First, El Marco has e-mailed his latest photo-journalism essay, "Ward Churchill Trial in Denver - Education is the Motor Force of Revolution." I know this is hardly new, but I'm still blown away at these neo-Stalinist idiots parading around at protests - and now the Churchill trial - with the most hare-brained anti-capitalilst paraphernalia imaginable.
Be sure to check out the cool blog keeping track of the trial, Race to the Botttom: Ward Churchill - First Amendment Suit.
Our second item is the new essay at Pajamas by Mary Grabar, "Teachers: They’re All Bill Ayers Now."
Ms. Grabar discussses the popularity across the academy of "social justice education," and notes how at many of his campus lectures, Bill Ayers is billed as “leader in the educational reform movements for over forty years.” Ayers is scheduled to give a talk at Pennsylvania’s Millersville University on March 19, and the local write-up of the campus backlash against the visit describes Ayers as "a university professor and a member of Chicago's intellectual establishment."
And how's that working out for the education of our future teachers? Citing Ayers' latest book, To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, Ms. Graber describes the work as "a pastiche of self-promoting observations on the classroom, the need to inform children about “social justice,” like-minded radicals, and complaints about conservatives."
The leftist intelligentsia no doubt eats it up. Adds Grabar:
... it seems that education colleges are churning out teachers more concerned with being “agents of social change” than the three “R”s. Little wonder, then, that Ayers’ book is being reissued as a graphic novel. Little wonder that student groups sponsored Ayers’ visit on March 5 to the University of Colorado to speak in defense of ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill, who was fired for plagiarism and not for calling 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.” We can thank their teachers for planting in their heads notions about “social change” that would lead to their ignorantly calling the event “Forbidden Education and the Rise of NeoMcCarthyism.”You got that right, and click here for a look at more on the "social justice curriculum.
As time rolls on, Antonio Gramsci is looking much smarter than the famous guys like Lenin, Marx or Stalin. I fear we shall yet be defeated, from within--just as Gramsci predicted.
ReplyDeleteMost parents of school-aged kids haven't the foggiest idea of what "critical pedagogy" is, yet one has only to read the websites of public elementary schools to realize that postmodern Marxist theory does indeed trickle down to the lowest levels (even if the teachers couldn't pass an exam on Foucault or Adorno or Dewey). The platitudes and boilerplate jargon are there; more importantly, the concept that "social justice" is a primary goal of K-12 education is entrenched, along with the ritual denigration of the idea of education as demonstrated mastery of subject matter.
Thanks Jeff!
ReplyDeleteTo bad for Ayers, there are more teachers like me than he would like. You know those teachers who are not screaming liberals, who hold kids accountable for their actions (or lack thereof) and are more interested in education than 'rules for radicals'...
ReplyDeleteThe horror!
Ir appears the left isn't satisfied with the 65 million Obama voters this nation's government-controlled educational system has managed to produce so far.
ReplyDeleteSending a child to a government school is nothing short of child abuse.
What is more, it will eventually bring this country to its knees, if it hasn't already.
-Dave
The Vegas Art Guy,
ReplyDeleteI applaud your efforts, but once Ayers gets himself set up as the shadow head of the very soon to be twice as large federal Dept. of "Education," you and your kind, already an endangered species, will probably soon find yourselves being quietly weeded out of the system.
After all, the truly educated do not usually grow up to be compliant members of the proletariat. That, as we all know, just cannot be tolerated in the New Amerika.
-Dave
We'll see Dave, I'm not in the People's Republic of California so I won't be an easy target for Ayers and his ilk. And I won't go quietly into the night either.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post! Nice find on the link to Churchill case blog.
ReplyDeleteI challenge you to study how the human brain works and how learning happens; then overlap that with the scientific method and the processes of literacy; then overlap that with the nature of historical production. Then, ask yourself how educative becoming an agent of social justice might be.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of education (as opposed to simply schooling) is to create agents who can independently and collaboratively navigate the sociocultural world in which we are situated. That necessitates the clarification of social processes in order to bring students into conscious engagement with these processes. Conscious engagement involves transformation, or at least a process of reiteration even if one is only unconsciously engaged.
Humans are social creatures, cultural workers. At the point that you take responsibility for your empowered or privileged position in the world as an educated person, not just an automaton who can act like a calculator or a word processor, you have to then ask yourself who you will serve as a social agent. That is why social justice is at the heart of true education.