Resisting The Neoliberal Privatization of Education: Reclaiming Teachers' Unions, Education, and Epistemologies

I am so excited that my first peer reviewed journal article "The Non-Profit Industrial Complex’s role in imposing neoliberalism on public education" will be published in this upcoming issue of Regeneración.

Regeneración, the Association of Raza Educators Journal
Volume 6, Issue 1 (Spring 2015)

The theme for our next issue: "Resisting The Neoliberal Privatization of Education: Reclaiming Teachers' Unions, Education, and Epistemologies"

Undeniably, ever since the World Bank declared education a trade-able service—trumping the idea that education is a basic human right--education and teachers have been increasingly under attack by corporations, venture philanthropists, and a growing managerial middle class, who function within a neoliberal ideology that places insurmountable faith in markets and the expansion of capitalism globally into all facets of everyday life. We believe that the neoliberal project to de-fund and privatize public education interlocks with the idea of a racial-colonial State.  Thus, it is no coincidence that neoliberal experiments to privatize public education have materialized in large urban districts, such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc., where we find a significant number of Raza, Black, and other historically marginalized peoples.

In this issue of Regeneración we seek both analysis and praxis, that is texts that help us understand more deeply how neoliberalism is manifest in particular geographic, social, and cultural spaces. As well, we are looking for texts that provide examples of resistance to the corporate takeover of public education. How are urban and other communities responding to the attacks on education and teachers? What grassroots and strategic spaces are created that provide alternatives to neoliberalism and capitalism?  How are teachers' unions being reinvented? What role does the fight for Ethnic Studies present as a counter to the neoliberal attack?

To access past issues of Regeneración: http://www.razaeducators.org/archives_newsletter.html

 

The Association of Raza Educators

Resisting The Neoliberal Privatization of Education: Reclaiming Teachers' Unions, Education, and Epistemologies

An Evening with Professor Antonia Darder: Freire and Education

An Evening with Professor Antonia Darder: Freire and Education

Wednesday, January 21 at 5:30pm to 7:30pm

William H. Hannon Library, Von der Ahe Family Suite (Level 3) 1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045

Join us as Antonia Darder, Ph.D., Leavey Presidential Chair, LMU School of Education, discusses her recent book, Freire and Education.

One of the most influential educational philosophers of our times, Paulo Freire contributed to a revolutionary understanding of education as an empowering and democratizing force in the lives of the disenfranchised. In this deeply personal introduction to the man and his ideas, Antonia Darder reflects on how Freire’s work has illuminated her own life practices and thinking as an educator and activist. Including both personal memories and a never-before published, powerful dialogue with Freire himself, Darder offers a unique “analysis of solidarity,” in mind and spirit. A heartfelt look at the ways Freire can still inspire a critically intellectual and socially democratic life, this book is certain to open up his theories in entirely new ways, both to those already familiar with his work and those coming to him for the first time.

Food and refreshments will be served.

Copies of Freire and Education will be available for purchase and signing by Dr. Darder.

This event is brought to you by the LMU School of Education Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership for Social Justice and the William H. Hannon Library.

RSVP here.

An Evening with Professor Antonia Darder: Freire and Education

Schools Matter: We need to remember that the impediments to self-directed learning are by design

First published on Schools Matter on June 14, 2014

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"When teachers are told exactly what and how to teach, when they feel pressured to produce results, they in turn tend to pressure their students. That is exactly what another study found: teachers who felt controlled became more controlling, removing virtually any opportunities for students to direct their own learning." — Alfie Kohn

As always the wonderful Alfie Kohn is right on target. What's left out of his important analysis is that these conditions are exactly what our ruling class—namely, but not limited to the Gates, Broad, and Walton Family Foundations—wants. From their self-serving perspective, self-directed learning is for the scion of the 1%, not for us working class rabble. Completely control both educators and their pupils through fear (Vergara), and deployment the banking model of pedagogy (Common Core State Standards CCSS), and you control access to the one thing that could allow us to overthrow our oppressors.

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Works Cited

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2000. Print.

Kohn, Alfie. The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "tougher Standards". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1999. Print.

Schools Matter: We need to remember that the impediments to self-directed learning are by design

@ THE CHALK FACE: Humanities and LSAT reflect Critical Thinking versus Core Knowledge debate

First published April 28, 2014 on @ THE CHALK FACE

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"In short, the real literacy crisis occurs whenever we deploy a pedagogy that asks our students only to consume texts and not to produce them as well." — Richard E. Miller

The ABA Journal recently posted a piece entitled "Students with these college majors had the highest LSAT scores" that discusses the findings of Pepperdine University School of Law professor Derek Muller. Humanities majors held three of the top six spots; with Classics [1], Art History, and Philosophy taking the one, four, and six spots respectively. Moreover, preparatory curricula like pre-law were at the bottom, as were most forms of business majors — stealing from workers doesn't require much critical thinking. Professor Muller's own post is entitled The Best Prospective Law Students Read Homer. Unlike David Coleman and Bill Gates, I think everyone should read Homer. Some of us are fortunate enough to have read it in the original Greek. Here are my slightly edited comments on the UCLA posting where the ABA Journal was linked.

It's telling that these findings parallel the debates over pedagogy between critical thinking camp of those including Stephen Krashen and Peter McLaren versus the "core knowledge" camp including E. D. Hirsch and David Coleman. The latter, who are responsible for both Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and much of the current thinking behind the Administration's education policy, espouse narrow preparatory pedagogies like pre-law. Moreover, the President himself recently mocked Art History as a major during a speech [2]. The fact that Classics and Art History are 1 and 4 respectively on this listing goes to show that broad curricula that require abstract and critical thinking are preferable to canned curricula. Unfortunately, the dominant narrative in society tends to drown these important facts out.

While I don't have the time to explore this fully—and it deserves to be explored fully—I was in a conversation with Dr. Cynthia Liu recently and she was discussing how damaging Hirsch's wrongheaded ideas are. Rightfully so, her biggest complaint is how Hirsch's "core readings" are essentially devoid of people of color, women, and other marginalized groups like LGBT. The more I started researching the connections between Hirsch, Coleman, and the whole deemphasis on literature in CCSS derived from Hirsch's so-called "functional literacy", the more I realized that our greatest fears about CCSS are firmly grounded in fact. With CCSS we've established "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" as our official national curriculum.

I'm posting this to start the discussion. These LSAT findings confirm that narrow, preparatory type curricula are inferior to broad, abstract ones. As we watch the neoliberal corporate reformers eliminate every part of the education experience that humanizes children in favor of chimerical "college and career" readiness, and hear of a President that disparages the study of humanities [2], there must be increased struggle to resist CCSS and all its attendent reforms. Additionally, we need to make the case for returning free voluntary reading, play, arts, drama, music, literature, and the humanities to our classrooms, as well as making ethnic studies and other critical studies available to students.

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[1] Disclaimer, I just received my B.A. in Classical Civilization from UCLA. Our department's facebook page exposed me to the ABA article. For many years I've heard that Classics majors cited as top prospects for law school, so the Pepperdine findings appeal to my admitted confirmation bias. The matriculation findings are of interest as well.
[2] I haven't saved all of them, but I did consolidate many of my comments on the infamous Obama attacking Art History majors incident mentioned above.
* The opening Miller quote is from a paper available on the ERIC archives. I reviewed the paper on WorldCat.

@ THE CHALK FACE: Humanities and LSAT reflect Critical Thinking versus Core Knowledge debate

Seventh Annual Anti-racist Anti-bias Teaching Conference

Hosted at The Indian Community School  (http://www.ics-milw.org)

10405W. St. Martens Road
Franklin, Wisconsin
Saturday, May 3, 2014
8:30 a.m.-3:15 p.m.
Conference Sponsors:  UW-Milwaukee School of Education, National-Louis University, YMCA Southeast Wisconsin, Plowshare Center, Indian Community School, Rethinking Schools

Keynote Speaker: Curtis Acosta
Mr. Acosta, a high school teacher in Tucson for nearly 20 years, developed and taught  Chican@/Latin@ literature classes for the district's acclaimed Mexican-American Studies (MAS) program. His classes have been profiled nationally, appearing in The New York Times, CNN and the Los Angeles Times.  He was also a plaintiff in the court case challenging the Arizona state law that banned the MAS program in 2010. Mr. Acosta is featured in the documentary Precious Knowledge and appears in a humorous segment about the ban on The Daily Show with John Stewart. Mr. Acosta is the recipient of many education awards and was named one of the 10 Latinos in politics to keep an eye on by the Huffington Post in 2013. He continues to work and collaborate to ensure students have access to critical pedagogy and culturally responsive curriculum.

Curtis Acosta

Call for Proposals

Proposal Submission Deadline:  February 10, 2014

Seventh Annual Anti-racist Anti-bias Teaching Conference

@TCFKSM: Noam Chomsky, Howard Gardner, and Bruno della Chiesa on 45th anniversary of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

First published on @TCFKSM on May 31, 2013

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"I stayed with Marx in the worldliness,
looking for Christ in the transcendentality." — Paolo Freire

On May Day 2013, Harvard's Askwith Forum commemorated the 45th anniversary of the publication of Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed with a discussion about the book's impact and relevance to education today. Chuck Leddy tweeted about his write up of the event entitled Subversive education, and the video posted of the entire talk.

"To achieve critical consciousness of the facts that it is necessary to be the "owners of one's own labor," that labor "constitutes part of the human person," and that "a human being can neither be sold nor can he sell himself" is to go a step beyond the deception of palliative solutions. It is to engage in authentic transformation of reality in order, by humanizing that reality, to humanize woman and men." — Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

While those of us that eat, breath, and sleep critical pedagogy would have probably selected different speakers (Macedo, Giroux, and P. L. Thomas perhaps?) to discuss the book's anniversary, it's refreshing that Harvard would even discuss it at all.

The best part of the video occurs at around the 50:00 mark when a young woman from India, who says Freire was a major component in her education there, makes a very profound statement condemning Harvard saying that "there's no space for Marxist thought..." at the university (any surprise?). Professor Bruno della Chiesa's criticisms of the PISA tests around the 56:00 mark are interesting too.

Professor Noam Chomsky's various insights make sense if you are familiar with his work, and the fact that he's always a little uncomfortable discussing ideas of Marxist scholars like Freire as opposed to those of anarcho-syndicalists. Chomsky finally hits stride around 1:06:00 where he sets up the purpose of education under class society, and several minutes later calls out "No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top, which means Every Child Left Behind and Race to the Bottom."

Freire's watershed book does far more than explain the oppressions of class society, and make the case against the banking concept of education. His framework of critical pedagogy challenges students to formulate problem posing questions in response to limit situations. That framework is as radical, and, as Chomsky mentions, dangerous, a skill as one can possess during this age of total corporate domination.

I find the best introduction to provide those unfamiliar with Freire's work is Adrienne Johnstone and Elizabeth Terzakis' "Pedagogy and Revolution: Reading Freire in Context" chapter in Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation. An excerpt of the chapter is available online. However, there's no substitute for reading Freire's canon itself.

@TCFKSM: Noam Chomsky, Howard Gardner, and Bruno della Chiesa on 45th anniversary of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

Tonight: Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

Come meet two of the authors from a new book on capitalism and education, Gillian Russom and Sarah Knopp. The book traces Marxist theories of education under capitalism; outlines the educational experiences of emergent bilingual and African American students historically; recaps the theory and history of teachers’ unions; analyzes the neoliberal attack on public schools under Obama; critically appraises Paolo Freire’s legacy; and makes the link between social revolution and struggles for literacy.

United Teachers Los Angeles building (Room 816)
3303 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 5:00PM

haymarketbooks.org

Tonight: Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone on Pedagogy and Liberation

"It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them." — Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone speaking at Socialism 2011 on July 01, 2011 — Chicago, Illinois.



[Click if you can't listen to the audio]

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone on Pedagogy and Liberation