Critical Theories in Education
Teachers 4 Social Justice 2008 Conference
Save the Date!
Saturday, October 11th, 2008 – 9am-5pm
8th Annual Conference
“Teaching for Social Justice: Building Power, Making Change”
WORKSHOPS, RESOURCE FAIRE, LUNCHTIME NETWORKING, KEYNOTE SPEAKER
San Francisco, CA
Registration available in June, 2008 For more information, email us at teachers4socialjustice@yahoo.com
Download an application to present a workshop here.
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the new folks, from all over the world, on our Rouge Forum list. For newcomers, the Rouge Forum home page is at
www.rougeforum.org</a . There you will find current updates on education, the wars, and those good-for-the-rest-of-our-lives Rouge Forum posters on sale at cost.
Substance News won a small victory after the paper of the education resistance was denied a press pass for the American Federation of Teachers convention coming up soon. After Rouge Forum members and Substance readers let the AFT leadership know that Substance is indeed a “legitimate” news source, the AFT leaders changed course. Here is one sentence from their recent response: “”By the way, could you please let your subscribers know that you will be covering the convention so that they’ll stop e-mailing and calling?”
Substance is carrying live online updates from the National Education Association Representative Assembly right now at
http://www.substancenews.net/ and will have even broader coverage of the AFT conference soon. A subscription to the hard copy of Substance is just $16, a good way to spend a small portion of the hush money Bush is sending to people in the US.
Here is a short, 4 minute piece from George Carlin on Who Owns Education, and US?
Bill Moyers’ Journal on Post Civil War Slavery (Moyers and his guest seem to have forgotten that W.E.B. Dubois broke the ground on this)
Ten years ago, Osama bin Laden demanded that oil should be priced at $144 a barrel. Now it is. Where is Osama? For those who want to follow events in Central Asia, see the bourgeoisie nationalist Ahmed Rashid, “Descent into Chaos.” While his standpoint makes him as unable to see a way out as Bush, his presentation is detailed and worth the candle.
An overview of world military spending is here.
My own checking suggests that the US military is the most excessive user of oil and gas in the world, using about 160 million gallons of gas a month, and that sets aside oil used for other military purposes: tires, plastics in weaponry, etc. While the subprime crisis, a result of the mastery of the US economy by finance capital, surely is related to the acceleration of oil costs, as speculators shifted away from the US dollar, the massive US military increase in using oil products has to be considered—in the context that oil moves the military of every nation in the world and no nation is prepared to convert to anything else. Oil and empire are intertwined. Thus, oil and war.
Nations that promise perpetual war on the world will make peculiar demands on their schools.
Rouge Forum updates will be sporadic through the summer. Next, among other highlights, a review of the Obamagogue/McWarcriminal dogfight and the nature of capitalist democracy—and education.
For those in Southern California, we will host a Rouge Forum potluck in early August, heading back to school.
All the best,
r
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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
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
To bad the Louisiana legislature doesn’t encourage mere thinking.
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
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.”