RADICAL TEACHER
a socialist and feminist journal on the theory and
practice of teaching
Issue #65. 2003.
News for Educational Workers
Education and Prisons
A new report shows that during the 1980s and 1990s, state spending on corrections grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education, and by the close of the millennium, there were nearly a third more African American men in prison and jail than in universities or colleges. To read the full report, go to www.justicepolicy.org. (U.S. Newswire, August 22, 2002)
Another study for the Education Department found that “22 percent of inmates in three states who took vocational, high school or college classes in prison were back behind bars three years after their release, compared to 31 percent of those who did not.” An Open Society Institute study said that classes have even greater benefits for women prisoners. (The New York Times, November 18, 2001)
Race and Education
According to a new report in the Washington Post, 50 years after state-sponsored segregation was outlawed, public schools are increasingly divided by race, even as minority populations increase nationwide. To view the entire article, go to www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62702-2002Aug9.html.
In a Symposium on Racism, Manning Marable states, “The great challenge of the twenty-first century . . . is the challenge of abolishing American apartheid, root and branch, and creating a genuinely non-racial, pluralistic democracy, a free and fair society with opportunity and justice for all.” Marable goes on to trace the results of this apartheid to a monstrous prison system that drains the finances necessary for true equity in our society. (portside@yahoogroups.com, August 5, 2002)
In The Black World Today (July 25, 2002), Manning Marable writes about diversity as a central theme in American higher education over the past twenty years and praises the efforts made by most universities and colleges to diversify their courses, administrative personnel and faculty. Marable wishes that the positive statistics about greater access for women also applied to African Americans.
Vouchers and Charter Schools
The Supreme Court finished its 2001 term with the most important ruling in many years on religion in the schools, upholding the constitutionality of taxpayer-financed vouchers for parochial school tuition. The ACLU says for the first time in history the Court has approved the transfer of millions of dollars in taxpayer money for religious education. In addition, the Court struck another blow against public education by ruling that public school students who participate in extracurricular activities can be subject to random drug testing. Since extracurricular activities help prevent drug use among students, the Court’s decision has set up barriers to these positive activities. (ACLU Online, July 3, 2002)
For responses to the Supreme Court decision on vouchers, read “Vouchers: a Shift, but Just How Big?” and “Win the Debate, Not Just the Case” (The New York Times, June 30, 2002 and July 14, 2002). Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. has declared this 5-4 ruling declaring school vouchers constitutional as “the worst decision in the last 50 years involving church/state issues. It’s a sad day for America.” Jackson has proposed an amendment (H.J. Res. 31) that guarantees every student a public education of equal high quality. (Statement made by Jackson on June 27, 2002)
The first independent study of charter school performance across the nation found that charter school students are scoring significantly below public school pupils in basic reading and math skills. Fifty-nine percent of students at traditional public schools scored better than charter school students during the period studied. (Associated Press, September 3, 2002)
Cuba
Cuba hosted 21 American students from July 15 to August 14, 2002. Sponsored by the Interlocken International Camp, the exchange had students meet with their Cuban hosts, practice language skills, learn Latin dances, discuss differences between capitalistic and socialist economies, do community service projects, and visit cultural sites like a tobacco factory and the famous Bay of Pigs. A documentary film of the interaction between Cubans and American students was made during the visit, with students involved in all aspects of film production. For more information, contact mail@interlocken.org.
Cuban Social Work education is on the rise in response to the major socioeconomic problems developed in Cuba in the 1990s that require new and comprehensive solutions. The collapse of the former Soviet Union and its subsequent withdrawal of economic assistance to Cuba, the tightening of the U.S. embargo and Cuba’s increased participation in the global economy have created disparities for Cubans. Those Cubans most affected by the worsening economic conditions, such as the disabled, prisoners, pregnant teenagers and single mothers, senior citizens, children, and an increasing number of out-of-school and unemployed youth, have become the priority for outreach and development in the new social work projects. (Social Work Today, September, 2002, www.socialworktoday.com/socialworktoday.asp)
The Disarm Education Fund, in a special report from Edward Asner, states that the end of the Cuban embargo may be near and funds are needed to push toward that end. To contribute or for more information, call 212-979-1583, or go to www.disarm.org.
Student Activism and Protest
Students from both high schools and universities are joining faculty to walk off campus to protest proposed budget cuts. On April 30, 2002 thousands of students from New York City high schools walked out to join The City of New York (CUNY) college students to stop the proposed budget cuts at their institutions. On September 5, 2002, thousands of professors and other employees at University of Massachusetts at Amherst walked off their jobs for a half hour break to protest state cuts to higher education and freezes on their salaries. (The Associated Press, September 6, 2002)
Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, a conservative group led by William Bennett, sponsored a poll of 634 students from 96 four-year colleges. The responses revealed that 37 percent of U.S. college students would try to evade a draft if one were enacted. An impressive 60 percent of students “agreed that developing an understanding of the values of history of other cultures and nations is a better way to prevent terrorism than investing in strong military and defense capabilities.” (The Miami Herald, June 21, 2002, www.miami.com)
In his review of Liza Featherstone’s Students Against Sweatshops (London and New York: Verso, 2002), Michael Yates reviews several factors helping to explain the origins and development of the anti-sweatshop movement: the exposure of working conditions in the subcontracted plants of high profile companies like Nike; the organization of sweatshop workers themselves; significant changes in U.S. labor; and as Featherstone stresses, the colleges and universities of future activists had become thoroughly corporatized. The first four chapters focus on the background of the formation of the United Students Against Sweatshops, its initial successes, its growing understanding of and struggle against the corporate university, and the backlash as soon as the groups began to have a real impact on the way corporate America does business. The book also faces important problems of race and gender in USAS. While racial tensions have existed, gender has been a less divisive issue. (www.monthlyreview.org/0902yates.htm)
United Students Against Sweatshops consciously encourages women leaders and challenges gender issues as part of its work. Women leaders are actively recruited and trained and make up a majority of the group’s leadership. (In These Times, July 22, 2002)
President Bush spoke at Ohio State University’s commencement ceremony on June 14, 2002. The graduates planned a protest where they would turn their backs on Bush while he was speaking. At the start of the ceremony, potential protesters were warned that they would be denied their diploma and would be arrested if they turned their backs. Everybody was encouraged to applaud Bush and give him a standing ovation.
In scores of interviews at 10 universities around the country during the week of September 29, 2002, anti-war sentiment made up the plurality of student opinions. The largest number of students interviewed “were skeptical, overtly cynical or downright hostile to the administration’s determination to oust Hussein.” (Washington Post, September 29, 2002, www.washingtonpost.com). Stay tuned to News for Educational Workers as the student protests build.
Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR), a Cambridge, Massachusetts group whose mission is to help young people “develop the convictions and skills to shape a safe, sustainable, democratic and just world,” continues to spread its idea that social and emotional learning is as important as subject mastery. ESR’s peacemaking lesson plans and readings have proven popular. Within weeks after 9/11, ESR’s website (www.esrnational.org) posted numerous progressive teaching aids for teachers and a discussion guide for parents. ESR’s hallmark is its day-to-day presence in schools, focusing on conflict resolution, violence in the schools, and discussions of race, class, and sexual orientation. (In These Times, June 24, 2000)
Corporate Education
With the growth of testing and standardized high school curricula, foundations and corporations will offer an even greater “free-market” bias to students. High school economics courses were first introduced into the schools in the 1970s and 1980s, and corporations and non-profit organizations often worked together to provide supplementary readings, classroom activities, and most recently, websites. Organizations like Junior Achievement claim to reach four million students every year with its “free enterprise message of hope and opportunity.” The Foundation for Teaching Economics (FTE) joined Junior Achievement in 1975 offering one-sided, pro-market messages to students and teachers. The National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) has become the largest provider of economics curriculum materials for K-12. In 1994, after Congress mandated economics as one of the nine core subjects for which national standards should be developed, the U.S. Department of Education designated NCEE, with the assistance of FTE, to produce the Voluntary Content Standards, a list of 20 standards and accompanying teaching strategies guaranteed to provide an increasingly one-sided indoctrination in a “free market” ideology. (Dollars and Sense, May/June 2002)
For a critique of Christopher Whittle’s Channel One, and its metamorphosis into the Edison Schools, see the Boston Globe, June 14, 2002. For a history of Edison and its recent plunge in the stock market (from $38 a share to $1 a share), see CorpWatch, June 20, 2002. “Edison’s economic troubles raise renewed questions about the wisdom of turning public schools over to for-profit corporations—and could pose a major setback for the school privatization movement.” (www.corpwatch.org)
A federal advisory board recently reported that a shortfall in federal and state grants, along with rising tuition charges, would keep more than 400,000 qualified high school students from attending and 170,000 college students from returning to college in the fall of 2002. (Boston Globe, June 27, 2002)
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Students
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) envisions a future in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. GLSEN’s Teaching Respect for All 2002 conference was held in Los Angeles from October 4-6. The Fall 2002 issue of Respect, GLSEN’s news magazine, starts the school year off with a new, three-year strategic plan to 1. make anti-LGBT bullying, harassment, and name-calling unacceptable in America’s schools; 2. engage and empower educators as partners in creating schools where every student can fully participate in school life regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression; and 3. ensure that the national education agenda to create effective schools includes LGBT issues. The GLSEN BookLink 2002 offers the highest quality resources for students, educators, families and community allies working to end anti-LGBT bias in K-12 schools. To join GLSEN, call 212-727-0135 or visit www.glsen.org.
Gay seminary students joined forces in “Called Out,” the 11th national conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied seminarians, held from March 15-17 at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.
CLAGSnews (Summer 2002), from The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, offers information about fellowships in Queer Studies, suggestions for pedagogy, a calendar of CLAGS events, and reports on CLAGS colloquia. For more information about CLAGS, call 212-817-1955 or visit www.clags.org.
School of the Americas
SOA Watch Update (Summer 2002) provides information about the November 15-17 mobilization for the closing of the SOA in Fort Benning, Georgia. The Update features an article on the coup against President Chavez of Venezuela, saying that two SOA graduates were key players in the arrest of Chavez by the armed forces. The legacy of the “School of Coups” continues.
A “Free” Internet
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has taken a “free for all” approach to the Internet. While many other colleges and universities have launched online degree courses that cost money, MIT has taken a completely different direction with a project called OpenCourseWare (OCW). There will be no online degrees for sale, but thousands of pages of information available to anyone on the Internet. OCW hopes to start nothing short of a revolution in education. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/technology/2270648.stm)
Resources
Occupation, a film about the Harvard Living Wage Campaign’s Sit-in, makes use of student footage shot before and during the sit-in as well as news coverage, archival footage, and worker portraits. Occupation follows the story of the longest sit-in in Harvard history. To find out more about the film, visit www.enmassefilms.org.
Rethinking Schools: An Urban Education Resource announces a special reprint of its anthology, War, Terrorism and Our Classrooms: Teaching in the Aftermath of the September 11 Tragedy for the one-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks. This 28-page report, including new pieces on “Images of War,” “Teaching about September 11,” “Poetry in a Time of Crisis,” and “Terrorism and Globalization” is free online at www.rethinkingschools.org/sept11. For printed copies, call 414-964-9646.
Brian Burch’s revised 4th edition of Resources for Radicals is an annotated bibliography of print resources for those involved in movements for social transformation. Many of the new resources focus on globalization, pacifism, co-operatives, masculinity and violence, the roots of the Middle East conflict, and consensus decision-making. The price, including postage and handling, is $12 Canadian, $13 U.S., and $15 for the rest of the world (U.S. funds) and can be ordered from Toronto Action for Social Change, P.O. Box 73620, 509 St. Clair Ave. West, Toronto, Canada, M6C 1C0, 416-651-5800.
The Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA) has a Summer and Fall 2002 Sale catalog of Central American and Caribbean political history and literature in both Spanish and English. To receive the catalog, call 202-332-0999 or visit www.epica.org.
Teaching for Change: Best K-College Resources on Equity and Social Justice is an online catalog offering alternative perspectives on current events in the news through links to articles and other sites. www.teachingforchange.org.
to issue #65 table of contents