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Educating for Peace in a Time of Permanent War: Call for proposals:

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS

FOR A BOOK ENTITLED

EDUCATING FOR PEACE IN A TIME OF PERMANENT WAR:
ARE SCHOOLS PART OF THE SOLUTION OR THE PROBLEM?

Under Contract
Routledge / Taylor & Francis

Co-editors Paul R. Carr (Lakehead University, Orillia) & Brad J. Porfilio (Lewis University)

Afterword Zvi Bekerman (Hebrew University)

SCHEDULE

1. Chapter proposals due: February 28, 2011
2. Feedback and decisions from editors to contributors: April 4, 2011
3. First drafts due to editors: July 15, 2011
4. Feedback on first drafts from editors to contributors: September 5, 2011
5. Final drafts by contributors due to editors: October 14, 2011
6. Manuscript to publisher: December 1, 2011
7. It is our expectation that the book will be publisher in early 2012

Statement of aims
This project responds to a defined need to add to the literature in a critical manner, providing scholars, educators and others interested in peace and peace education with a nuanced, complexifed analysis and, importantly, strategies to better understand how schools engage with the notion of war and peace, and, moreover, what they can do to become part of the solution related to creating societies that strive to establish peace as a foundational component to socio-cultural, economic and political manifestations framing relations and experiences.

This CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS seeks critical contributions from scholars who are concerned with the unchecked infiltration of the military within schools, whether it be through the curriculum, through pedagogy, through policy, through experiential learning, or through military recruitment. As Paulo Freire and other critical theorists, including Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, bell hooks, Joe Kincheloe, Antonia Darder and others have acknowledged, education is a political process, and it should, necessarily, address human suffering and oppression. The willful neglect, combined with our individual and collective complicity within the military enterprise, sometimes referred to as the military-industrial complex, takes place at many levels, including ignorance of militarization at home and abroad, tacit support for military conflict in spite of alternatives for peace that exist, an uncritical reading of history that glorifies war and patriotism, a lack of critical engagement to promote peace over war, and a general reluctance to infuse a more critical pedagogical experience interwoven into education that would allow for deliberative democracy and engagement that seeks to contextualize and bring to life diverse epistemologies, value-sets, disciplines, theories, concepts, and experiences.

Little is done in schools at the formal and informal levels to address war and peace, especially in relation to what can and should be done to bring about peace, and this volume seeks to provide a range of policy, pedagogical, curriculum and institutional analyses aimed at facilitating meaningful engagement toward a more robust and critical examination of the role that schools play (and can play) in framing war, militarization and armed conflict.

We are particularly interested in the connection between war and peace. Many excellent texts deal specifically with peace and peace education, and we are hoping that this volume will make a more explicit connection between war/conflict/militarization and peace in and through education. We are also interested in nuanced, alternative, critical interdisciplinary studies that bring to light how we know, understand, engage with, and problematize war within our societies, and, particularly, within our schools. This manuscript is intended for an international audience, and we welcome proposals from scholars in diverse contexts, geographical locations and disciplines.

ONE LINE DESCIPTION OF THE BOOK

Ignorance is no defense, and may even be construed as complicity in the quest for what Peter McLaren calls “permanent war”.

If education is not about peace, then is it about war?

Can a society have education that willfully avoids considering peace as its central objective?

FOCUS

This book intends to better articulate how schools are part of the war industry, and, importantly, how schools can do peace education by examining war.

War is not a nebulous, far-away, mysterious venture; we are involved in perpetrating and perpetuating it, and education about and against war can be as liberating as it is necessary.

If war equates killing, can our schools avoid engaging in the examination of what war is all about?

This book shines a light on the pivotal role played by schools and education in ending or continuing war.

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS

1. Submit the following by February 28, 2011, to Paul R. Carr and Brad J. Porfilio: prcarr@gmail.com & Porfilio16@aol.com
2.
a. Title of proposed chapter
b. Author(s) and complete institutional titles and contact information
c. A 150-word biography for each author
d. A 300-word abstract of the proposed chapter, including what research methods are being used, theoretical and conceptual framework used, focus, and findings (or expected findings), and how the chapter is directly connected to the focus of the book.

Co-editor biographies

Paul R. Carr is originally from Toronto, and now resides in Montreal. He was recently an associate professor at Youngstown State University, where he taught courses in multicultural education, the sociology of education, diversity and leadership, and qualitative methodology, and is now an Associate Professor at Lakehead University (Orillia) in the Departments of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Studies. His current research is broadly concerned with social justice, with specific threads related to critical pedagogy, democracy, media literacy, and intercultural education. In 2007, he co-edited The Great White North? Exploring Whiteness, Privilege and Identity in Education (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), which won two national awards, and, in 2008, co-edited another book, entitled Doing Democracy: Striving for Political Literacy and Social Justice (New York: Peter Lang). He recently finalized two other edited books: the first in French entitled Les faces caches de l’intercultural (Paris: L’Harmattan), and the second, with Brad Porfilio, entitled Youth Culture, education and resistance: Subverting the commercial ordering of life (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers). He has recently authored book entitled Democracy and critical pedagogy: Does your vote count? (New York: Peter Lang). Paul is the co-founder and co-director of the Global Doing Democracy Research Project, which aims to produce a range of studies on the international level, leading to critical, comparative analysis of how democracy and education can be more effectively connected.

Dr. Brad J. Porfilio is Assistant Professor of Education at Lewis University in Romeoville, IL. He teaches courses on critical pedagogy, qualitative research, globalization and education, multicultural education, foundations of education, and curriculum theory in the Educational Leadership for Teaching and Learning Doctoral Program. The Educational Leadership Program at Lewis University is unique in its critical and transformative focus where students are prepared to become transformative educational leaders who are deeply discerning, knowledgeable and approach the educational system as a potential avenue for challenging and transforming the status quo. Dr. Porfilio received his PhD in Sociology of Education in 2005 at the University at Buffalo. During his doctoral studies, he served as an Assistant Professor of Education at Medaille College and D’Youville College, where he taught courses across the teacher education spectrum and supervised pre-service and in-service teachers from Canada and the US. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, edited volumes, and conference papers on the topics of urban education, critical social studies education, neoliberalism and schooling, transformative education, teacher education, gender and technology, and cultural studies. He recently published three co- edited volumes: The first, co-edited with Curry Malott, The Destructive Path of Neoliberalism (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), the second, co-edited with Paul R. Carr, Youth Culture, Education and Resistance: Subverting the Commercial Ordering of Life (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), and the third, co-edited with Curry Malott, Critical Pedagogy in the 21st Century: A New Generation of Scholars (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing).

Paul R. Carr Brad J. Porfilio
Lakehead University (Orillia) Lewis University
prcarr@gmail.edu porfilio16@aol.com

“Empire rots the brains of imperialists, is driven by hubris, racism and arrogance”—R.I.P. Chalmers Johnson

“Imperialism is a form of tyranny, it never rules through consent of the governed. …We talk about the spread of democracy, but we talk about the spread of democracy at the point of an assault rifle.”—Chalmers Johnson

Via Rich Gibson:

So Long Chalmers Johnson (Died November 20, Saturday, San Diego):

“Empire rots the brains of imperialists, is driven by hubris, racism and arrogance.”

Johnson was always an anti-communist, which he equated with Soviet and Chinese communism (he quickly identified the latter as little more than peasant nationalism, rightly so). Probably recruited by Hannah Arendt as a CIA asset, Johnson targeted the east, Japan (“US puppets”) and China. With the implosion of Soviet social fascism, Johnson expected a peace dividend which never materialized. Turning his eyes on the US empire of bases (800 plus), he foretold 9/11/2001 in “Blowback,” then built a trilogy with the later “Sorrows of Empire,” and “Nemesis.” In print and in person, he repeatedly said the US is now a fascist state, one of the few truly reputable scholars with the courage to do so. In “Nemesis,” he said bankruptcy would be the key to the end of the US empire–but warned it would not die with a whimper. He had two suggestions for citizens. The first, take your cat and go to Vancouver. Later, he suggested the US just dissolve its own might, as he said the Brits did. The US, however, does not have the US to hide behind. Johnson’s almost reflexive rejection of a Marxist analysis of imperialism (born almost simultaneously with capitalism, a relentless quest for cheap labor, raw materials, markets, regional control–empire) led him to view imperialism as hubris plus militarism–meaning a change of mind could upend the vampire’s desires. It cannot. Nevertheless, Johnson’s incredible prescience creates a field of land-mines for any of his critics. His research methods should be studied by everyone serious about social change. His book on Revolution, opposing it, inspires those who are for it. Finally, his insider knowledge coupled with a razor wit made encounters with Chalmers Johnson a challenge. He never backed down. So long, and “adios” (his habitual farewell) Chalmers. What you did counted.

Good luck to us, every one.

r

Democracy Now!: Chalmers Johnson, 1931-2010, on the Last Days of the American Republic

Audio interview March 2010 on Media Matters with Bob McChesney

John Nichols The Nation Blog: Chalmers Johnson and the Patriotic Struggle Against Empire

Education as Enforcement

Routledge has just published the second edition of Education as Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, edited by Kenneth J. Saltman and David A. Gabbard.

I’m pleased to have contributed co-authored chapters to both editions (with Kevin D. Vinson and John F. Welsh for the second edition).

The first volume to focus on the intersections of militarization, corporations, and education, Education as Enforcement exposed the many ways schooling has become the means through which the expansion of global corporate power are enforced. Since publication of the first edition, these trends have increased to disturbing levels as a result of the extensive militarization of civil society, the implosion of the neoconservative movement, and the financial meltdown that radically called into question the basic assumptions undergirding neoliberal ideology. An understanding of the enforcement of these corporate economic imperatives remains imperative to a critical discussion of related militarized trends in schools, whether through accountability and standards, school security, or other discipline based reforms.

Education as Enforcement, Second Edition elaborates upon the central arguments of the first edition and updates readers on how recent events have reinforced their continued original relevance. In addition to substantive updates to several original chapters, this second edition includes a new foreword by Henry Giroux, a new introduction, and four new chapters that reveal the most contemporary expressions of the militarization and corporatization of education. New topics covered in this collection include zero-tolerance, foreign and second language instruction in the post-9/11 context, the rise of single-sex classrooms, and the intersection of the militarization and corporatization of schools under the Obama administration.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Governing Through Crime and the Pedagogy of Punishment, HENRY A. GIROUX

Introduction to the Second Edition, Kenneth J. Saltman & David A. Gabbard

Introduction to the First Edition, Kenneth J. Saltman

1. The Function of Schools: Subtler and Cruder Methods of Control, NOAM CHOMSKY

2. Rivers of Fire: BPAmaco’s impact on Education, KENNETH J. SALTMAN and ROBIN TRUTH GOODMAN

3. Education IS Enforcement: The Centrality of Compulsory Schooling in Market Societies, DAVID A. GABBARD

4. Cracking Down: Chicago School Policy and the Regulation of Black and Latino Youth, PAULINE LIPMAN

5. Facing Oppression: Youth Voices from the Front, PEPI LEISTYNA

6. Tased and Confused: From Social Exclusion to Shock in the War on Youth, CHRISTOPHER G. ROBBINS

7. Freedom for Some, Discipline for “Others”: The Structure of Inequity in Education, ENORA R. BROWN

8. Forceful Hegemony: A Warning and a Solution for Indian Country, FOUR ARROWS

9. From Abstraction and Militarization of Language Education to Society for Language Education: Lessons from Daisaku Ikeda and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, JASON GOULAH

10. The Proliferation of JROTC: Educational Reform or Militarization, MARVIN J. BERLOWITZ and NATHAN A. LONG

11. Combat Girls: What Single-Sex Classrooms Have To Do With the Militarization of Women’s Bodies, ROBIN TRUTH GOODMAN

12. Education for War in Israel: Preparing Children to Accept War as a Natural Factor of Life, HAGGITH GOR

13. Post-Columbine Reflections on Youth Violence as a (Trans)National Movement, JULIE WEBBER

14. Imprisoning Minds: The Violence of Neoliberal Education or “I Am Not For Sale”, SHEILA LANDERS MACRINE

15. Taking Command: The Pathology of Identity and Agency in Predatory Culture, RON SCAPP

16. Commentary on the Rhetoric of Reform: A Twenty Year Retrospective, SANDRA JACKSON

17. Securing the Corporate State: Education, Economism, and Crisis in the Age of Obama, ALEX MEANS

18. Controlling Images: Surveillance, Spectacle, and High-Stakes Testing as Social Control, KEVIN D. VINSON, E. WAYNE ROSS, and JOHN F. WELSH

19. The Politics of Compulsory Patriotism: On the Educational Meanings of September 11, MICHAEL APPLE

Education for Dangerous Citizenship

I’ll be at the University of Texas at San Antonio in November giving a talk as part of the Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Distinguished Lecture Series.

The talk, titled “Education for Dangerous Citizenship”, will draw from some of my recent work with Rich Gibson (e.g., “The Education Agenda is a War Agenda” and “No Child Left Behind and the Imperial Project”) and Kevin D. Vinson (“The Concrete Inversion of Life”: Guy Debord, the Spectacle, and Critical Social Studies Education” [pdf]). The UTSA talk will cover some of the foundational ideas for a book Kevin and I are currently writing titled Dangerous Citizenship: A Theory and Practice of Contemporary Critical Pedagogy.

Thanks to Abraham DeLeon for organizing things at UTSA.

Here’s the blurb:

Education for Dangerous Citizenship: War, Surveillance, Spectacle, and the Education Agenda

We live in an era in which leaders have delivered on the promise of perpetual war and where the primary role of “public” schooling is social control. In the contemporary milieu of advanced capitalism, the fusion of surveillance and spectacle produces, maintains, and propagates controlling images that enforce prevailing societal norms by disciplining the thoughts and behaviors of individuals and groups. How might educators respond to the mechanisms of the state used to ensure direct and ideological social control? How might we resist increasingly color-coded social and economic inequality? And might we subvert an education agenda that is a (class) war agenda?

New book: Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education

Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education
New Perspectives for Social Studies Education

Edited by:
Abraham P. DeLeon
University of Texas, San Antonio, USA
and
E. Wayne Ross
University of British Columbia, Canada

Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education: New Perspectives for Social Studies Education begins with the assertion that there are emergent and provocative theories and practices that should be part of the discourse on social studies education in the 21st century. Anarchist, eco-activist, anti-capitalist, and other radical perspectives, such as disability studies and critical race theory, are explored as viable alternatives in responding to current neo-conservative and neo-liberal educational policies shaping social studies curriculum and teaching.

Despite the interdisciplinary nature the field and a historical commitment to investigating fundamental social issues such as democracy, human rights, and social justice, social studies theory and practice tends to be steeped in a reproductive framework, celebrating and sustaining the status quo, encouraging passive acceptance of current social realities and historical constructions, rather than a critical examination of alternatives. These tendencies have been reinforced by education policies such as No Child Left Behind, which have narrowly defined ways of knowing as rooted in empirical science and apolitical forms of comprehension.

This book comes at a pivotal moment for radical teaching and for critical pedagogy, bringing the radical debate occurring in social sciences and in activist circles—where global protests have demonstrated the success that radical actions can have in resisting rigid state hierarchies and oppressive regimes worldwide—to social studies education.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement: Through Collaboration, All Things are Possible

Introduction: On the Edge of History: Towards a New Vision of Social Studies Education
Abraham P. DeLeon and E. Wayne Ross

1. Anarchism, Sabotage, and the Spirit of Revolt: Injecting the Social Studies with Anarchist Potentialities
Abraham P. DeLeon

2. Embattled Pedagogies: Deconstructing Terror from a Transnational Feminist Disability Studies Perspective
Nirmala Erevelles

3. Ecojustice, Community-based Learning, and Social Studies Education
Rebecca A. Martusewicz and Gary R. Schnakenberg

4. Why have School?: An Inquiry through Dialectical Materialism
Rich Gibson

5. Gumbo and Menudo and the Scraps of Citizenship: Interest Convergence and Citizen-making for African Americans and Mexican Americans in U.S. Education
Anthony Brown and Luis Urrieta, Jr.

6. “The Concrete Inversion of Life”: Guy Debord, the Spectacle, and Critical Social Studies Education
Kevin D. Vinson, E. Wayne Ross and Melissa B. Wilson

7. Critically Examining the Past and the “Society of the Spectacle”: Social Studies Education as a Site of Critique, Resistance, and Transformation
Brad J. Porfilio and Michael Watz

8. The Long Emergency: Educating for Democracy and Sustainability during Our Global Crisis
David Hursh

9. Building Democracy through Education: Human Rights and Civic Engagement
William T. Armaline

10. Critical Reflection in the Classroom: Consciousness, Praxis, and Relative Autonomy in Social Studies Education
Wayne Au

11. The Radical and Theoretical in Social Studies
Stephen C. Fleury

Download PDF of book Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2 here.

Battleground Schools

Please pardon this tooting-my-own-horn moment, but I’m very proud that Battleground: Schools, which I co-edited with Sandra Mathison, has won the 2010 Critics Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association.

Battleground: Schools, which is published by Greenwood Press, was truly a collaborative effort as Sandra and I worked with—and learned a great deal from—the 118 contributors who produced 93 essays, which provide historically situated descriptions of the most salient controversies in schooling during the past century. Never before has such a pre-eminent and diverse group of scholarly perspectives been combined in one collection. The authors each have demonstrated through their publications and research their prominence in their particular area. Many are award-winning scholars. Some are practitioners. No single ideology prevails.

The essays are arranged alphabetically by topic. Each essay summarizes the nature of the controversy, including major players and events relevant to the topic. In a number of cases, timelines of critical events are included. And each essay concludes with readings for further investigation of the topic. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of works that address the topics covered.

You can download a PDF of the front matter of the book here, which includes the Contents, Guide to Related Topics, Preface, and Introduction to the book.

Anarchism in the academy

Education Review has just published Cory Maly’s review of Contemporary Anarchist Studies edited by Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, and Deric Shannon.

I highly recommend the book and Maly’s review, which frames the book quite well in relation to current issues and debates on education reform. I used parts of Contemporary Anarchist Studies in my curriculum theory seminar this past year and was really pleased by the depth of debate and discussion it stimulated.

Obviously anarchism is gaining some traction among a small, but growing circle of education scholars. As evidenced by this book and several new or recently announced projects including:

Critical Education‘s series on “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research”, which is edited by Abe DeLeon has published two articles in the past several months, with more in works.

DeLeon is also guest editing a special issue of Educational Studies titled “Anarchism…is a living force with our life…”: Anarchism, Education, and New Possibilities. Download the call for papers here.

And, Robert Haworth (U of Wisconsin, La Crosse) has recently circulated a call for chapter proposals to be included in the book, Anarchist Pedagogies to be published by PM Press

This edited book calls on international scholars (15 single authored or collectively authored chapters) in anarchist studies to critically reflect on historical and contemporary experimentations in anarchist pedagogies. Scholarly efforts will focus on what we have learned from past anarchist experiences and current transformative learning environments — where individuals are engaged in collective, participatory, voluntary and mutual efforts that contest global capitalist structures.

The edited collection responds to the need to reflect on anarchist pedagogies and will highlight three major themes. Authors in the first section will be encouraged to focus on historical discussions surrounding anarchism and education. The authors will give introspective critiques of historical practices, including theories of teaching and learning and alternatives to compulsory public schools. Authors in the second section will construct philosophical and theoretical frameworks evolving from contemporary anarchists, particularly through individuals participating in cooperatives, independent media collectives, infoshops, political zines, open source projects, DIY, direct action networks and other autonomous and cultural spaces.

Matt Hern has a new blog. You’ll be a smarter and better person if you read it.

Mighty Matt Hern is an East Van superhero and the chief Canucklehead fan. He writes about lots of interesting stuff: community, cities, learning, deschooling. He has a new blog. I think you should read it.

Look out for his new book, Common Ground in a Liquid City, from AK Press.

A message from Staughton Lynd

I encourage you to get your library to purchase the new memoir by Staughton and Alice Lynd. EWR

Friends,
Greetings. Alice and I have written a joint autobiography entitled Stepping Stones: Memoir of a Life Together. We need your help in getting the book into the hands of the young people for whom it is most intended.

The book begins with a lovely Foreword by our longtime colleague, Tom Hayden. Then come chapters, some written by us both, some by one of us, some by the other. The chapters are grouped in the following sections:

Beginnings (our families, Staughton as a “premature New Leftist” and Alice on “Music and Dance and Discovering Childhood,” how we met and fell in love);

Community (our three years in the Macedonia Cooperative Community in the hills of Georgia);

The Sixties (among other matters, Mississippi Freedom Summer, a trip to Hanoi, Alice’s work in draft counseling and how it planted in our minds the idea of the “two experts” — the professionally trained person and the counselee, client or fellow struggler — who work together);

Accompaniment (how we found our way beyond the Sixties by doing oral history and then law together, with chapters on Nicaragua and Palestine);

The Worst of the Worst (representing and learning from prisoners);

Afterwords (a poem, retrospectives, Alice’s wishes for our daughter Martha’s marriage).

We had some difficulty finding a publisher. At length we signed a contract with Lexington Books. Lexington has produced an attractive hardback edition. On the front cover there is a photograph of the two of us on the day we married (looking very young) and on the back cover a picture taken at our 50th wedding anniversary.

The problem is that this hardback edition is intended for academic libraries and costs $70. Perhaps in part because of the current recession, we have been told that a paperback edition will be forthcoming only if orders from libraries are substantial.

This is where you can help. It could make all the difference in getting this book into the hands of those who will carry on from all of us if you could:

* Ask whatever libraries you are connected with — law libraries, college or university libraries, public libraries — to acquire Stepping Stones. The address of Lexington Books is:

Lexington Books
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite 200
Lanham MD 20706, www.lexingtonbooks.com.

There is a customer service number if desired: 800-462-6420.

* If you are told that the library would purchase a paperback edition but cannot afford an expensive hardback copy at this time, we hope you will write to Lexington Books and tell them that.

Let’s look at the bright side. If your library orders a copy, you can read the durned book for free. And if enough libraries order copies it will hopefully trigger paperback production, and together we can pass on to our successors what one Zapatista has called the hope of creating “another everything.”

With thanks, love, and comradeship,

Staughton Lynd for S&A