

A salute to our old friend Ira Gollobin, author of “Dialectical Materialism,” whose web site is now online: http://gollobin.org/

And here is Chalmers Johnson, in a toned-down piece, arguing that the sky is still falling. In other public appearances and in his book, “Nemesis,” he said that an economic collapse, triggered by military adventures and hubris, would bring fascism, dictatorship, to the USA.

For a voice from the past; Aristotle on how tyrants rule.

“The lopping off of outstanding people and the destruction of the proud, and also the prohibition of common meals and club fellowships and education and all other things of this nature, in fact the close watch upon all things that usually engender…pride and confidence and the prevention of…study circles and other conferences for debate, and the employment of every means that will make people as much as possible unknown to one another (for familiarity increases mutual confidence), and for the people of the city to be always visible as they hang about the palace gates (for thus there would be at least concealment for what they are doing, and they would get into a habit of being humble from always acting in a servile way)…and to try not to be uniformed about any chance utterances or actions of any of the subjects, but to have spies…wherever there was any gathering or conference, ..and to cause quarrels between friend and friend and between the people and the notables, and among the rich. And it is a device of tyranny to make the subjects poor, so that a guard may not be kept, and also that the people being busy with their daily affairs may not have leisure to plot against their ruler. Instances of this are the pyramids in Egypt, and the building of the temple of the Olympian Zeus…(for all these undertakings produce the same effect, constant occupation and poverty among the subject people) and the levying of taxes, as at Syracuse (for in the reign of Dionysius the result of taxation used to be in five years men had contributed the whole of their substance). Also the tyrant is a stirrer-up of war, with the deliberate purpose of keeping the people busy and also of making them constantly in need of a leader.”

The wishes of a tyrant are directed by three aims, to produce humility, “for a humble-spirited man would not plot against anybody,” to prevent confidence among subjects, “for a tyranny is not destroyed until people come to trust each other,” and the people’s power to resist must be demolished, “so that nobody attempts impossibilities, as nobody tries to put down a tyranny if they do not have power behind them.” (From Aristotle, “Politics”).

The question to any government: Is this for the common good?

The ethics of every movement for change for the common good: Freedom and Equality.

Here are questions that could be used in most schools, designed to highlight the historical critique of tyranny.

And a letter from a friend about the financial crises:

“Just so we are all clear about one thing. The system we live under is called “capitalism.”

The people who benefit under it are the capitalists.

ANY “bailout”, etc., is going to be a bailout of the capitalists.

The aim and purpose of any such program is to help the capitalists.

That’s what capitalism is all about — profiting the capitalists.

Therefore, this or any possible plan will, first and foremost, profit the capitalists.

Will it help the rest of us? The answer is always the same. Some employees of the capitalists will benefit indirectly.

But “benefiting society” is not, and cannot possibly be, the purpose of such a program. Not under capitalism it can’t!

Capitalism needs capitalists. For the last 150 years or so the main capitalists it needs are financial capitalists — financiers.

Financial capitalists control the others, by controlling the supply of capital. Financial capitalists are the most powerful and — as we now see — the most important.

You can’t have finance capitalism without financiers.

So the whole purpose of the government’s actions is to benefit the financial capitalists.
That’s how problems under capitalism are solved. Otherwise, it’s not capitalism.

Some of this will “trickle down” to some of us employees and workers. Of course!
The financial capitalists can’t function by themselves. They need the industrial, commercial, real estate, etc. capitalists, who will borrow from them.

And THOSE capitalists need us, the employees and workers, to actually do the work, and by doing it, create all the value that the rest of the capitalists appropriate, invest, borrow, lend, gain, lose, and spend.

Paul Krugman’s column today in the New York Times points this out too. “Cash for Trash?”

Henry Paulson is a politically-connected investment banker, and this plan is his. (Paulson succeeded New Jersey’s own governor Jon Corzine as head of Goldman Sachs). Naturally enough, his plan hugely profits financial institutions, while not necessarily solving the economic problems of the country. Obviously this is deliberate.
This is, after all, capitalism. The capitalists win, no matter what else. The British Empire crashed and burned in the 20th century, but the Bank of England and other British banks are still among the strongest in the world.

That’s what capitalist politics are all about: profiting the financiers, who control the rest of the economy.

It’s not a “mistake”. It’s not “incompetence.” This is the way capitalism has always worked, since the 1830s at least. It cannot possibly work any other way. To ask capitalism not to work the way it must work is like asking a dog to act like a mouse.
* * * * *
So, let’s complain, for sure. I’m going to write “our” Congressman, and the two senators. But I’m not going to pretend I’m naive. I’m not going to say: “Make the government’s actions benefit ‘the little guy.'” The capitalists — mainly, the financiers — RUN the government. The government always benefits them. It never benefits “the little guy”, except as a by-product (they can’t let us all die out, or there would be no capital, and therefore no capitalists). Slavery wasn’t made for the slaves, but for the slave-owners. Capitalism wasn’t made for the workers, but for the capitalists. But we don’t have to like it. Any more than the slaves liked slavery. And, like the slave system, capitalism isn’t going to last forever. ”

Thanks to Greg and Katie, Adam and Gina, Joe and Joe, Bill Blank, Amber, Colleen, Kelly, Wayne, Ashwani, Ravi, MrJ, Bonnie and Marc, Sherry, Nancy, Grace and Lydia, Spencer and Brady, Kim B, Elaine H, Sally and Sandy, Bonnie Mc, Hope and Art.

All the best, r

Call for Manuscripts: Teachers’ Voices in Today’s Schools—Why Are They Critical?

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS
Teachers’ Voices in Today’s Schools—Why Are They Critical?
Deadline: October 15, 2008
Publication: March 2009

<a href=”Democracy & Education is seeking manuscripts that explore the role for teachers’ voices in today’s schools and classrooms, and as part of the larger conversation about education policy, democracy, and student achievement. Often teachers find themselves in a contradictory position of having knowledgeable “teacher voices” with their students, but having little say in how other aspects of education or in how people perceive their work. Manuscripts might address themes captured in the following questions:

What does it mean to be an activist teacher in a democratic tradition?
Has the role of teacher voice changed in the last century? If so, how?
How are school cultures set up to encourage (or discourage) teachers’ voices? Is there a cost associated with using your “teacher voice” outside the classroom?
How do teachers’ voices and student’s voices balance each other? What are models of collaborative conversation that involve student voices in the decision-making process? How do these models assist in the teaching and learning of democracy?
What is the role of technology in opening new avenues for expression of teachers’ voices (e.g., through blogs and “virtual communities”)?
How do teachers find time to talk and collaborate with other teachers? How can teachers bring their voices together to make change?
With national, state, and district mandates, where is there room for the teacher’s voice? What are examples of innovative ways that teachers have ensured their voices are heard?

We invite educators to explore these issues in theory (essay), to suggest pedagogical approaches (teacher file), or to share your own classroom experiences (reflection). To learn more about the categories for article submissions, or to submit a paper, please our submission guidelines at http://www.lclark.edu/org/journal/subguides.html. Feel free to forward this call for papers to any colleagues or peers that might be interested in submitting an article for consideration.

—
Hanna Neuschwander
Director of Publications
Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling
0615 SW Palatine Hill Rd. MSC 93
Portland, OR 97202

tel: (503) 768-6054
fax: (503) 768-6053

The current importance of Marx, 150 years after the Grundrisse: A Conversation with Eric Hobsbawm

ZNet: The current importance of Marx, 150 years after the Grundrisse

Conversation with Eric Hobsbawm

September, 16 2008

By Eric Hobsbawm
and Marcello Musto

Eric Hobsbawm is considered one of the greatest living historians. He is President of Birkbeck College (London University) and Professor Emeritus at the New School for Social Research (New York). Among his many writings are the trilogy about the “the long 19th century”: The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848 (1962); The Age of Capital: 1848-1874 (1975); The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (1987), and the book The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (1994).

Marcello Musto is editor of Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, London-New York: Routledge 2008.

1) M. M. Professor Hobsbawm, two decades after 1989, when he was too hastily consigned to oblivion, Karl Marx has returned to the limelight. Freed from the role of instrumentum regni to which he was assigned in the Soviet Union, and from the shackles of “Marxism-Leninism”, he has in the last few years not only received intellectual attention through new publication of his work, but also been the focus of more widespread interest. Indeed in 2003, the French magazine Nouvel Observateur dedicated a special issue to Karl Marx – le penseur du troisième millénaire? (Karl Marx – the thinker of the third millennium?). A year later, in Germany, in an opinion poll sponsored by the television company ZDF to establish who were the most important Germans of all time, more than 500,000 viewers voted for Marx; he came third in the general classification and first in the “current relevance” category. Then, in 2005, the weekly Der Spiegel portrayed him on the cover under the title Ein Gespenst kehrt zurück (A spectre is back), while listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time voted for Marx as their Greatest Philosopher.

In a recent public conversation with Jacques Attalì, you said that paradoxically “it is the capitalists more than others who have been rediscovering Marx”, and you talked of your astonishment when the businessman and liberal politician George Soros said to you “I’ve just been reading Marx and there is an awful lot in what he says”. Although weak and rather vague, what are the reasons for this revival? Is his work likely to be of interest only to specialists and intellectuals, being presented in university courses as a great classic of modern thought that should never be forgotten? Or could a new “demand for Marx” come in the future from the political side as well?

E. H. There is an undoubted revival of public interest in Marx in the capitalist world, though probably not as yet in the new East European members of the European Union. It was probably accelerated by the fact that the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party coincided with a particularly dramatic international economic crisis in the midst of a period of ultra-rapid free market globalization.

Marx had predicted the nature of the early 21st century world economy a hundred and fifty years earlier, on the basis of his analysis of “bourgeois society”. It is not surprising that intelligent capitalists, especially in the globalized financial sector, were impressed by Marx, since they were necessarily more aware than others of the nature and instabilities of the capitalist economy in which they operated. Most of the intellectual Left no longer knew what to do with Marx. It had been demoralised by the collapse of the social-democratic project in most North Atlantic states in the 1980s and the mass conversion of national governments to free market ideology, as well as by the collapse of the political and economic systems that claimed to be inspired by Marx and Lenin. The so-called “new social movements” like feminism either had no logical connection with anti-capitalism (though as individuals their members might be aligned with it) or they challenged the belief in endless progress in human control over nature, which both capitalism and traditional socialism had shared. At the same time the “proletariat”, divided and diminished, ceased to be credible as Marx’s historical agent of social transformation. It is also the case that since 1968 the most prominent radical movements have preferred direct action not necessarily based on much reading and theoretical analysis.

Of course this does not mean that Marx will cease to be regarded as a great and classical thinker, although for political reasons, especially in countries like France and Italy with once powerful Communist parties, there has been a passionate intellectual offensive against Marx and Marxist analyses, which was probably at its height in the 1980s and 1990s. There are signs that it has now run its course.2) M. M. Throughout his life Marx was a shrewd and tireless researcher, who sensed and analysed better than anyone else in his time the development of capitalism on a world scale. He understood that the birth of a globalized international economy was inherent in the capitalist mode of production and predicted that this process would generate not only the growth and prosperity flaunted by liberal theorists and politicians but also violent conflicts, economic crises and widespread social injustice. In the last decade we have seen the East Asian Financial Crisis, which started in the summer of 1997, the Argentinian economic crisis of 1999-2002 and, above all, the subprime mortgage crisis, which started in the United States in 2006 and has now become the biggest post-war financial crisis. Is it right to say, therefore, that the return of interest in Marx is also based on the crisis of capitalist society and on his enduring capacity to explain the profound contradictions of today’s world?

E. H. Whether the future politics of the Left will once again be inspired by Marx’s analysis, as the old socialist and communist movements were, will depend on what happens to world capitalism. But this applies not only to Marx but to the Left as a coherent political ideology and project. Since, as you say correctly, the return of interest in Marx is largely – I would say mainly – based on the current crisis of capitalist society, the outlook is more promising than it was in the 1990s. The present world financial crisis, which may well become a major economic depression in the USA, dramatises the failure of the theology of the uncontrolled global free market, and forces even the US government to consider taking public actions forgotten since the 1930s. Political pressures are already weakening the commitment of economic neo-liberal governments to uncontrolled, unlimited and unregulated globalization. In some cases (China) the vast inequalities and injustices caused by a wholesale transition to a free market economy already raise major problems for social stability and raise doubts even at the higher levels of government.

It is clear that any “return to Marx” will be essentially a return to Marx’s analysis of capitalism and its place in the historical evolution of humanity – including, above all, his analysis of the central instability of capitalist development, which proceeds through self-generated periodic economic crises, with political and social dimensions. No Marxist could believe for a moment that, as neo-liberal ideologists argued in 1989, liberal capitalism had established itself forever, that history had come to an end, or indeed that any system of human relations could ever be final and definitive.

3) M. M. Do you not think that if the political and intellectual forces of the international left, who are questioning themselves with regard to socialism in the new century, were to foreswear the ideas of Marx, they would lose a fundamental guide for the examination and transformation of today’s reality?

E. H.: No socialist can foreswear the ideas of Marx, since his belief that capitalism must be succeeded by another form of society is based not on hope or will but on a serious analysis of historical development, particularly in the capitalist era. His actual prediction that capitalism would be replaced by a socially managed or planned system still seems reasonable, though he certainly underestimated the market elements which would survive in any post-capitalist system(s). Since he deliberately abstained from speculation about the future, he cannot be made responsible for the specific ways in which “socialist” economies were organised under “really existing socialism”. As to the objectives of socialism, Marx was not the only thinker who wanted a society without exploitation and alienation, in which all human beings could fully realise their potentialities, but he expressed this aspiration more powerfully than anyone else, and his words retain the power to inspire.

However, Marx will not return as a political inspiration to the Left until it is understood that his writings should not be treated as political programmes, authoritative or otherwise, nor as descriptions of the actual situation of world capitalism today, but rather as guides to his way of understanding the nature of capitalist development. Nor can or should we forget that he did not achieve a coherent and fully thought out presentation of his ideas, in spite of attempts by Engels and others to construct a volume II and III of Capital out of Marx’s manuscripts. As the Grundrisse show, even a completed Capital would have formed only part of Marx’s own, perhaps excessively ambitious, original plan.

On the other hand, Marx will not return to the Left until the current tendency among radical activists to turn anti-capitalism into anti-globalism is abandoned. Globalisation exists, and, short of a collapse of human society, is irreversible. Indeed, Marx recognised it as a fact and, as an internationalist, welcomed it, in principle. What he criticised, and what we must criticize, was the kind of globalisation produced by capitalism.

4) M. M. One of Marx’s writings which has provoked the greatest interest amongst new readers and commentators is the Grundrisse. Written between 1857 and 1858, the Grundrisse is the first draft of Marx’s critique of political economy and, thus, also the initial preparatory work on Capital; it contains numerous reflections on matters that Marx did not develop elsewhere in his incomplete oeuvre. Why, in your opinion, are these manuscripts one of Marx’s writings which continue to provoke more debate than any other, in spite of the fact that he wrote them only to summarise the foundations of his critique of political economy? What is the reason for their persistent appeal?

E. H. In my view the Grundrisse have made so large an international impact on the Marxian intellectual scene for two connected reasons. They were virtually unpublished before the 1950s, and, as you say, contained a mass of reflections on matters that Marx did not develop elsewhere. They were not part of the largely dogmatised corpus of orthodox Marxism in the world of Soviet socialism, yet Soviet socialism could not simply dismiss them. They could therefore be used by Marxists who wanted to criticise orthodoxy or widen the scope of Marxist analysis by an appeal to a text which could not be accused of being heretical or anti-Marxist. Hence the editions of the 1970s and 1980s (well before the fall of the Berlin Wall) continued to provoke debate largely because in these manuscripts Marx raised important problems which were not considered in Capital, for instance, the questions raised in my preface to the volume of essays you collected [Karl Marx’s Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later, edited by M. Musto, London—New York: Routledge 2008; http://www.routledgeeconomics.com/books/Karl-Marxs-Grundrisse-isbn9780415437493 ].

5) M. M. In the preface to this book, written by various international experts to mark the 150th anniversary of its composition, you have written: “Perhaps this is the right moment to return to a study of the Grundrisse less constricted by the temporary considerations of leftwing politics between Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and the fall of Mikhail Gorbachev”. Moreover, to underline the enormous value of this text, you stated that the Grundrisse “contains analyses and insights, for instance about technology, that take Marx’s treatment of capitalism far beyond the nineteenth century, into the era of a society where production no longer requires mass labour, of automation, the potential of leisure, and the transformations of alienation in such circumstances. It is the only text that goes some way beyond Marx’s own hints of the communist future in the German Ideology. In a few words, it has been rightly described as Marx’s thought at its richest.” Therefore, what might be the result of re-reading the Grundrisse today?

E. H. There are probably not more than a handful of editors and translators who have full knowledge of this large and notoriously difficult mass of texts. But a re-rereading, or rather reading, of them today could help us to rethink Marx: to distinguish what is general in Marx’s analysis of capitalism from what was specific to the situation of mid-nineteenth-century “bourgeois society”. We cannot predict what conclusions from this analysis are possible and likely, only that they will certainly not command unanimous agreement.

6) M. M. To finish, one final question. Why is it important today to read Marx?

E. H. To anyone interested in ideas, whether a university student or not, it is patently clear that Marx is and will remain one of the great philosophical minds and economic analysts of the nineteenth century, and, at his best, a master of passionate prose. It is also important to read Marx because the world in which we live today cannot be understood without the influence that the writings of this man had on the twentieth century. And finally, he should be read because, as he himself wrote, the world cannot be effectively changed unless it is understood – and Marx remains a superb guide to understanding the world and the problems we must confront.

England struggles with “teaching to the test”

BBC NEWS
Too much maths ‘taught to test’

Almost half of England’s schools are not teaching mathematics well enough, putting too much emphasis on “teaching to the test”, inspectors have said.

Ofsted said pupils were taught to pass exams and results had improved, but understanding of the subject had not.

Teaching and learning, the curriculum and management were all stronger in primary schools than secondary schools.

The government said it was investing £140m in measures “to transform the standard” of maths teaching in England.

Ofsted said its report, Mathematics: Understanding the score, was based principally on evidence from inspections undertaken between April 2005 and December 2007 in 192 maintained schools in England, 84 primary and 108 secondary.

Many secondaries had big problems finding good teachers. Pupils’ progress was inadequate in one in 10 lessons, Ofsted said.

The effectiveness of work in maths was judged to be outstanding in 11%, good in 44% and satisfactory in 40% – by an inspectorate which regards “satisfactory” as not being good enough.

Of the nine schools where the quality was deemed to be inadequate, six were secondary schools.

Strategies

The report said there had been a steady improvement in test and examination results.

We need children to be equipped to use mathematics with confidence in and beyond the classroom to play their part in a rapidly changing society
Chief inspector Christine Gilbert

Key Stage 3 results – from the tests taken by pupils aged 13 and 14 – were improving and a greater percentage of pupils reached the vital threshold of grade C at GCSE level.

“But this does not tell the whole story,” Ofsted said.

“Based on the gains made at Key Stage 3, more pupils than at present should be reaching the higher GCSE grades.

“Evidence suggests that strategies to improve test and examination performance, including ‘booster’ lessons, revision classes and extensive intervention, coupled with a heavy emphasis on ‘teaching to the test’, succeed in preparing pupils to gain the qualifications but are not equipping them well enough mathematically for their futures.

“It is of vital importance to shift from a narrow emphasis on disparate skills towards a focus on pupils’ mathematical understanding.”

Rapid change

Pupils should be taught to make sense of mathematics – so they could use it confidently in their everyday lives and were prepared for further study and the workplace.

Chief inspector Christine Gilbert said: “The way mathematics is taught can make a huge difference to the level of enthusiasm and interest for the subject.

“As well as developing fluent numeracy skills to deal with everyday mathematics, children and young people need to be able to think mathematically, model, analyse and reason.”

She added: “We all benefit from the advanced mathematics that underpins our technological world.

We know that more needs to be done to improve maths for the long term
Jim Knight, Schools Minister

“We need children to be equipped to use mathematics with confidence in and beyond the classroom to play their part in a rapidly changing society.”

Among a series of recommendations, Ofsted said the Department for Children, Schools and Families should reintroduce separate reporting of pupils’ attainment in “using and applying mathematics”.

The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics – set up after a previous critical inquiry into maths teaching in England – should help teachers assess their own knowledge, get access to training and share good practice.

To an extent Ofsted’s report has been overtaken by a later review the government commissioned, by Sir Peter Williams, which was published in June.

Accepting his findings, ministers said 13,000 maths specialists would spearhead better primary school teaching. It will take 10 years to train them.

England’s Schools Minister Jim Knight said: “While Ofsted recognises there are positive trends, with results in maths up at all ages, we know that more needs to be done to improve maths for the long term.

“That’s why we are introducing a whole range of measures, backed by £140m, which will transform the standard of maths teaching in this country.

“Good teachers know that the best way to ensure pupils make good progress – and to pass exams and tests – is to give them a broad, in depth understanding of the subject. There is no reason why testing should result in a narrow focus or uninspiring lessons.

“This year’s new secondary curriculum will help bring mathematics to life. It will promote better mathematical thinking and problem solving as well as developing pupil’s confidence in maths and their ability to apply maths in real life, relevant contexts.”

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/education/7623436.stm

Published: 2008/09/19 00:12:25 GMT

Rouge Forum Update

Dear Friends,

A serious crisis visits us. I suggest only the Rouge Forum, small as we are, is positioned in North America to link reason with knowledge and answer the coming crash–with schools and children in the forefront of our minds.

Only the Rouge Forum predicted this smash-up of war and the economy and only the Rouge Forum fashioned answers. http://www.richgibson.com/roleofschools.pdf

That is because, in part, we understand that political economy is not about the “market,” “profit and loss,” or even “capital,” but it is the study of social relations people create in our struggle with nature in order to deal with the necessities of life: (1) work and production, (2) reproduction–love and aesthetics, (3) rational knowledge, (4) and freedom.

That’s a sum of what class struggle is about. Now, with the fickle system of capital leaving its personifications in the US (the bailouts have mostly been directed at salvaging foreign investors, especially China, to keep them holding dollars, which will not last), and with inter-imperialist rivalry intensifying (Georgia invades S. Ossetia and the US military is paralyzed), especially over regional control of oil; we can easily foresee an intensifying attack of the rich on the poor everywhere. That will play out in schools in North American, the central organizing point of most people’s lives.

Only Cassandra, with a crystal ball, can look into the specifics of the future but history helps with some quick terms: inflation which robs the poor, bank closures called “holidays” , massive unemployment, possible currency devaluations, payment in script, more evictions, government used as a weapon of the rich–and schools used as missions for capital, teachers its missionaries, urging upon kids the witless nationalism that gets the poor to fight and die for the rich in their birthplaces.

It is in this context that we need to analyze the election. This election should not only be studied as how to choose who will best oppress the majority of the people from the executive committee of the rich, which is the government. It should be studied, more importantly, as how a spectacle of capitalism, the election inside the capitalist “democracy”, has speeded the emergence of fascism, that is,
*the corporate state, the rule of the rich (bailouts, oil wars),
*the suspension of civil liberties,
*the attacks on whatever press there is,
*the rise of racism and segregation (in every way, but especially the immigration policies),
*the promotion of the fear of sexuality as a question of pleasure (key to creating the inner slave),
*the governmental/corporate attacks on working peoples’ wages and benefits (tax bailouts to merit pay),
*intensification of imperialist war (sharpening the war in Afghanistan sharpens war on Pakistan which sharpens war on Russia, etc, and the US is NOT going to leave Iraq’s oil),
*the promotion of nationalism (all class unity) by, especially, the union bosses),
*trivializing what is supposed to be the popular will to vile gossip, thus building cynicism—especially the idea that we cannot grasp and change the world,
*increased mysticism (is it better to vote for a real religious fanatic or people who fake being religious fanatics?) and,
*incessant attacks on radicals (Bill Ayers is not a radical; he is a liberal now, once he was a liberal with a bomb, but people see him as the epitome of a radical and he IS connected to Obama).

That is a litany of the acceleration of fascism. The unions, all of them, and all existing education reform groups–other than the Rouge Forum– believe in the all-class-unity, nationalism, that lies at the core of fascism and no union or education reform group other than the Rouge Forum has ever initiated and sustained a struggle that united people across lines of job, community, age, race, disability, and sex. We have connected our research, reason, to power.

What to do? Build direct action resistance in the military and the military feeding machines–schools.

But if this US population, which has shopped it through two decades of warfare (Clinton dropped more bombs on Iraq than Bush2 did); if these people can no longer shop, and there is no organized left, a real left that grasps the nature of class war, then we lambs among wolves had better watch out.

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee is meeting in Detroit on September 27. Your analysis, ideas for action, will be noted and appreciated, and you are welcome to come join us. The Vietnamese resistance started with a dozen people.

Congratulations to Greg Queen of the RF steering committe for winning the NCSS academic freedom award for defending his right to teach critically.

Oppositional and Defiant–Or Critical Thinker?

In a post at The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Brainstorm blog, Marc Bousquet explores the medicalization of resistance and rebellion, what the DSM IV calls “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (ODD). ODD is a common diagnosis of young people and is often treated with powerful drugs.

Thing is, ODD seems to have a lot in common with basic everyday critical thinking. And, as Bousquet points out the bigger problem might be “Compliance Acquiescent Disorder”, which seems rampant among psychologists, psychiatrists, and educators.

Rouge Forum Update

Dear Friends,

Restored to life!

Welcome back to school and the Rouge Forum. Our web page is fully updated.

Our Steering Committee will meet in Detroit on the weekend of September 27, setting our agenda for the coming year. If you would like to attend or add agenda items, please let me know.

Rouge Forum members will help lead teach-ins about schools and the war around the US this fall. Information is on our web site.

Some items of interest from the summer:

Let us remember that both Obama and McCain insist they support merit pay as does Democrat George Miller and Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

In fact, the Democratic delegation at their recent Denver convention routinely showed contempt for leaders of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, together representing the largest bloc on the convention floor, NEA alone with 210 delegates. The unions both endorsed Obama nevertheless and will pour millions of dollars into the current election spectacle, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours. NEA, in addition, proudly claims a million Republican members, of 3.2 million nationwide.

Why would NEA and AFT executives endorse politicians who attempt to enforce merit pay, a vital choke point for those who seek to sort children, educators, and knowledge itself, by class and race? The usual official argument is, “lesser of two evils.” The reality is that presidents of both NEA and AFT earn well over $450,000 a year. That alone means they do not live like school workers, do not shop where we shop, do not work where we work, do not witness our struggles and, since they have lived like this for more than a decade, their viewpoint is from the other side.

Worse still is the fact that of the ten executive officers of NEA (including the top executive, John Wilson), only two are from states that have collective bargaining in the law, meaning eight never could have bargained a contract, and the two remaining never bargained a contract anyway, and none of them has ever directly managed a strike—the most important weapon educators have. The memory of how to resist, from officialdom, is nearly gone.

Both NEA and AFT actively supported the development of NCLB, working in tandem with the US Chambers of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the Broad Foundation and others. Executives of both unions, from time to time, hint about problems with NCLB, its high stakes exams and regulated curricula, but the union bosses actually attack those who try to do something about NCLB—like Susan Ohanian—and they never opposed the military invasion of schooling that is an important part of the law.

UTLA, the largest school worker union in California, still insists it will back merit pay on “a cold day in hell,” according to a past president. But the coming trends, and the war-based budget collapse, show that educators have a fight ahead—for pay, benefits, and the freedom to teach well and the very lives of kids who, this year, arrive homeless, foreclosed. Bankers, though, get bipartisan bailouts.

San Diego’s Education Association fought massive layoffs for 9 months. Still 194 teachers are laid off and the superintendent, Terry Grier, continues to insist on injecting merit pay into contract negotiations.

Denver teachers in the American Federation of Teachers will likely ratify a contract that extends their existing merit pay program.

In collapsing Detroit, dozens of schools will be closed and hundreds of school workers laid off. The district’s new superintendent, Connie Calloway who previously administered a district smaller than 5,000 kids, just discovered a $408 million dollar deficit.

Calloway also discovered thousands of textbooks sitting unopened in a warehouse, new from last year, full of mold, never delivered. The Detroit Federation of Teachers President, Virginia Cantrell, suspended the Executive Vice President, Greg Johnson, for insisting that educators need, “books, supplies, lower class size,” at a union rally where Cantrell gave the podium to superintendent Calloway to make a pitch for concessions.

Washington DC teachers, though divided, will likely endorse a merit pay program introduced by Teach for America grad, Michell Rhee, a favorite of NPR and PBS. The VP of the DC local is currently suing the president.

We should remember this quote about NPR from William Blum, author of Killing Hope:

“The president of NPR, incidentally, is a gentleman named Kevin Klose. Previously he helped coordinate all US-funded international broadcasting: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Central Europe and the Soviet Union), Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio/TV Marti (Cuba), Worldnet Television (Africa and elsewhere); all created specifically to disseminate world news to a target audience through the prism of US foreign policy beliefs and goals. He also served as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Would it be unfair to say that Americans then became his newest target audience? All unconscious of course; that’s what makes the mass media so effective; they really believe in their own objectivity. Not to mention the conscious propaganda.”

Note, though, that the former DC teachers union president and other officers are in prison for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dues dollars.

New York City teachers endorsed an expanded merit pay system over the summer.

Miami Dade teachers went back to work with a contract but the district refused to pay the negotiated raise. The union, whose past president of twenty plus years, Pat Tornillo, was convicted and jailed for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dues dollars, urged the teachers to sign a petition, and work.

The Chicago Teachers Union, AFT, continues to sport a merit pay project initiated by a federal grant in 2006. CTU’s President also suspended it’s Vice President for dissent.

Six years ago, the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers resoundingly defeated a move to continue a merit pay system in their schools that had, in their experience, failed. AFT presses on with one sellout after the next. Later, AFT leaders in Cincinnati wheedled a contract that has teachers evaluating teachers for merit pay, a high point of educators becoming instruments of their own oppression.

Clearly, the urban American Federation of Teachers leads the charge toward merit pay, as they have led nearly every retreat of the labor movement since Al Shanker declared in 1975 that he stood for the unity of union bosses, superintendents, business, and government, “in the national interest.” Shanker began concession bargaining, never learning that making concessions is like giving blood to sharks—they only want more.

AFTs’ betrayals of its own members are, as we see in San Diego, going to appear on NEA bargaining tables everywhere. Given NEA’s history, and their adoption of Shanker’s collaborative outlook, it is quite possible that absent rank and file action, merit pay based on test scores will appear in NEA contracts nationwide. Then, educator pay and benefits will reflect the income of the parents of the kids in the classroom. This will materially divide the work force even more, weakening solidarity, making it easier still to manipulate education in the interest of war and inequality.

A 2007 study by a University of Florida Economics professor, David Figlio, now seeks attention as academic proof that teacher merit pay improves student test scores, a fetish among politicians, NPR, Ed Week, and many people in the public. What goes unnoticed by many educators is that about 16 percent of US schools are already working with merit pay.

With Governor Swarzenegger declaring a $4.8 billion dollar budget deficit and the budget long overdue, given our current social context of an international war of the rich on the poor, inter-imperialist warfare (costing the US taxpayers $3 Trillion), the collapsing banks (Bear Stearns bailed out), the mortgage crisis (Fannie and Freddie Mac bailed out to the cost of untold trillions)—i.e., the use of government to privatize profits and socialize loss, using the state as an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich—school workers (parents and kids) can expect fights ahead on many fronts.

At issue is whether or not we wisely hunt down the root source of our problems, from inflation to layoffs to health care and pay cuts, to merit pay to pension cuts and rising class size, and the systematic attacks on our kids through regimented curricula promoting little more than technical expertise and witless nationalism, high-stakes racist exams, and the militarization of working class schools: will we see these problems have common beginnings and fight together, parents, students and kids; or will we allow ourselves to be picked off one by one—as is happening with thousands of wrongly foreclosed families right now?

What is the source of our problems? The system of capital, its wars, and the class war we find ourselves in today. Should we miss that reality, or believe we can vote ourselves out of it when both the Democrats and Republicans have conducted open, bipartisan war on the schools through the NCLB–as well as promising endless war on the world–if we fail to see that nobody is going to save us but us, we are in for dark days in education, and the very struggle for reason.

We have mounted a resistance based on direct action and an ethic of equality that says, “you are what you do,” for more than a decade through Substance News, The Rouge Forum ( www.rougeforum.org ), Susan Ohanian’s web site, and Calcare on the Resist list. Please spread the word.

There is always hope in kids.

All the best for a good school year.

r
ps: Here is an early look at a piece in the October Substance

Take a look at the newly designed Substance web site at
www.substancenews.net and please, please subscribe to the hard copy version or send a donation to the only print source of education activism in the US.

File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA Litigation

Image from modernhumorist.com

From Wired.com via RockRap.com:

File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA Litigation

By David Kravets September 04, 2008 | 5:55:39 PM from wired.com

RIAA attorney Donald Verrilli Jr. says file sharers are automatically liable for copyright infringement and monetary damages for using peer-to-peer networks. Casey Lentz is trying to settle her RIAA lawsuit. She says the RIAA is “harassing” her.
It was five years ago Monday the Recording Industry Association of America began its massive litigation campaign that now includes more than 30,000 lawsuits targeting alleged copyright scofflaws on peer-to-peer networks.

The targets include the elderly, students, children and even the dead. No one in the U.S. who uses Kazaa, Limewire or other file sharing networks is immune from the RIAA’s investigators, and fines under the Copyright Act go up to $150,000 per purloined music track.

But despite the crackdown, billions of copies of copyrighted songs are now changing hands each year on file sharing services. All the while, some of the most fundamental legal questions surrounding the legality of file sharing have gone unanswered. Even the future of the RIAA’s only jury trial victory — against Minnesota mother Jammie Thomas — is in doubt. Some are wondering if the campaign has shaped up as an utter failure.
“We’re just barely scratching the surface of the legal issues,” says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer and one of the nation’s few who have taken an RIAA defendant’s case. “They’re extorting people — and for what purpose?”

When the first round of lawsuits were filed on Sept. 8, 2003 — targeting 261 defendants around the country — it was a hairpin turn from the RIAA’s previous strategy of going after services like Napster, RIAA president Cary Sherman said at the time. “It is simply to get peer-to-peer users to stop offering music that does not belong to them.” The goal in targeting music fans instead of businesses was “not to be vindictive or punitive,” says Sherman.

Today, the RIAA — the lobbying group for the world’s big four music companies, Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music — admits that the lawsuits are largely a public relations effort, aimed at striking fear into the hearts of would-be downloaders. Spokeswoman Cara Duckworth of the RIAA says the lawsuits have spawned a “general sense of awareness” that file sharing copyrighted music without authorization is “illegal.”

“Think about what the legal marketplace and industry would look like today had we sat on our hands and done nothing,” Duckworth says in a statement. (The RIAA declined to be interviewed for this story.)

Casey Lentz, a 21-year-old former San Francisco State student, is among those caught in the RIAA’s PR campaign.

“They’re harassing me nonstop,” says Lentz, who’s been trying to settle her RIAA case, but can’t afford a lawyer. “I wasn’t the one who downloaded the music. It was a shared computer with my roommates and my friends. They want $7,500 for 10 songs.”

“I told them I only had $500 in my bank account. And they said ‘no way,'” she says.

Despite a fallow legal landscape, most defendants cannot afford attorneys and settle for a few thousand dollars rather than risk losing even more, Beckerman says. “There are still very few people fighting back as far as the litigation goes and they settle.”

“It costs more to hire a lawyer to defend these cases than take the settlement,” agrees Lory Lybeck, a Washington State attorney, who is leading a prospective class-action against the RIAA for engaging in what he says is “sham” litigation tactics. “That’s an important part of what’s going on. The recording industry is setting a price where you know they cannot hire lawyers. It’s a pretty well-designed system whereby people are not allowed any effective participation in one of the three prongs in the federal government.”

Settlement payments can be made on a website, where the funds are used to sue more defendants. None of the money is paid to artists.

The quick settlements have left largely unexamined some basic legal questions, such as the legality of the RIAA’s investigative tactics, and the question of what proof should be required to hold a defendant liable for peer-to-peer copyright infringement

In two cases, judges have ruled that making songs available on a peer-to-peer network does not constitute copyright infringement — the RIAA has to show that someone actually downloaded the material from a defendant’s open share folder. One of those cases is still mired in pretrial litigation. In the other, an Arizona judge issued a $40,000 judgment last week in favor of the recording industry, after learning the defendant tampered with his hard drive to conceal his downloading.

The so-called “making available” issue also emerged, belatedly, in the only RIAA file sharing lawsuit to go to trial: the case against Thomas, a Minnesota mother of three, who was slammed with a $222,000 judgment last year for sharing 24 tracks in her Kazaa folder.

Months after the Duluth, Minnesota jury’s October verdict, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis called the lawyers back to his courtroom. He said he likely committed a “manifest error” in the case by instructing (.pdf) the jury that merely offering music was infringement.

Judge Davis is expected any day to declare a mistrial in the case, and rule that the Copyright Act demands a showing of an actual “transfer” of files from Thomas’ share folder. If that line of reasoning is followed elsewhere, it endangers a key prong of the RIAA’s litigation strategy. The association believes it is technically impossible to prove that files offered on a peer-to-peer user’s shared folders were actually downloaded by anyone besides its own investigators. “It’s all done behind a veil,” RIAA attorney Donald Verrilli Jr. argued in the Thomas case last month.

That doesn’t mean the RIAA would be dead in the water. The recording industry could try to prove, through forensic examination, that the shared files were pirated to begin with, i.e., that the defendant infringed copyright law by downloading the music, before sharing it again. It’s also possible the courts will find that — as the RIAA has argued — downloads by the RIAA’s investigators can be considered infringement by the file sharer; digital rights advocates counter the recording industry should not be able to pay investigators to make downloads of its own music, and then declare them unauthorized copies.

The RIAA’s investigative tactics have come under attack as well. In a few states — Michigan, Texas, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, Oregon and Arizona — state governments and RIAA defendants have challenged the qualifications of the private company that develops the music industry’s cases.

MediaSentry — aka SafeNet — specializes in logging into peer-to-peer networks, where it downloads some music, takes screenshots of open share folders and documents the offending IP address. The RIAA’s position is that the online sleuthing isn’t covered by state laws regulating private investigators. But Michigan (.pdf) recently disagreed, and told MediaSentry it needed a private investigator’s license to continue practicing in that state.

Against that shifting legal backdrop, a handful of universities, including the University of Oregon, have begun refusing to divulge students’ names in file sharing lawsuits, on privacy grounds.

Nobody can credibly dispute that file sharing systems are a superhighway for pirated music. “There is no doubt that the volume of files on P2P is overwhelmingly infringing,” says Eric Garland, president of Los Angeles research firm BigChampagne. But critics of the RIAA say it’s time for the music industry to stop attacking fans, and start looking for alternatives. Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the lawsuits are simply not reducing the number of people trading music online.

“If the goal is to reduce file sharing,” he says, “it’s a failure.”