Rouge Forum Update

Dear Friends,

For most of us, school is out for the summer. Oddly enough, the wars continue and the economy is not on vacation. But let us take a breather. Here are the Angry Tired Teachers at the old ballgame.

Good fun, comrades, and study are offered at the San Francisco Freedom School led by Kathy Emery in July and August.

As a summer study interlude, here is a link to David Harvey’s classroom presentations on Karl Marx’s “Capital.” Harvey has taught “Capital” for more than 40 years. The link will hold thirteen two hour classes examining “Capital,” chapter by chapter.

Harvey’s book, “Limits to Capital,” is truly challenging, more that worth the candle. His later, unfortunate, “New Imperialism,” follows the commonplace current liberal call for a new, “New Deal.” That book is reviewed here in JCEPS.

Michael Baker’s path-breaking radio program, Room 101, streams here. Note the recent interviews with test resister Carl Chew and UBC’s Wayne Ross on cutting the schools to war pipeline.

Michael Klare has written for years about the central role of oil in the coming imperial wars. Here he is in Tomgram, reiterating the point that the New York Times only recognized in today’s (Sunday) editorial suggesting that it is rather unseemly for US oil companies to go forward with the seizure of Iraq’s oil assets.

Some of us have yet to receive our hush money from President Bush. But we’re assured it will be here for the hottest months of summer, to keep us shopping while the media ignores the wars (less than 4% of current TV news broadcasting now addresses Iraq or Afghanistan). Perhaps, with just 16 dollars of that hush money, colleagues could offer gift subscriptions to Substance News. Here is a recent Substance article on school resistance and a link for subscribing.

Members of the Rouge Forum from many corners of the earth were up in Vancouver, guests of Wayne Ross and Sandra Mathison at UBC. Here is a link to presentations, complete with powerpoints and photos!

Rouge Forum updates will be sporadic between June and August as we hit the road to promote the resistance–and check out woods to hide in if necessary. We will have updates on the NEA and AFT conventions where leaders hope time will be devoted to anointing new presidents, at $450,000 and $600,000 per year respectively, and the billion dollar election spectacle, while activists will push for serious debate about war, NCLB, and the fight-back against cutbacks.

Up the Rebels!

all the best, r

1st Annual Northwest Conference on Teaching Social Justice

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Examples of Workshops:
Teaching Math and Science for Social Justice ● Parent-Teacher
Alliances for Better Schools ● Rethinking Special Education ● First Year 101 ● Anti-bias
Curriculum for English Language Learners ● Teaching About Japanese-American Internment ●
Living with High Stakes Testing While Working to End It
For more information, to sign up to lead a workshop, to table, or to register to attend,
please visit www.nwtsj.org

Co-Sponsors
Puget Sound Rethinking Schools, Tacoma Friday Club, Olympia Educators for Social Justice, Portland
Area Rethinking Schools, Rethinking Schools Magazine

Darwin Defeated in the Bayou

To bad the Louisiana legislature doesn’t encourage mere thinking.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education: Darwin Defeated in the Bayou: Louisiana Encourages ‘Critical Thinking’ About Evolution

The Louisiana House voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill on Wednesday that would promote “critical thinking” by students on topics such as evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning. The Louisiana Senate already passed a similar bill.

Similar bills have been introduced in several states over the past year and have been supported by opponents of evolution. The Discovery Institute, which promotes a brand of creationism known as intelligent design, hailed the 94-to-3 vote on the bill.

The Louisiana Coalition for Science opposes the bill, which it says “will open the door for creationism in public schools.”

University professors in several states have organized against such bills, many of which are based on a model created by the Discovery Institute. —Richard Monastersky

Sha Na Na: From Rock ‘n’ Roll Stardom to Academe

The Chronicle of Higher Education: From Rock ‘n’ Roll Stardom to Academe

By INGRID NORTON

How do you top the thrill of playing at Woodstock? By going to graduate school, of course.

Just ask the members of Sha Na Na, who were the penultimate act at the legendary 1969 rock festival, in the slot just before Jimi Hendrix. Of Sha Na Na’s 12 original members, eight went on to get advanced degrees. The musicians, who blended doo-wop choruses with blazing dance moves, formed from a Columbia University a cappella group in the late 60s.

Beneath the group’s retro varnish, Sha Na Na’s story mirrors its generation’s: Square teenagers come to college from the suburbs and promptly trade in turtlenecks and stiff dance moves for shimmying, getting girls, and hanging out at clubs. As the decade recedes, they come back down to earth and rejoin the establishment, becoming lawyers, academics, and doctors.

“I don’t think I ever went to a rock concert till I was in a rock concert,” says Rob A. Leonard, a founding member and, today, a professor of linguistics at Hofstra University.

Sha Na Na was the brainchild of Rob Leonard’s brother, George, who was working on his Ph.D. George J. Leonard, now a professor of interdisciplinary humanities at San Francisco State University, wanted to revive 50s innocence through doo wop, making it avant-garde. He became a Svengali, teaching members dance moves and impressing them with his older girlfriend and Lincoln hard-top convertible. Sha Na Na’s first shows in 1969 were a sensation. By the end of summer the group had a gig at Woodstock.

“After that, my college experience was completely abnormal,” says Bruce C. Clarke, a professor of literature and science at Texas Tech University.

Members balanced lives as rock stars and students by taking classes that met in the middle of the week and touring on extended weekends. Rob Leonard, who would later do years of research in East Africa, originally took Swahili because it was the only introductory language class that didn’t meet on a Friday. Rich T. Joffe, who got a Ph.D. after leaving the group but is now an antitrust lawyer, remembers reading an introductory economics textbook on an airplane while the rest of his severely hung-over bandmates tried to sleep.

As time went on, performing took its toll. Rob Leonard started falling asleep during a 10 a.m. linguistics class; Mr. Clarke recalls skipping a party to read Rilke in his hotel room.

Slowly, members peeled off, pursuing separate paths. Mr. Clarke put himself through his first few years of graduate school with money he’d saved from tours. Alan M. Cooper, now provost and a professor of Jewish studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, wondered if he should go back to the band when he couldn’t find housing at Yale graduate school. They all watched as the band took on new members and grew, starring in a variety show and appearing in the film Grease, which hit theaters 30 years ago this month.

All agree that Sha Na Na shaped them professionally. Mr. Cooper still relies on his performance instincts when he teaches. George Leonard calls his bandmates “the best students I ever had.” Musing on how Sha Na Na influenced him, Rob Leonard says, “Well, you can’t escape rock and roll.”

Two new books

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A few years ago, I worked with David Gabbard, Sandra Mathison, Kevin Vinson, and Kathleen Kesson to edit a four volume set of books titled Defending Public Schools. The books were published by Praeger (a division of Greenwood Publishing Group) and received some really outstanding reviews.

I very pleased that Teachers College Press has decided to publish two of the DPS books in paperback editions: Education Under the Security State and The Nature and Limits of Standards-Based Reform and Assessment. Both books will be available in July.

The Defending Public Schools set is still available from Greenwood in hardcover, with individual volumes also available as ebooks.

Rouge Forum Update: $130 a Barrel!

Dear Friends,

As school winds down, it appears the resistance heats up. Integrity is coming forward. Can the resistance be sustained, or make sense?

It may be that the collision of NCLB restrictions, the wars, and $130 a barrel is prompting school resistance. In the past few weeks we have seen:

  • New York City teacher Douglas Avella’s 160 students turned in blank tests. Avella was sent to the notorious $65 million per year NYC “rubber room,” where disciplined teachers live in limbo but get paid, and then may be fired. One student said, “The school system’s just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams.”
  • Twenty-six University of California students were arrested protesting a 10% fee hike (95% in the last six years) in the last month, 16 at a Board of Regents meeting at UCLA.
  • A North Carolina teacher refused to force his special ed kids take the exams he knew they were scheduled to fail.
  • As we know, Carl Chew of Seattle refused to proctor the exams.
  • In San Diego, school workers, like thousands of others, are whipsawed with threats of layoffs. It began with the new superintendent announcing 1200 support personnel layoffs and more than 900 teacher layoffs. Rank and file teachers from Hoover High organized the initial Fightback Demonstration with more than 1000 parents, kids, and educators marching on the school board meeting. Several demonstrations, organized by SDEA and the PTA followed. Only the rank and file led demonstration noted the connection between the economic crises, oil, and the wars. Now, all the support personnel layoffs remain on the table. More than 300 teachers are scheduled to lose jobs. The superintendent found some money. Maybe he can find more. But Las Vegas actively recruited many of the educators wrongly given notices and many of them left.
  • In Detroit, the new superintendent of the collapsing system threatened to open Small Schools based on the failed Chicago Model, then virtually disappeared. Community leaders are wondering where the $280, a year boss is.
  • In D.C. the AFT Local, WTU, appears to prepare to bargain a contract that dumps seniority. WTU is one of the more notoriously corrupt locals of the American Federation of Teachers. Past leaders are in prison for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars of member money. One top WTU leader sued the others for similar activity in April. The AFT is the more urban and smaller of the two US school worker unions. Other top AFT officials, like Miami’s Pat Tornillo, are also in prison for embezzlement, while the former Broward County, Florida AFT boss is in jail for molesting children. Both served on key AFT boards which helped develop and promote the NCLB. The AFT in New York City, the bellweather local of the union, recently agreed to a merit pay scheme. AFT has overseen the near-complete collapse of urban schooling (Detroit would be a prime example) and done nothing of note but collaborate.
  • The coming NEA and AFT conventions in early July should be interesting. Activists will seek to bring forward motions against the NCLB and the wars while the leaders of the big school worker unions will do all they can to focus on nothing but crowning new presidents (NEA with Dennis Van Roekel at $450,000 a year and AFT with Randi Weingarten at $600,000 a year) and the billion dollar election spectacle.

At issue is whether or not there can be sense made out of all of this—and sense then connected to organization. Only the Rouge Forum in the US has connected the wars, the NCLB, racist high-stakes exams, and the militarization of schools. We did that even before the NCLB existed, warning middle school teachers in 1997, “you are teaching the combatants in the next oil war.” Here is a recent piece, one of many http://www.richgibson.com/schoolresistance.htm

Our Rouge Forum Louisville conference adjourned with many, many suggestions for what to do: test boycotts, driving recruiters off campus, rejecting union concessions and building a spirited Fightback movement uniting school workers, parents and students, and organizing teach-ins for the fall as well as our own conference in 2009.

The Rouge Forum Steering Committee will take the lead in that. Meanwhile, could you spread the word of the Rouge Forum? Tell friends and colleagues that there is an organization fighting back, leading, and making the kind of sense that makes real solidarity possible. We don’t live off foundation grants whose owners typically run the organizations they fund. We have no dues. Money comes strictly from volunteers. We seek to build a mass base of people who can forge the resistance against an opposition that is well organized and ruthless while, at the same time we build a caring community where people can demonstrate their own creativity and expertise. Ask others to join us!

The Rouge Forum No Blood for Oil (with those good-for-the-rest-of-your-life anti-war posters cheap!) is updated.

All the best, r