Wayne Au: Mapping Corporate Education Reform in the Neoliberal State

Wayne Au: ”Mapping Corporate Education Reform in the Neoliberal State" from Fairhaven College, WWU on Vimeo.

Wayne Au, Associate Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell; an editor for Rethinking Schools.

Public education is currently seen as one of the last great “prizes” for proponents of neoliberalism as a large market for potential profit. In this talk Professor Wayne Au analyzes how the neoliberal restructuring of the state relative to public education has resulted in a shift from democratic government to an increase in non-democratic network governance by corporations, non-profit organizations, and philanthropies. Drawing from his upcoming co-edited collection, this talk offers a framing for the rise of neoliberal network governance in education and share different examples of social network analyses illustrating such governance in the U.S. Chile, and elsewhere.

Wayne Au: Mapping Corporate Education Reform in the Neoliberal State

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

K12NN Wire: American anti-intellectualism more popular than ever, and why not?

First published on K12NN Wire on December 28, 2014

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"The capitalists, from the start, complained that universities were unprofitable. These early twentieth century capitalists, like heads of investment houses and hedge-fund managers, were, as Donoghue writes "motivated by an ethically based anti-intellectualism that transcended interest in the financial bottom line. Their distrust of the ideal of intellectual inquiry for its own sake, led them to insist that if universities were to be preserved at all, they must operate on a different set of principles from those governing the liberal arts." — Chris Hedges

Last week I came across a two year old essay written by Professor Patricia Williams for The Guardian. I recall reading her piece some time ago (the Arizona book bannings being covered by Schools Matter as well), and reposted it on facebook with a bit of my own commentary. The post received a few interesting comments. A teacher posted the link and my commentary to the "Badass Teachers Association" (BATs) page, and to my surprise it garnered over 180 "likes" and more than 55 comments.

I believe that this is because this is a critical conversation we should be having publicly, over and over. I'm going to reproduce my commentary here, and rather than expand on it, I'll leave it to readers to add their own thoughts.

We see this anti-intellectualism in Marshall Tuck, Tom Horne, and John Huppenthal's shuttering of Ethnic Studies programs and book banning. We see it in the proliferation of adjunct professors in higher education, and the spreading infestation of predatory, for-profit schools. We see it in corporate curricula like Common Core State Standards (#‎CCSS), and the proliferation of the K-12 privatization project embodied in charters and vouchers. The war on tenure at all levels of education is further evidence. It isn't just right-wing, religious reactionaries fueling anti-intellectualism, as the demands of neoliberalism require that both critical thinking, and the institutional memory of the working class be squelched. Anti-intellectualism is a prelude to the unchallenged dominance of the plutocrat class and their corporate state. — Robert D. Skeels

Two quick things. My compañero in struggle, Jose del Barrio, had commentary I felt worth reproducing here:

"There has been an unfortunate uptick in academic book bannings and firings, made worse by a nationwide disparagement of teachers, teachers' unions and scholarship itself. Brooke Harris, a teacher at Michigan's Pontiac Academy for Excellence, was summarily fired after asking permission to let her students conduct a fundraiser for Trayvon Martin's family." — Jose del Barrio

Lastly, a perfect example of anti-intellectualism. Here's a direct quote from a racist that has been trolling me on twitter: "Professors are failures at life, thus they teach"

@rdsathene you think that you know something because you took some classes? Professors are failures at life, thus they teach

— Sadico Solitario (@dasanman69) December 28, 2014

Yet Eli Broad, the Walton fortune heirs, Bill Gates, David F. Welch, Charles and David Koch, Richard M. DeVos, and their ilk aren't waging a war against teachers, professors, and intellectuals?

K12NN Wire: American anti-intellectualism more popular than ever, and why not?