Tag Archives: Conference

Dr Seuss and Dangerous Citizenship

This past weekend I had the great honor and pleasure to deliver a keynote address to the 6th Annual Equity and Social Justice Conference held at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

I would like to thank the conference organizers for inviting me to participate in an exciting day that included many cutting edge papers as well as a provocative and high energy performance/workshop by the Hip Hop Psychology Performing Arts Movement.

My keynote, titled “Dr Seuss and Dangerous Citizenship” explored the efforts of governments (in British Columbia, Arizona, and Texas) to keep schools “political neutral” and how these actions actually undermine opportunities for objective teaching and curriculum. I outline the contexts of rulings that have restricted the rights of teachers to express political views in BC (specifically in Prince Rupert where teachers have been banned from using particular Dr Seuss books and in a bizarre irony have also been prohibited from wearing t-shirts displaying portions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms). I also outline the attacks on Tucson (AZ) school district’s Mexican American Studies program and the right wing Christian revisions of the Texas history curriculum, which demote Thomas Jefferson and promote St. Thomas Aquinas; deletes abolitionist Harriet Tubman and highlights the Confederacy; and emphasizes the role of religion in American society at the expense of the US Constitutional separation of church and state.

If political expression is repressed and restricted in schools (and it certainly is, as I illustrate in this talk) then there are reduced opportunities to critically examine knowledge claims. The ideology of neutrality that dominates current thought and practice in schools (and teacher education) is sustained by theories of knowledge and conceptions of democracy that constrain rather than widen civic participation and functions to obscure political and ideological consequences of so-called “neutral” schooling, teaching, and curriculum. The consequences include conceptions of the learner as passive; democratic citizenship as a spectator project; and ultimately the maintenance of status quo inequalities in society.

I offer up “dangerous citizenship” as a framework I have developed along with Kevin D. Vinson (University of the West Indies) for re-thinking responses to these conditions and explore the work of interventionist artists as sources of inspiration for teaching and curriculum.

Download the paper and accompanying powerpoint from Academia.edu or below.

Dr Seuss and Dangerous Citizenship Talk

Dr Seuss Dangerous Citizenship PDF version of PPT

Conference: Education Under Siege by Neoliberalism

3rd International Conference on Critical Education
Education Under Siege by Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism
May 15-17
Ankara, Turkey

Call for Papers

Neoliberal and neoconservative educational politics have significantly been damaging education all over the World. Public education is regarded as old fashioned, private schools and a variety of types of education have been presented as an ideal model, schools and the students are now in a more competitive relationship, public education has been losing its status as a social right as a result of relationships with the market, and the state is rapidly losing its social character in the face of these developments. It leads us to rethink education given problems such as the education becoming less democratic, less secular and losing its scientific character; becoming more conservative and capital oriented and becoming less concerned with- in fact- detrimental to- issues of equality and critique. In rethinking education, the critical education movement takes an important role in creating new horizons and strategies against the global attack of the capital.

The International Conference on Critical Education, which was held in Athens for first meetings, provides a base for the academics, teachers and intellectuals who are interested in the subject to come together in order to overcome obstacles for public education. Therefore, in the age where education is under siege by neoliberalism and neoconservatism, we invite you to the IIIrd International Conference on Critical Education to reflect on the theory and practice of critical education and to contribute to the field.

On behalf of the organising committee,
Prof.Dr. Meral UYSAL
University of Ankara, Faculty of Educational Sciences
Department of Life Long Learning and Adult Education

CALL FOR PAPERS Conference on Equity and Social Justice

CALL FOR PAPERS

Conference on Equity and Social Justice
2013 Conference Theme
Testing Our Limits: Teaching and Learning
with Courage and Conviction

March 2, 2013 at State University of New York at New Paltz, NY
Conference Website
http://www.equitysocialjustice.org/

Conference Theme Description
Testing Our Limits: Teaching and Learning with Courage and Conviction The stakes could not be higher. Educators today – as well as their students – are working in a world that is being overrun by standardized accountability initiatives that threaten to diminish learning endeavors aimed toward social justice. As K-12 schools and institutions of higher education are increasingly influenced by the implementation of data-driven, privatized and corporate reforms, educators and educational leaders at all levels must strive to ensure that learning and teaching are not reduced to ranked results that are frequently tied to economic outcomes. Authentic teaching and learning cannot be easily quantified: it intends to provide opportunities for
empowerment, agency, and self-actualization. Education in a democratic society is meant to foster the development of active citizens who think critically and act equitably, and educators are charged to keep that promise alive.

Proposals might address topics such as (but not limited to) the following:
• What kinds of data are meaningful in the quest for social justice through education?
• How is standardization affecting pre-service and practicing teachers? Students? Administrators?
• How might the experiences of students, teachers, and administrators in alternative settings inform traditional classrooms?
• How are efforts to achieve social justice and equity affected by the current reforms?
• How can educators use data to resist the negative effects of standardization?
• What is measured by standardized assessments? How can classroom assessments amplify and/or negate the results of standardized assessments?

Conference strands:
• Teaching and Learning for Equity and Social Justice
• Critical Race Studies
• Critical Youth Studies
• Urban Education & Community Partnerships
• “Othering”
• Genocide and Human Rights
• Educational Reform in the 21st Century

Rouge Forum @ AERA [Videos]

To Know is Not Enough:
Rouge Forum @ AERA

Friday April 13, 2012
Vancouver, BC
Videos on the ICESchannel at YouTube (or click on links below)

The Rouge Forum @ AERA brought together world-renowned scholars, teachers, community organizers, and other activists to discuss these questions and others related to activist scholarship, social change, academic freedom, and work in the corporate university as part of this one-day interactive conference at the Robson Square Campus of University of British Columbia in downtown Vancouver.

Introduction to the Rouge Fourm @ AERA 2012
E. Wayne Ross, University of British Columbia 

Session I: What might happen when teachers and other academics connect reason to power and power to resistance?
Patrick Shannon, Penn State University
Ken Saltman, DePaul University
E. Wayne Ross on Canada Border Services Agency’s prohibition of Abraham DeLeon from Canada / the Rouge Forum 
Antonia Darder, Loyola Marymount University (unable to attend)
Abraham DeLeon, University of Texas, San Antonio (turned away at border)
Natalia Jaramillo, University of Auckland (unable to attend)
Discussion I
Discussion II
Sandra Mathison comments on recent labour dispute in British Columbia between the BCTF and government

Introduction to the Rouge Forum @ AERA 2012 Afternoon Session
E. Wayne Ross, University of British Columbia 

Session II: How can academic work (in universities and other learning environments) support local and global resistance to global capitalism?
Peter McLaren, UCLA
Gustavo Fischman, Arizona State University
Jill Pickney Pastrana, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Ken Saltman, DePaul University
Rebecca Martusewicz, Eastern Michigan University (unable to attend)
Discussion I
Discussion II

Special Session – Great Schools Project
David Chudnovsky
Discussion I
Discussion II

Session III: How do we respond to the obstacles and threats faced as activist scholars?
Stephen Petrina, University of British Columbia
Nancye E. McCrary, University of Kentucky
Brad Porfilio, Lewis University
Elizabeth Heilman, Michigan State University (unable to attend)

ICES at Community Events

  • ICES at at May Day rally Vancouver (1 May 2012)
  • ICES at Occupy Wall Street (16 April 2012)
  • ICES at BCFed & BCTF rally Vancouver (7 March 2012)
  • ICES at BCFed & BCTF rally Victoria (6 March 2012)
  • ICES at BC Secondary Students’ Walk-Out (2 March 2012)
  • ICES at Occupy Vancouver (October-November 2011)

CFP: Rouge Forum 2012 (Deadline April 15)

The Rouge Forum 2012 will be held at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The University’s picturesque campus is located 50 minutes northwest of Cincinnati. The conference will be held June 22-24, 2012.

Proposals for papers, panels, performances, workshops, and other multimedia presentations should include title(s) and names and contact information for presenter(s). The deadline for sending proposals is April 15.  The Steering Committee will email acceptance notices by May 1.

Read the Call for Proposals.

Featured speakers this year include Mike Prysner, Paul Street, and Susan Ohanian.

Social control and the pursuit of dangerous citizenship

Last month I gave the keynote address at the Ninth International Conference on Research in Teaching of Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). Organized by GREDICS (Research Group on the Teaching of Social Sciences) this year’s conference theme was “The Formation of Social Thought and the Construction of Democracy in the Teaching of Social Science, Geography, and History.”

While in Barcelona, I also had the pleasure of participating, along with social studies researchers from Colombia, France, and Brazil, in two seminars for the students and faculty at AUB, which focused on recent topics of and methods for conducting research in social studies, geography, and history education.

My talk, titled “Social Control and the Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship”, can be streamed online here (translated to Catalan).

The PowerPoint presentation of my talk is available in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

The abstract of my talk follows:

Social Control and the Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship

Yes, citizenship—above all in a society like ours, of such authoritarian and racially, sexually, and class-based discriminatory traditions—is really an invention, a political production. In this sense, one who suffers any [or all] of the discriminations…does not enjoy the full exercise of citizenship as a peaceful and recognized right. On the contrary, it is a right to be reached and whose conquest makes democracy grow substantively. Citizenship implies freedom…Citizenship is not obtained by chance: It is a construction that, never finished, demands we fight for it. It demands commitment, political clarity, coherence, decision. For this reason a democratic education cannot be realized apart from an education of and for citizenship. (Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, p. 90)

The nature of citizenship and the meanings of citizenship education are complex, as are their multiple and contradictory implications for contemporary schooling and everyday life. The issues citizenship education presents are critical and inexorably linked to the present and future status of public schooling and the maintenance, strengthening, and expansion of individual and democratic rights.

In his classic book Democracy and Education (1916), John Dewey opens with a discussion of the way in which all societies use education as a means of social control. Dewey argues that education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind. In other words, there is no “objective” answer to questions about the means and ends of citizenship education, because those purposes are not things that can be discovered.

In Normative Discourse, Paul Taylor (1961) succinctly states a maxim that has the potential to transform our approach to the civics, citizenship education and the whole of the social studies curriculum: “We must decide what ought to be the case. We cannot discover what ought to be the case by investigating what is the case” (p. 278). We—educators and citizens—must decide what ought to be the purpose of citizenship education. That means asking what kind of society, what kind of and world we want to live in and then taking action to make it a reality. And, in particular, in what sense of democracy do we want this to be a democratic society? In order to construct meaning for civics and citizenship education, we must engage these questions not as merely abstract or rhetorical, but in relation to our lived experiences and our professional practice as educators.

Not surprisingly then civics and citizenship education—which is generally accepted as the primary purpose the social studies education—has always been a highly contested curricular area. The tapestry of topics, methods, and aims we know as social studies education has always contained threads of social reconstructionism. Social reconstructionists in the USA, such as George S. Counts, Harold Rugg, and later Theodore Brameld argued that teachers should work toward social change by teaching students to practice democratic principles, collective responsibility, and social and economic justice. Dewey advocated the democratic reconstruction of society and aspects of his philosophy inform the work of some aspects of citizenship education. The traditional patterns of social studies teaching, curriculum, and teacher education, however, reflect little of the social reconstructionist vision of the future, and current practices in these areas are more often focused on implementing standardized curriculum and responding to high-stakes tests than developing and working toward a vision of a socially just world. Indeed, the self-described social studies “contrarians” in the USA who advocate the “transmission” of “facts” and reject pluralism in favor of nationalism and monculturalism seem to be have the upper hand in most schools and classrooms, despite spirited resistance.

Undoubtedly, good intentions undergird citizenship education programs in North American. And yet, too often their oppressive possibilities overwhelm and subsume their potential for anti-oppression and anti-oppressive education, especially as states, the national government, and professional education associations continue their drive to standardize, to impose a singular theory and practice of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Social studies educators must pursue, as some already do, an agenda dedicated to the creation of a citizenship education that struggles against and disrupts inequalities and oppression. Classroom practice must work toward a citizenship education committed to exploring and affecting the contingencies of understanding and action and the possibilities of eradicating exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence in both schools and society. Freire, as illustrated in the above quotation, like Dewey, teaches us that citizenship education is essential to democratic education, and that democratic education is essential to a free and democratic society. Students must know that birth, nationality, documents, and platitudes are not enough. They must understand that the promises of citizenship (freedom), the fulfillment of its virtues, are unfinished, and that they remain an ongoing, dynamic struggle. And they must come to act in a variety of creative and ethical ways, for the expansion and realization of freedom and democracy, the root of contemporary notions of citizenship, is in their hands, and it demands of them no less than the ultimate in democratic and anti-oppressive human reflection and human activity.

Contemporary conditions demand an anti-oppressive citizenship education, one that takes seriously social and economic inequalities and oppression that result from neoliberal capitalism and that builds upon the anti-oppressive possibilities of established and officially sanctioned approaches. Some new and potentially exciting directions and alternatives exist, however, within the recent scholarship surrounding Freirean and neo-Freirean pedagogy, democratic education, and cultural studies.

The pedagogical power “dangerous citizenship”, which I explore in the balance of this paper, resides in its capacity to encourage students and educators to challenge the implications of their own education/instruction, to envision an education that is free and democratic to the core, and to interrogate and uncover their own well-intentioned complicity in the conditions within which various cultural texts and practices appear, especially to the extent that oppressive conditions create oppressive cultural practices, and vice versa.

2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION (Athens, Greece)

The Department of Education, University of Athens, Greece is hosting the

2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION

10-14 July 2012, Athens, Greece

Organized by the journals:

 JOURNAL OF CRITICAL EDUCATION POLICY STUDIES (UK)

CULTURAL LOGIC (USA/CANADA)

KRITIKI (GREECE)

RADICAL NOTES (INDIA)

ICCE Conference Website: http://icce-2012.weebly.com/index.html

Some of last year’s papers (from the 2011 conference) will go into a special edition of JCEPS, the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, coming out in around April 2012. In addition, all the papers that were presented at the 2011 conference and were submitted in written form will be published as conference proceedings in the next couple of months.The website is in process of improvement, e.g. re methods of payment, also final keynote speakers not yet confirmed.. we are asking Dennis Beach, Dave Hill, Marnie Holborow, and Alex Callinicos. As well as leading Greek Marxists/critical educators. So, hope to see you at this conference in Athens in July! Last year’s was great- politically, intellectually, socially!

 

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to confirmation)

Kostas Skordoulis (University of Athens, Greece)

Dave Hill (Universities of Middlesex, United Kingdom; Limerick, Ireland; Athens, Greece)

Peter McLaren (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Grant Banfield (University of South Australia, Australia)

Dennis Beach (University of Göteburg, Sweden)

Ramin Farahmandpur (Portland State University, Oregon, USA)

Marnie Holborrow (University College Dublin, Ireland)

Alpesh Maisuria (Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom)

Sharzad Mojab (University of Toronto, Canada)

Ravi Kumar (South Asian University, New Delhi, India)

Deborah Kelsh (College of St. Rose, Albany, NY, USA)

Curry Malott (West Chester University, Pennsylvania, USA)

Gregory Martin (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

Micheal O’Flynn (University of Limerick, Ireland)

Perikles Pavlidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)

Brad Porfilio (Lewis University, Romeoville, Illinois, USA)

Martin Power (University of Limerick, Ireland)

Helena Sheehan (University College Dublin, Ireland

Juha Suoranta (University of Tampere, Finland)

Spyros Themelis (Middlesex University, United Kingdom)

Salim Vally (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa)

To Know is Not Enough: Activist Scholarship, Social Change & The Corporate University

The Rouge Forum @ AERA 2012

Free Interactive Conference Open to All

To Know is Not Enough:

Activist Scholarship, Social Change & The Corporate University

 www.RougeForumConference.org

Friday April 13, 2012

University of British Columbia,

Robson Square Campus

HSBC Hall

Vancouver, BC

 

The theme for the 2012 annual meeting of the American Education Research Association is “Non Satis Scire: To Know Is Not Enough.” It is laudable that AERA is promoting “the use of research to improve education and serve the public good” rather than the mere accumulation of research knowledge, but The Rouge Forum is interested in exploring what it means for scholars, and educators in general, to move beyond “knowing” to the pursuit of activist agendas for social change.

  • What happens when teachers and other academics connect reason to power and power to resistance?
  • How can academic work (in universities and other learning environments) support local and global resistance to global neoliberal capitalism?
  • How do we respond to the obstacles and threats faced as activist scholars?

The Rouge Forum @ AERA will bring together world-renowned scholars, teachers, community organizers, and other activists to discuss these questions and others related to activist scholarship, social change, academic freedom, and work in the corporate university as part of a one-day interactive conference at the Robson Square Campus of University of British Columbia in downtown Vancouver.

What is the Rouge Forum?

The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what that is. We seek to build a caring inclusive community that understands that an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless. RougeForum.com

 

CFP: The Fourth World Curriculum Studies Conference

The Fourth World Curriculum Studies Conference
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
June 18-21, 2012

Conference website: http://www.periodicos.proped.pro.br/iviaacs/

The International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies
(IAACS) is a worldwide consortium of those with an interest in the field
of curriculum studies. It is established to support a worldwide – but not
uniform – field of curriculum studies. At this historical moment and for
the foreseeable future, curriculum inquiry occurs within national borders,
often informed by governmental policies and priorities, responsive to
national situations. Curriculum study is, therefore, nationally
distinctive. The founders of the IAACS do not dream of a worldwide field
of curriculum studies mirroring the standardization and uniformity the
larger phenomenon of globalization threatens. Nor are they unaware of the
dangers of narrow nationalisms. Their hope, in establishing this
organization, is to provide support for scholarly conversations within and
across national and regional borders about the content, context, and
process of education, the organizational and intellectual center of which
is the curriculum.

The Fourth World Curriculum Studies Conference will have no official
language.

Our theme for this Conference is Questioning Curriculum Theory.
Proposal Deadline: January 31, 2012

Contacts:

E-mail: 2012IAACS@gmail.com
Twitter: @2012IAACS
Facebook: IAACS Brazil

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION—Athens, Greece (12-16 JULY 2011)

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION
ATHENS
12-16 JULY 2011

Organized by the journals:

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL POLICY EDUCATIONAL STUDIES (UK)
CULTURAL LOGIC (USA/CANADA)
KRITIKI (GREECE)
RADICAL NOTES (INDIA)

Conference and Local Organizing Committee Coordinators:
Dave Hill, (Middlesex University, UK)
Peter McLaren, (UCLA, USA)

Program details here [pdf].

International Conference on Critical Education: Keynote Speakers and Participants
Keynote Speakers
Peter McLaren (UCLA, USA), Amrohini Sahay (Hofstra University, New York, USA), Dave Hill (Middlesex University, UK), Aristides Baltas (National Technical University of Athens), Ravi Kumar (Jamia Milia Islamia University, Delhi, India), John Preston (University of East London, England), Chrysoula Papageorgiou (Secondary education).

Confirmed Participants (as on 6th Dec 2010)
Fayaz Ahmad (JMI Central University, Delhi, India), Dennis Beach and Anna-Carin Johnsson (University of Boras, Sweden), Sarah Carpenter and Shahrzad Mojab (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada), Namita Chakrabarty (University of East London, England), Domingos Leite Lima Filho (Federal Technological University of Paraná -UTFPR, Brazil), Morgan Gardner (Memorial University, Faculty of Education, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada), Sara Hauftman (Achva Academic College of Education, Israel), Steven Hales, (University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Petar Jandric (Polytechnic Graduate School in Zagreb, Croatia), Nathalia Jaramillo (Purdue University, USA), Anastasia Liasidou (European University of Cyprus), Vicki Macris (University of Alberta, Canada), Alpesh Maisuria (Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England), Spyros Themelis (Middlesex University, London, England), Gabor Pallo (Academy of Sciences, Hungary), Periklis Pavlidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Peter Perikles Trifonas (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada), Nosheen Rachel-Naseem (Middlesex University, London, England), Debbie Toope (Memorial University, Faculty of Education, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada), Paul Welsh (ChristChurch Canterbury University, England), Sara Zamir (Ben-Gurion University, Eilat, Israel)