Where are the Voices from the Grass Roots?

(Cross-posted from the Journal of Educational Controversy blog)

In reading much that is printed in the mainstream media like today's editorial in the New York Times - "Accountability in Public Education," one constantly hears accounts and perspectives from the voices of those who are in power. Where are the voices from the grass roots about their concerns, frustrations, hopes, and challenges to what passes as educational reform in this country. I recently came across a website and a listserv that provides readers with this alternative perspective. For readers interested in educating themselves on other perspectives, check out the following website and join the listserv of the Education for Liberation Network.

Website: http://www.edliberation.org/

To join the listserv: go to www.edliberation.org/join-us

Description and Purpose: The Education for Liberation Network is a national coalition of teachers, community activists, youth, researchers and parents who believe a good education should teach people - particularly low-income youth and youth of color - to understand and challenge the injustices their communities face.

Teachers may also be interested in their recent publication of a new kind of plan book that is called: Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers 2009-2010. You can find it at: http://www.justiceplanbook.com/. I am told that the first printing is already sold out, but more are being printed.

New Alberta law may chill classroom speech

In June, the Alberta legislature passed a bill that will require teachers to notify parents whenever sexual or religious topics will be addressed. Under the terms of the bill, the parents, once notified, could elect to pull their children out of any classes that concerned these topics.

Not surprisingly, this legislation has provoked opposition from a number of corners, perhaps most significantly from teachers, who feel that it will have a chilling effect on their speech. For some teachers, it may be easier to avoid a topic than to take the trouble of sending formal notification home. Yet even if the topic is a required element of the curriculum (e.g. sex education), a new bureaucratic hurdle has been created.

Teachers have also noted that this law may require notification whenever evolution is discussed in science classrooms. Lindsay Blackett, Alberta's Minister of Culture and Community Spirit, has indicated that this is not the case--he claimed that it is only when religion is explicitly addressed that notification would be required. However, the Premier of Alberta, Frank Stelmach, cast doubt on this, suggesting that parents would be notified and given the opportunity to remove their children from classes which dealt with the topic of evolution.

Gay rights activists are also unhappy with this legislation. One gay parent asked, "What happens at Father's Day art projects when my son makes two? How does the teacher explain that without talking about my family?" Yet even if parental notification is not actually required in this case, it seems likely that the law will lead teachers to avoid topics like this. What teacher will want to talk about a subject that has, in essence, been designated officially as dangerous?

The bill occasioned a great deal of heated rhetoric in the Alberta legislature, which is currently controlled by the Progressive Conservative (PC) party. Government members claimed that they were respecting the rights of parents. Rob Anderson, the PC member for Airdrie-Chestermere, offered the following comment on the bill:

...there are thousands and thousands of parents, the silent majority, severely
normal Albertans that are extremely happy with this legislation, that
believe it’s right to affirm the right of parents as being the primary
educators of their children in these subjects. I think that it’s a credit
to this government that it has stood up for what is right on this
matter...

Opposition Liberal and NDP members, however, maintained that the government had caved to religious interests. Harry Chase, the Liberal member for Calgary-Varsity, remarked:

By enshrining prejudice in the name of religious tolerance, this
government has taken Alberta back to the controversy of the Scopes
monkey trial of 1925 in Tennessee. To divert Albertans’ attention
from their prejudicial proposal, they have played and replayed the
racial discrimination defence card, that due to their caucus’s ethnic
diversity they are shocked that anyone would dare to accuse them of
promoting intolerance. However, that is exactly what Bill 44, which
does not apply to private schools, will do to previously inclusive,
open-minded, secular-based public schools by enshrining in law the
right to discriminate on the basis of human sexuality, religion, or
sexual orientation.

Opposition members also noted that Alberta already provides generous public funding for private schools. Any citizen who wishes to send their child to private school can receive a voucher for 70% of the public school subsidy. Not surprisingly, the parental notification bill does not apply to Alberta private schools, many of which are faith-based.

Since the Conservatives have a 72-11 majority in the Alberta legislature, the opposition had no chance of stopping the passage of the bill. However, the law has yet to be implemented in schools, and it remains to be seen what effect it will have. How rigorously will teachers comply with the law? Will many parents elect to pull their children from classes?

At any rate, the question remains as to how parents' rights to control their children's learning should be balanced against teachers' rights and state interests. In Alberta, at least, it would seem as though the balance has shifted decisively towards parents.

Call for Reviewers

The Journal of Educational Controversy is in the process of building a pool of reviewers to assist in evaluating future manuscripts. If you would like to be considered as a reviewer, please e-mail a vita indicating your discipline and areas of interest to: CEP-eJournal@wwu.edu Please include "Potential Reviewer" on the subject line.

The Richness of Experiences

During her confirmation hearings last week, Sonia Sotomayor repudiated her now-famous earlier statement that “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”. Of course, political pressure makes confirmation hearings no place to stick to a nuanced point, but I’m still sorry that Sotomayor had to back away from that point rather than explaining some things about experience, perspective, and education.

The key phrase is “with the richness of her experiences”. Experience is educational; judges who have had richer experiences are better educated and may therefore reach better, decisions than judges with less understanding of the way the world and people are. Hardly problematic, it seems to me. Whether the experiences of Latinas are indeed richer than those of White men would then become the question. Not always, I’d guess, but given the dynamics of race and social class probably true of most Latinas and White men who become judges.

I hear Sotomayor echoing Dewey’s argument about growth and burglars. Cliques of all sorts, including the company of elite lawyers, and the educational situations in which many law-school bound students grow up, are inimical to education that reaches beyond the limitations of school. Rather than criticize Sotomayor for this point, we might all want to think again about what factors enable White men to lose touch with the wider experiences of humanity. And not only White men, of course, or all White men -- there's no need to slide into an essentialism that I don't read in Sotomayor's original comment. Richness of experience matters. That's the main idea.

Betting the University Endowment on the Market

A small Canadian university, St. Francis Xavier, made the headlines last week when it revealed that it lost a staggering 43% of its $100 million endowment in the past year. Unlike most universities, which use a mix of assets in their investment portfolios, St. F.X. placed 90% of the endowment in Canadian stocks, and the rest in "U.S. equities."

It sounds like a housecleaning is in order on one particular university committee. The Globe and Mail article notes:

St. FX also is on the hunt for new members for the volunteer committee that oversees the university's investments. “A number of them are in their 70s,” Mr. Duff said, and the school needs to do some succession planning.

One interesting thing about this whole case is that St. F.X., like most Canadian universities, is a public institution. Granted, the endowment money doubtlessly came from private donors, but the university still relies largely on public funding. Perhaps, given this reliance, some light government regulation is in order in terms of how public universities manage their endowment.

I find it difficult to believe that a university could pursue such a risky strategy. However, as we've been finding out steadily over the course of the past year, there are many aspects about the whole financial meltdown that have beggared belief. It may be that St. F.X. is an isolated case, but as the financial crisis continues to unfold, we may yet see some more "interesting" financial news coming from higher education. Let's just hope that no one decided to invest their endowment in derivatives...

Supreme Court Decides Student Strip Search Case

(Cross-posted from the Journal of Educational Controversy blog)


The U.S. Supreme Court decision on the student strip search case was announced today. The ACLU , who represented April Redding, the mother of the Arizona student, Savana Redding, calls it the first victory for student rights in the last twenty years. The High Court ruled that the search that took place when honors student Savana was 13 years old was an unconstitutional violation of her rights. The search was done by school officials on the basis of an uncollaborated accusation by another student that Savanna had ibuprofen in her prosession. Now nineteen years old, Savanna wrote about her experience and her court victory on the ACLU blog today.


Savana's own words about her court victory from the ACLU blog:


Civics 101
by Savana Redding

"People of all ages expect to have the right to privacy in their homes, belongings, and most importantly, their persons. But for far too long, students have been losing these rights the moment they step foot onto public school property -- a lesson I learned firsthand when I was strip-searched by school officials just because another student who was in trouble pointed the finger at me. I do not believe that school officials should be allowed to strip-search kids in school, ever. And though the U.S. Supreme Court did not go quite so far, it did rule that my constitutional rights were violated when I was strip-searched based on nothing more than a classmate's uncorroborated accusation that I had given her ibuprofen. I'm happy for the decision and hope it helps make sure that no other kids will have to experience what I went through.

"Strip searches are a traumatic intrusion of privacy. Forcing children to remove their clothes for bodily inspection is not a tool that school officials should have at their disposal. Yet, until today, the law was apparently unclear, potentially allowing for the most invasive of searches based on the least of suspicions. Every day, parents caution their children about the importance of not talking to strangers, looking both ways before crossing the street, and following directions at school. But I imagine they never think to warn them that a school official, acting on a hunch, may force them to take their clothes off in the name of safety. And now, thankfully, they won't have to.

"Our fundamental rights are only as strong as the next generation believes them to be, and I am humbled to have had a part in preserving and promoting the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights."

Readers can read the U.S. Supreme Court decision here.

Editor: The journal recently published some articles on another student rights case, Morse v. Frederick, decided by the U.S Supreme Court in 2007.

Readers can read two articles on that case in our journal's Winter 2008 issue on "Schooling as if Democracy Matters.

"Visions of Public Education In Morse v. Frederick by Aaron H. Caplan

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus”: Have students’ First Amendment rights to free speech been changed after Morse v. Frederick? by Nathan M. Roberts

Announcing the New Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal

We have just put up a post on the Journal of Educational Controversy Blog about our newly formed Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal. We are anxious to get ideas and feedback. Check it out.

Education for the Public Good - TED talk

Liz Coleman of Bennington College calls for us to reinvent liberal arts education in a recently posted TED talk. This talk documents the way "expertise" has overthrown the generalist, "with increasing emphasis on the technical and obscure." She disses postmodern deconstructionism in literature, which I find unnecessary and a bit unintellectual, but she makes a good case for something that many of us already know: that higher education institutions have no clear sense of the democratic purposes of education. She says that despite the explosion of community service programs on campuses, these remain strictly outside the curriculum, and the current civic engagement push is oversimplified and does not disturb, ultimately, the basic neutral and expert stance that characterizes the academy's curriculum. Higher education (her focus) no longer provides the capacity for deep civic engagement, she argues. We are "playing with fire in terms of our responsibilities for the health of this democracy," she states. While some of her points are a bit overstated, and "education for education's sake" seems to be utterly dismissed, I think her basic point is right on. It is exactly the stance that makes folks like Stanley Fish crazy.

Community as Intellectual Space, 2009

The fifth annual Community as Intellectual Space Symposium will be held on June 12-14 at La Estancia on 2753 W. Division Street, Paseo Boricua, Chicago, Illinois.

The theme of the symposium is Critical Pedagogy: Community Building as Curriculum. As professionals and institutions are engaging with communities to enhance the life chances and well-being of residents, the conference examines how community-building and critical pedagogy can offer effective and sustainable change, locally and among collaborators as well.

The keynote speaker this year is Antonia Darder, a Professor at the University of Illinois in Educational Policy Studies and Latino/a Studies. There will be presentations and workshops on

• Community Based Research;


• Urban Agriculture;


• Community Informatics and Service-Learning;


• Social Emotional Learning at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School;


• Critical Pedagogy and its Application to Teacher Certification;


• Community Health at the Barrio Arts, Culture, and Communications Academy;


• Community Archiving and Web 2.0 Cataloging.

The conference also offers Batey Urbano's production of Crime against Humanity, screenings of original documentaries filmed on Paseo Boricua, community tours, and art exhibits.

Community as Intellectual Space is co-organized by the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center (Chicago) and the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Continuing Professional Development Units (CDPUs), academic course credit for those who enroll in UI's LIS590 CIO, and registration scholarships available.

Cross post from Chip's Journey

Nick Burbules of Illinois on technology and education

Two short clips on YouTube of blogger Nick Burbules being interviewed in Argentina about technology and education.

Cross posted from Education Policy Blog.