OMNI
EDUCATION USA FOR THE
FUTURE NEWSLETTER #3, April 6, 2014
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
(#1 July 7, 2011; #2, May 28, 2014).
Newsletters
Index:
Blog
See
Newsletters #1 and #2 at end
Needs
editing, compare Contents with actual contents--karen
Contents: Education for Change
Newsletter #3
Present Condition of Higher Education
Chomsky,
Dwindling Away of Faculty Control
Laurence
Wittner, “The $7 Million University President.”
Administrators UP,
Faculty DOWN
Faculty DOWN
Karen Madison,
Contingent (non-tenured) Faculty, Sign Petition
Steve Smith,
Contingent Faculty
Student Debt
The Nation, Student Debt Protest Petition
Matt Taibbi, College Loan Scandal
Scot Ross and Mike Browne, Student Debt Should
be Lightened
Rolling Jubilee
Higher and Public Education for Change
Critical
Pedagogy
Totten and
Pederson: Critical Pedagogues and Theories
Iveta Silova,
Education for Global Citizenship
Rossatto, Globalizing
Education on Freirean Principles
Bowen,
Schwartz, Camp: Academic Freedom and the University’s Purpose
Struggle to
Increase Girls and Women in STEM
Recent Related Newsletters
Contact Your District Superintendent and
School Principals, Tell Them about
Giroux and Others in these Newsletters.
Giroux and Others in these Newsletters.
PRESENT CONDITION OF
HIGHER EDUCATION
Chomsky:
CorporateThink is harming American Universities
http://www.alternet.org/education/chomsky-thinking-corporations-harming-american-universities?page=0%2C4
Under representative systems, you
have to have someone doing administrative work, but they should be recallable
at some point under the authority of the people they administer. That’s less
and less true. There are more and more professional administrators, layer after
layer of them, with more and more positions being taken remote from the faculty
controls. I mentioned beforeThe Fall of the Faculty by Benjamin
Ginsberg, which goes into a lot of detail as to how this works in the several
universities he looks at closely: Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and a couple of
others.
Meanwhile, the faculty are
increasingly reduced to a category of temporary workers who are assured a
precarious existence with no path to the tenure track. I have personal
acquaintances who are effectively permanent lecturers; they’re not given real
faculty status; they have to apply every year so that they can get appointed
again. These things shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
Laurence
Wittner, “The $7 Million University President.”
Z Magazine (February 2015).
About the extraordinary salary for the president of Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, a private university in Troy, NY, as presaging the
future of US universities: “inflating administration
salaries; exploiting adjunct faculty, regular faculty, and other workers;
strengthening administration power; raising tuition to astronomical heights;
and, above all, running colleges and universities like modern business
enterprises. . . .”
CONTINGENT
FACULTY
SIGN PETITION FOR CONTINGENT (NON-TENURED) FACULTY
From: Karen
Lentz Madison
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2014 8:09 PM
Hi Dick, Steven, and Stephanie--I just sent
the note below to our non-tenure track listserv in the English Department.
Could you forward to any friends or colleagues who would help us in our goal
for signatures on the petition found in this email? And would you sign it, too!
Thanks--Karen Madison
Hi Gang,
I hope you are having a good summer. For those of us who won't be back this
fall, you will be missed, and I hope you have found a position or work that
suits you. Please let me know if you are still looking and or you have had
trouble applying for .unemployment.
Also, folks, please, please read over this petition and then sign it and
forward it, post it on your social media platforms. It concerns improving the
working lives of all contingent faculty (full time and part time) across the
US. https://www.change.org/petitions/david-weil-dir-wage-and-hour-div-u-s-dept-of-labor-open-an-investigation-into-the-labor-practices-of-our-colleges-and-universities-in-the-employment-of-contingent-faculty?recruiter=394703&utm_campaign=twitter_link&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition
I helped write it, and it's going to the Sect. of Labor on Labor Day or right
after. It's been written about in Salon, and the Chronicle of Higher Education,
Adjunct Project, New Faculty Majority, talked about on NPR, and blogged about
in Harvard University Press Blog, to mention just a few of our media
connections
http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2014/08/adjuncts-petition-david-weil.html
And, Rebecca Schumann (pankisseskafka) is going to sing a song chosen by her
readers when we hit 7500. Well, her followers all know that it will be
"Major Tom" in German, regardless of suggestions. But if we hit
10000-- just read her post and the comments:
http://pankisseskafka.com/2014/07/31/the-adjunct-petition-challenge-watch-me-humiliate-myself-more-than-usual/
You get the idea. We are pushing for 10000 signatures and are asking friends,
students, family, tenure-stream and non-tenure stream colleagues to help us get
there. And I am asking you to be a part of it, too.
Hi Dick,
I need to share an article that Stephen Smith
wrote. He told me he hoped it would fire up some people. We shall see!
Here's the link to it:
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MU68CbncAe6ICNYa257E/full#.VQduYo74K9g
Karen
STUDENT DEBT
 |
||
|
Dear
DICK,
$1.3
trillion. That’s how much Americans owe in student loan debt. $1.3
trillion.That’s more than credit card debt. More than car loans. In fact,
it’s more than any kind of debt other than mortgages.
This is
a big problem and we need big ideas to fix it. Sign our petition to cancel
all student loan debt.
We know
that this is a big ask and that you’re probably constantly getting emails
asking you to sign petitions. But we need a dramatic change in
the conversation around this issue if higher education is ever going to be
affordable in America.
We know
we can do it. Just a few decades ago, you could pay for a college education
with your average summer job. After World War II, the G.I. Bill helped thousands
of veterans get a college education and establish a middle class life.
Today,
students leave school burdened by an average of $25,000 in debt. Their debt
then makes it difficult for them to make big purchases like cars or homes,
dragging down the entire economy.
College
needs to be affordable. Students need to be able to build their lives. Sign our petition demanding
that all student debt be forgiven.
All the
best,
Sarah Arnold  |
||
MATT TAIBBI, “RIPPING OFF YOUNG
AMERICA.” ROLLING STONE.
“Ripping
Off Young America
The federal
government has made it easier than ever to borrow money for higher education -
saddling a generation with crushing debts and inflating a bubble that could
bring down the economy
Illustration
by Victor Juhasz
On May 31st, president Barack Obama strolled
into the bright sunlight of the Rose Garden, covered from head to toe in the
slime and ooze of the Benghazi
The topic?
Student loans. Unless Congress took action soon, he warned, the relatively low
3.4 percent interest rates on key federal student loans would double. Obama
knew the Republicans would make a scene over extending the subsidized loan
program, and that he could corner them into looking like obstructionist meanies
out to snatch the lollipop of higher education from America
Flash-forward
through a few months of brinkmanship and name-calling, and not only is nobody
talking about the IRS anymore, but the Republicans and Democrats are snuggled
in bed together on the student-loan thing, having hatched a quick-fix plan on
July 31st to peg interest rates to Treasury rates, ensuring the rate for
undergrads would only rise to 3.86 percent for the coming year.
Though this
was just the thinnest of temporary solutions – Congressional Budget Office
projections predicted interest rates on undergraduate loans under the new plan
would still rise as high as 7.25 percent within five years, while graduate
loans could reach an even more ridiculous 8.8 percent – the jobholders on
Capitol Hill couldn't stop congratulating themselves for their "rare"
"feat" of bipartisan cooperation. "This proves Washington
can work," clucked House Republican Luke Messer of Indiana
Not only had
the president succeeded in moving the goal posts on his spring scandals, he'd
teamed up with the Republicans to perpetuate a long-standing deception about
the education issue: that the student-loan controversy is now entirely about
interest rates and/or access to school loans.
Obama had
already set himself up as a great champion of student rights by taking on banks
and greedy lenders like Sallie Mae. Three years earlier, he'd scored what at
the time looked like a major victory over the Republicans with a transformative
plan to revamp the student-loan industry. The 2010 bill mostly eliminated
private banks and lenders from the federal student-loan business. Henceforth,
the government would lend college money directly to students, with no middlemen
taking a cut. The president insisted the plan would eliminate waste and
promised to pass the savings along to students in the form of more college and
university loans, including $36 billion in new Pell grants over 10 years for
low-income students. Republican senator and former Secretary of Education Lamar
Alexander bashed the move as "another Washington
The thing is,
none of it – not last month's deal, not Obama's 2010 reforms – mattered that
much. No doubt, seeing rates double permanently would genuinely have sucked for
many students, so it was nice to avoid that. And yes, it was theoretically
beneficial when Obama took banks and middlemen out of the federal student-loan
game. But the dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan
interest rates are almost irrelevant. It's not the cost of the loan that's the
problem, it's the principal – the appallingly high tuition costs that have been
soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward
trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years
before 2008.
How is this
happening? It's complicated. But throw off the mystery and what you'll uncover
is a shameful and oppressive outrage that for years now has been systematically
perpetrated against a generation of young adults. For this story, I interviewed
people who developed crippling mental and physical conditions, who considered
suicide, who had to give up hope of having children, who were forced to leave
the country, or who even entered a life of crime because of their student
debts.
They all take
responsibility for their own mistakes. They know they didn't arrive at gorgeous
campuses for four golden years of boozing, balling and bong hits by way of
anybody's cattle car. But they're angry, too, and they should be. Because the
underlying cause of all that later-life distress and heartache – the reason
they carry such crushing, life-alteringly huge college debt – is that our
university-tuition system really is exploitative and unfair, designed primarily
to benefit two major actors.
First in line
are the colleges and universities, and the contractors who build their
extravagant athletic complexes, hotel-like dormitories and God knows what other
campus embellishments. For these little regional economic empires, the federal
student-loan system is essentially a massive and ongoing government subsidy,
once funded mostly by emotionally vulnerable parents, but now increasingly paid
for in the form of federally backed loans to a political constituency – low-
and middle-income students – that has virtually no lobby in Washington
Next up is the
government itself. While it's not commonly discussed on the Hill, the
government actually stands to make an enormous profit on the president's new
federal student-loan system, an estimated $184 billion over 10 years, a
boondoggle paid for by hyperinflated tuition costs and fueled by a
government-sponsored predatory-lending program that makes even the most
ruthless private credit-card company seem like a "Save the Panda"
charity. Why is this happening? The answer lies in a sociopathic marriage of
private-sector greed and government force that will make you shake your head in
wonder at the way modern America
In the early
2000s, a thirtysomething scientist named Alan Collinge seemed to be going
places. He had graduated from USC in 1999 with a degree in aerospace
engineering and landed a research job at Caltech. Then he made a mistake: He
asked for a raise, didn't get it, lost his job and soon found himself
underemployed and with no way to repay the roughly $38,000 in loans he'd taken
out to get his degree.
Collinge's
creditor, Sallie Mae, which originally had been a quasi-public institution but,
in the late Nineties, had begun transforming into a wholly private lender,
didn't answer his requests for a forbearance or a restructuring. So in 2001, he
went into default. Soon enough, his original $38,000 loan had ballooned to more
than $100,000 in debt, thanks to fees, penalties and accrued interest. He had a
job as a military contractor, but he lost it when his employer ran a credit
check on him. His whole life was now about his student debt.
More Taibbi: The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
Collinge became so upset that, while sitting on a buddy's couch in
Tacoma, Washington, one night in 2005 and nursing a bottle of Jack Daniel's, he
swore that he'd see Sallie Mae on 60 Minutes if it was the last thing he did. In
what has to be a first in the history of drunken bullshitting, it actually
happened. "Lo and behold, I ended up being featured on60 Minutes within about a year," he says. In
2006, he got to tell his debt story to Lesley Stahl for a piece on Sallie Mae's
draconian lending tactics that, curiously enough, Sallie Mae itself refused to
be interviewed for.
From that
point forward, Collinge – who founded the website StudentLoanJustice.org –
became what he calls "a complaint box for the industry." He heard
thousands of horror stories from people like himself, and over the course of
many years began to wonder more and more about one particular recurring theme,
what he calls "the really significant thing – the sticker price." Why
was college so expensive?
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ripping-off-young-america-the-college-loan-scandal-20130815#ixzz33UhPUzaB
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Debt Casts a Shadow on Graduation
It’s
college graduation time, and while it’s a happy occasion for the graduates and
their families, it comes at a high price.
According to the most recent
national statistics available, 71 percent of college seniors from the class of
2012 had student loan debt averaging $29,400 for a bachelor’s degree. Based on
the trend over the last two decades, members of the class of 2014 can expect to
find themselves in even worse shape.
- See more at:
http://www.progressive.org/topics/education#sthash.k58dp8Ft.dpuf
See Scot Ross and Mike Browne,
“Sentenced to Debt,” The Progressive (November
2013).
This time, it’s different.
Since the beginning of the Rolling Jubilee campaign, we’ve wanted to buy ...
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Higher and Public
Education for Change
Critical pedagogy
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
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Critical pedagogy
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Major works
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Theorists
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Pedagogy
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Concepts
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Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of
education and social movement that combines
education with critical theory.[1] First described by Paulo Freire, it has since been developed
by Henry Giroux and others as a praxis-oriented "educational
movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of
freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and
the ability to take constructive action."[2] Among its leading figures are Michael Apple, bell hooks, Joe L. Kincheloe, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, and Patti
Lather.
Critical pedagogue Ira Shor defines critical pedagogy
as:
"Habits
of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning,
first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional
clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning,
root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action,
event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy,
mass media, or discourse." (Empowering Education, 129)
Critical pedagogy includes relationships between teaching
and learning. Its proponents claim that it is a continuous process of what they
call "unlearning", "learning", and "relearning",
"reflection", "evaluation", and the impact that these
actions have on the students, in particular students whom they believe have
been historically and continue to be disenfranchised by what they call
"traditional schooling".[citation
needed]
Contents
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION
Educating
About Social Issues in the 20th and 21st Centuries - Vol 4
Critical
Pedagogues and Their Pedagogical Theories
Samuel Totten, University
of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Jon Pedersen, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
A volume in the series Research in Curriculum and Instruction
2014. Paperback 9781623966287 $45.99. Hardcover 9781623966294
$85.99. eBook 9781623966300 $50
This volume is the fourth, and last, volume in the series
entitled Educating About Social Issues in the 20th and 21st Centuries: An
Annotated Bibliography.
Volumes I and
Volume 2 focused on (1) the lives and work of notable scholars dedicated to
addressing why and how social issues should become an integral component of the
public school curriculum, and (2) various topics/approaches vis-Ã -vis
addressing social issues in the classroom. Volume 3 addressed approaches to
incorporating social issues into the extant curricula that were not addressed
in the first two volumes. This volume, Volume Four, focuses solely on critical
pedagogy: both the lives and work of major critical pedagogues and the
different strains of critical pedagogy the latter pursued (e.g., critical
theory in education, critical feminism in education, critical race theory).
Educating About Social Issues in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Vol. 3
A Critical Annotated Bibliography
Samuel Totten, University of Arkansas ,
Fayetteville
Jon Pedersen, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
A volume in the series Research in Curriculum and Instruction
Information Age Publishing, 2014. Paperback
9781623965235 $45.99. Hardcover 9781623965242 $85.99. eBook 9781623965259 $50
EDUCATING ABOUT
SOCIAL ISSUES IN THE 20th and 21st Centuries: A Critical Annotated
Bibliography, Volume 3 is the third volume in a series that addresses an
eclectic host of issues germane to teaching and learning about social issues at
the secondary level of schooling, ranging over
roughly a one hundred year period (between 1915 and 2013). Volume 3 specifically
addresses how an examination of social issues can be incorporated into the
extant curriculum. Experts in various areas each contribute a chapter in the
book. Each chapter is comprised of a critical essay and an annotated
bibliography of key
works germane to the specific focus of the chapter.
Teaching for Global Community: Overcoming
the Divide and Conquer Strategies of the Oppressor by: César Augusto Rossatto,
The University of Texas at El Paso . Information Age Publishing, 2011.
- eBook
SHARE: Tell a Friend | Link to this | Embed this
Education
has long been viewed as a vehicle for building community. However, the critical
role of education and schools for constructing community resistance is
undermined by recent trends toward the centralization of educational policy-making
(e.g. racial profiling new laws in the US—Arizona and Texas; No Child Left
Behind and global racism), the normalization of “globalization” as a vehicle
for the advancement of economic neo-liberalism and social hegemony, and the
commodification of schooling in the service of corporate capitalism.
Alternative visions of schooling are urgently needed to transform these
dangerous trends so as to reconstruct
public education as an emancipatory social project.
Teaching for Global Community: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategies of the Oppressor examines these issues among related others as a way to honor and re-examine Freirean principles and aim to take critical pedagogy in new directions for a new generation. The goal is to build upon past accomplishments of Paulo Freire’s work and critical pedagogy while moving beyond its historical limitations. This includes efforts that revisit and re-evaluate established topics in the field or take on new areas of contestation. Issues related to education, labor, and emancipation, broadly defined and from diverse geographical context, are addressed. The theoretical perspectives used to look at these emerge from critical pedagogy, critical race theory, critiques of globalization and neoliberalism, marxist and neo-marxist perspectives, social constructivism, comparative/international education, postmodernism indigenous perspectives, feminist theory, queer theory, poststructuralism, critical environmental studies, postcolonial studies, liberation theology, with a deep commitment to social justice.
Teaching for Global Community: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategies of the Oppressor examines these issues among related others as a way to honor and re-examine Freirean principles and aim to take critical pedagogy in new directions for a new generation. The goal is to build upon past accomplishments of Paulo Freire’s work and critical pedagogy while moving beyond its historical limitations. This includes efforts that revisit and re-evaluate established topics in the field or take on new areas of contestation. Issues related to education, labor, and emancipation, broadly defined and from diverse geographical context, are addressed. The theoretical perspectives used to look at these emerge from critical pedagogy, critical race theory, critiques of globalization and neoliberalism, marxist and neo-marxist perspectives, social constructivism, comparative/international education, postmodernism indigenous perspectives, feminist theory, queer theory, poststructuralism, critical environmental studies, postcolonial studies, liberation theology, with a deep commitment to social justice.
Globalizing
Minds
Rhetoric
And Realities In International Schools.
Iveta Silova, College
of Education , Lehigh University
Daphne P. Hobson, Global Teaching
Consultants, LLC
Information Age Publishers, 2014. Paperback 9781623965860 $45.99. Hardcover 9781623965877 $85.99.
eBook 9781623965884 $50
Globalization has a profound effect on the mission and goals of
education worldwide. One of its most visible manifestations is the worldwide
endorsement of the idea of “education
for global citizenship,” which has been enthusiastically supported by
national governments, politicians, and policy-makers across different nations.
Increasingly, the educational institutions feel under pressure to respond to
globalization forces by preparing students to engage competitively and
successfully with this new realm, lest their nations be left in the dust. What
is the role of international schools in implementing the idea of “education for
global citizenship”? How do these schools create a culturally unbiased global
curriculum when the adopted models have been developed by Western societies and
at the very least are replete with (Western) cultural values, traditions, and
biases?
End of Academic
Freedom:
The Coming Obliteration
of the Core Purpose of the University
William M. Bowen, Cleveland State
University
Michael
Schwartz, Cleveland
State University
Lisa
Camp, Case School
Information
Age Publishers, 2014.
Paperback
9781623966584 $45.99. Hardcover 9781623966591 $85.99. eBook 9781623966607 $50
This book is
premised upon the assumption that the core purpose of universities is to
create, preserve, transmit, validate, and find new applications for
knowledge. It is written in the perspective of critical university studies,
in which university governance processes should take ideas and discourse about
ideas seriously, far more seriously than they are often taken within many of to
day's universities, since doing so is the key to achieving this purpose.
Specifically, we assert that the best way for universities to take ideas
seriously, and so to best achieve their purpose, is to consciously recognize
and conserve the entire range of available ideas. Though the current emphasis
upon factors such as student headcounts, increased efficiency and job creation
are undoubtedly important, far more is at stake in universities than only these
factors.
From this
premise, we deduce insights and arguments about academic freedom, as well as
factors such control and monitoring of the market place of ideas,
the structure
of information flows within universities, the role of language in university
governance, and relationships between administrators, faculty
members and
students. We identify impediments to achieving the core purpose of universities,
including the idea vetting systems of authoritarianism,
corporatism,
illiberalism, supernaturalism and political correctness. We elucidate how these
impediments inhibit successful achievement of the core purpose
of the
university. In response to these impediments we prescribe relatively autonomous universities characterized by
openness, transparency, dissent, and the maintenance of balance between
conflicting perspectives, values, and interests.
Girls and Women in STEM: A Never
Ending Story
Janice Koch, Hofstra University
Beverly Irby, Texas A&M
University
Barbara Polnick, Sam Houston
State University
A volume in the
series Research on Women and Education
Information Age
Publishing, 2014. Paperback
9781623965563 $45.99. Hardcover 9781623965570 $85.99. eBook 9781623965587 $50
Encouraging the participation of girls and women in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) remains as vital today as it was
in the 1970s. ... hence, the sub-title: “A Never Ending Story.” This volume is
about ongoing advocacy on behalf of the future workforce in fields that lie on
the cutting edge of society’s future. Acknowledging that deeply embedded
beliefs about social and academic entitlement take generations to overcome, the
editors of this volume forge forward in the knowledge that these chapters will
resonate with readers and that those in positions of access will learn more
about how to provide opportunities for girls and women that propel them into
STEM fields. This volume will give the reader insight into what works and what
does not work for providing the message to girls and women that indeed STEM
fields are for them in this second decade of the 21st century. Contributions to
this volume will connect to readers at all levels of STEM education and
workforce participation. Courses that address teaching and learning in STEM
fields as well as courses in women’s studies and the sociology of education
will be enhanced by accessing this volume. Further, students and scholars in
STEM fields will identify with the success stories related in some of these
chapters and find inspiration in the ways their own journeys are reflected by
this volume.
Contents
Education Newsletter #1, July 7, 2011
Giroux on Commercialization,
Militarization of Higher Ed:
Radder on Commodification
of Research
Diane Ravitch
and Other: Responses to Waiting for
“Superman” on Charter
Schools:
Peace Education
11 Articles in Monthly Review
Contents
Education USA
Henry Giroux’s
Books on the Corporate, Military, Education Complex
College
Contingent Faculty
Noam Chomsky, Destroying the University by
Temps
Chomsky, Academic Labor
Karen Madison Recommends 3 Articles
AAUP Position
Hearn, The Promotional University
Andrew Delbanco, College: What It Was, and Should Be
Public Schools
Schneider, A Chronicle of Echoes, The Corporate Destruction of Public
Education for Profit
Antush, “Ed Deform” and Standardized
Testing in NYC
Doerr, Against Vouchers
END EDUCATION
USA FOR THE FUTURE NEWSLETTER #3
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