Lingual Tremors

A Summary of the Zapatista Women's Gathering

A Summary of the Zapatista Women`s Gathering: Comandanta Ramona & the Zapatista Women

From: Erika Del Carmen Fuchs

PLEASE CIRCULATE ** Favor de Circular**

Hopefully you will find the following piece interesting. It is about the recent Zapatista women´s gathering, which was amazing!! Feel free to write back if you have any questions, as some of us headed down to the Gathering and were witness and participants in this amazing space with these compañeras that inspire us and give us so much energy to organize ourselves wherever we are to have a better and more just world!

Espero que se les haga interesante este resumen del reciente encuentro  de mujeres zapatistas con mujeres del mundo. Si tienen preguntas, por favor escriban ya que algunas estuvimos alla para compartir de las energias e inspiraciones de estas compañeras y guerreras tan valiosas y chingonas!!! Las que nos inspiran y animan para seguir adelante organizandonos para el mejor y mas justo mundo que queremos!!

The Class Privilege Meme

via feminist reprise and sinister girl

Bold all those that apply to you.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like you are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in High School
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

Read This Book: Strapped

Hey 20- and 30- Something readers (and their parents):  you need to read this book!  Tamara Draut is the Director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos.  Her book, Strapped:  Why America's 20 and 30 Somethings Can't Get Ahead (just released in paperback) is an excellent analysis of the ways in which the privatization of American life has led to increasing debt for younger Americans.  I was very struck by her analysis of how the increasing privatization of formerly public services, and the defunding of formerly good public services, has a direct link to our current economic crisis. 

Among other subjects, Draut focuses on the "debt for diploma" syndrome in which many younger Americans are struggling under huge student loan debts.  Draut's analysis is very cogent, and unlike other books out there.  I really haven't read something that spoke so specifically to my own situation, and the situation of many others I know.  More than just telling us "how we got here," however, Draut also has an excellent final chapter on action steps to take to reverse the situation.  Draut also provides good information on how education has been defunded--think of this like a "talking points" book for the next election.  We know services have been cut; we know life is getting more & more difficult for the lower and middle classes--but do you really know why?  Read this book and you will!

Here's a good blurb from Richard Drezen at the Washington Post:

"Draut offers a chronology and carefully documents the causes of these circumstances. While she is cautiously hopeful in outlining various remedies - e.g. college education affordable for anyone who wants one - Draut is also realistic in assessing the lack of political courage required by Washington politicians to provide them. Thus, the outcome is doubtful. Although too many data at times overload her point, the author's thesis that "it is harder and more costly to become an adult" in America today is both inescapable and eloquent. This vital work should be read by anyone who cares about the future of this country."

I think Draut is more than cautiously optimistic.  I think she really believes in the possibility of reclaiming "the American Dream." And, after reading this book, I want to believe her.  Draut thinks the current moment provides an excellent start for reforming the American system.  I know that some of my readers are feeling despondent about American politics, but economics is one crucial issue we can use to organize voters.  So, time to belly up to the bar of hard facts.  Start memorizing so that you can use them!  Here are some of Draut's "quick facts":

• The maximum Pell Grant award, the nation's premier program for helping poor kids pay for college, covers about one-third of the costs of a four-year college today. It covered three-quarters in the 1970s.
• In 1948, veterans received a grant of $500 a year, enough to pay for all but $25 of tuition at Harvard. In 2003, the average federal grant to students was $2,421, which falls $24,000 short of tuition and fees at Harvard.
• In 1977, college students borrowed about $6 billion (2002 dollars) to help pay for college. College students borrowed $56 billion in 2003. The number of students enrolled in college grew by 44 percent between 1977 and 2003, but student loan volume rose by 833 percent.
• Three-quarters of full-time college students are holding down jobs.
• Only 53 percent of all students who enroll in four-year colleges end up getting their bachelors degree within 5 years.

Seriously.  Buy this book (in paperback!) and read it. Instead of whining about your lack money, you'll be able to DO something about it and speak intelligently about the financial and educational crisis in the United States!  More importantly, maybe we can begin reforming our educational system to make college available and affordable to students again.   

Good Resources:

Project on Student Debt

Center for American Progress

National Partnership for Women & Families

See also Robert Reich's blog (!) and his recent entry on the scandal over student loans

Controversy at the Tremor: Back to Censoring American History

A recent visitor to the ol' cyber homestead critiqued my quick (and frankly, fairly sloppy) posting on the recent dust up at Celerity Nascent Charter School.  I glibly entitled my post "What Good Education Means Today" and connected the incident to the No Child Left Behind Act, one of my favorite whipping boys.  The visitor writes:

No Child Left Behind has nothing  to do with this incident. If you had even the slightest idea what this school is about you would not use the words "drill and skill" to describe them. I am a teacher, not at Celerity, but at a LAUSD charter and teachers are well aware of their "at-will" contracts. We come to charter schools well aware of the hiring and firing process. You don't like it go teach somewhere else.

Creativity at charter schools is welcomed, but when teachers decide to abuse that freedom  they should not be allowed around impressionable children. Usingthe classroom to promote one's political views is inappropriate. Students need to know how to question authority without being threatening and angry. They ned to know how to present their black istory in a positive way that celebrates the race's accomplishments. Reliving violent and ugly acts in black history in front of children ranging from 2 and up is self serving and irresponsible. The teachers got a very important lesson. The teachers lacked creativity in getting their message across. They must have not been willing to compromise...shame on them for abusing their positions!

In the spirit of academic dialogue, I am very willing to admit that I did not parse out my analysis very well in the previous post.  So, here we go.

1.  I am not against charter schools per se;  I think there are many interesting and effective examples of charter schools living up to their expectations as pedagogically innovative and intellectually vibrant centers of K-12 learning.  Among others, Frank Smith of Columbia University's Teacher's College has written abotu many of the advantages of charter schools.  I also have a number of friends who teach at very interesting and progressive charter schools.  I celebrate those schools that let teachers approach their material creatively and innovatively.  I also share many of the concerns about the ways in which charter schools weaken public schools.  I also see a direct connection between charter schools and the privatization of American public education, something I vehemently oppose.  But, this isn't really a "pro" vs. "con" charter school post.  However, I disagree with the "at will" contract system used by many charter schools specifically because of what happened in this instance:  teachers were fired for objectionable content.  In a country that espouses the free exchange of ideas, that's not okay.

2.  My main problem with the incident at Celerity centers on the comments quoted in the LA Times article by the Celerity co-founder, Vielka McFarlane. "We don't want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success, walk proud and celebrate all the accomplishments we've made."  To be very clear:  we don't create a better tomorrow by whitewashing yesterday's history. 

Let me begin with the absurbism of the situation:  to suggest that at risk students in a poor community can't have access to their own history is to suggest that the entire purpose of education is foppery.  McFarlane's view seems to be, it doesn't matter what young black children learn as long as they look nice.  McFarlane says, "we don't want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success..."  The purpose of public education should not be about dressing for success.  It should be about critical thinking, writing, reading, and access to the whole world of ideas that await in the classroom and in the world.

Education=Fashion? 

Secondly, and more seriously:  we do not adequately prepare students for the world of tomorrow by making them poor students of history.  Students need to learn the good, the bad, and the ugly so that they can also learn how to initiate change.  This kind of Pollyanna approach to American history suggests that kids don't need to learn about:  the erasure of indigenous American cultures, any of the wars in American history, slavery, the civil rights' movement and the list goes on.  Of course American history can be rewritten as the fantasy of a perfect nation.  But that fantasy invalidates the lives of everyone living and working to make the story of the United States an amazing, intricate, funny, proud, angry, and sad narrative.  School officials have no business erasing the parts of history they find objectionable.  The last time I checked, this country still held dear the idea of freedom of speech.  Connected to that is the free flow of ideas and information that support the development of ideas and arguments.  Kids don't need to learn how to parrot the "triumphs of the nation" without being able to put those triumphs in appropriate historical context.

3.  Don't use poetry for evil purposes.  The students were inspired by Marilyn Nelson's poem "A Wreath for Emmett Till."  This was a clear case of censorship and the school administration's very poor handling of a topic of interest to students.  You don't teach students how to be better students by shutting down original research and a desire to learn.  Nelson, writing in defense of the teachers, says:

I suggest, Ms. Canada and Ms. McFarlane, that your firing Ms. Alba and Mr. Strauss has taught the students of Celerity Nascent Charter School one of the most important lessons to be learned from the study of Black history: that people in power often wield that power unjustly and unwisely, and that it is our responsibility to speak truth to power and to resist injustice. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Mamie Till Mobley would have been proud of your students’ passionate and clear view of your decision to cancel their program. They would have signed the students’ letters of protest, too. You have accelerated the original injustice by firing teachers who encourage your students to think. Thus you commit injustice against both teachers and students.

4.  How is this related to No Child Left Behind?  Well, my visitor is right on this one.  It's not ostensibly related;  this incident had nothing to do with high stakes testing.  I just get awfully damned agitated when it comes to the state of our public schools.  And so I would argue that at least on the surface this has nothing to do with NCLB.  But what lurks beneath?  Much of what the No Child Left Behind Act has done is to force standardized curriculum on schools.  This has led to the drill and skill mentality now prevalent in many public schools as children face batteries of tests.  Now, some charter schools, by virtue of their exemption status from particular laws guiding public schools, have a different relationship to mandated curriculum.  However, what No Child Left Behind has done is to eradicate individual teacher's abilities to make choices about their classrooms and their curriculums.  Instead, everyone follows the master plan for grade level.  In a school ostensibly set up to allow teachers greater freedom, as my visitor notes, these teachers should have had greater autonomy over their classroom curriculum.  Instead, their content was deemed inappropriate to the mission of the school;  this shares a certain intellectual connection, if not a direct connection, to mandated curriculums.

Now, I've provided some links below for further reading and listening.  I've also provided a link to an on-line petition to rehire to Marisol Alba and Sean Strauss.  I'm not sure if Alba and Strauss want to be rehired at Celerity Nascent, but the petition is at least one way to take concrete action (might I also suggest sending LOTS of books to the local library on important historical subjects so that kids have alternative access to information?):

Two local public libraries near the school, which I'm sure might appreciate donations of books on any topic, include:

• Washington Irving Public Library
• 4117 W. Washington Boulevard
• Los Angeles, CA 90018

and

• Jefferson Public Library
• 2211 W. Jefferson Boulevard
• Los Angeles, CA 90018

And finally, I'd like to thank my visitor for stopping by and raising some good questions.  I think it's clear, at the outset, that we don't agree, but I am always happy for well thought out critiques and comments on my posts.  Thanks!

Read On!  Celerity Nascent Charter School Controversy

Erin Aubrey Kaplan's Op Ed in the LA Times

The Cool Justice Report (with Nelson's letter)

Fire Dog Lake

Edwize and Edwize Update

Take Action!

Sign the petition

Listen!  Marilyn Nelson's "A Wreath for Emmett Till"

Read On!  Charter School Controversy

Center for Education Reform (Pro Charter Schools)

ERIC Digest:  Perspectives on Charter Schools

Charter School Debate (CNN.com)

What "Good" Education Means Today

L.A. teachers Marisol Alba and Sean Strauss, of the Celerity Nascent Charter School, were fired after supporting students who wrote a letter of protest about the school's decision not to let students read a poem about Emmett Till during a school-wide assembly for Black History Month.  In defending the decision to both censor the students and fire the two teachers, the executive director of this "school" said:

"Our whole goal is how do we get these kids to not look at all of the bad things that could happen to them and instead focus on the process of how do we become the next surgeon or the next politician," said Celerity co-founder and Executive Director Vielka McFarlane. "We don't want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success, walk proud and celebrate all the accomplishments we've made."

Welcome to "No Child Left Behind" schooling in the United States:  you need to drill and skill to learn information for standardized tests, creativity isn't welcome, and history, when ugly, need not be part of the curriculum.  Because nothing says "Let's Celebrate Black History Month" like erasing the ugly history of racism and deluding kids into thinking the racism they see everyday isn't in any way connected to the history of the U.S. 

Read the whole disgusting incident here.

An update to this post, on 3/26/07, is here.

Gardasil: The New Oreo

So.  2 blogs are a little tough to manage.  But I shall persevere!  Over at LX Project 365, I'm really enjoying exploring a different medium.  During the academic year, as I go to and from school, I have largely the same daily routine and follow the same route (isn't this true for all of us?).  So, I'm really finding myself challenged, in a good way, to find something to snap a picture of.  It reminds me a little bit of Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things.  A shower curtain shot?  Who knew?

But now, what you really came for:  grab a cuppa and settle in for a little politics, Lingual style.  So, them Texans are up to no good again, eh?  (With all due apologies to my darling best friend...)

Merck is selling Gardasil like it's the new Oreo.  Every time you turn on prime time television (or daytime television, for that matter), you're bombarded by ads for Gardasil.  And, in theory Gardasil is a good thing:  cervical cancer is a nasty, horrible form of cancer that really makes women suffer.  All cancers raise the collective alarms.  I think cancer is the secret fear of many in our society.  So, a vaccine for cancer seems like a good idea.  I was an early recipient of the Hepatitis B vaccine and I'm glad for it;  coming of age sexually during the HIV/AIDS boom, anything that made sex just a little less scary was a good thing.

Now, there have already been a lot of great pieces on Gardasil.  I'll direct you to 10 Things You Might Not Know About Gardasil.  It's well written and has some good research. 

What I'd like to focus on is Texas' inconsistent policy.  First, McGraw Hill created a special textbook JUST FOR TEXAS.  (You can read more about that here.)  The Texas "health" textbook  redefined marriage as only between a man and a woman;  it also takes an abstinence only position on sex. So, here's the thing:  if their schools emphasize heteronormative sexual relations, within the confines of marraige only, then why do 11 year olds need to be vaccinated against HPV?  In a state that privileges, in its educational policies and in its censorship of educational materials, the principals of abstinence only education until marraige, how are 11 year old girls going to get a sexually transmitted cancer?  In the era of the pre-pregnant body, the physical body is capable of having sex, but as a society, we won't offer any information about sex until it's too late.  The philosophy driving this seems to be:  let's close our eyes and pretend that girls don't have sex but vaccinate them just in case they do.  The pre-pregnant body is now being chased at all times by the spector of the almost-baby.  What's next?  Mandatory folic acid for all women from ages 10 and up?

The fact of the matter is:  if I had an 11 year old, I would have her vaccinated, despite some of the excellent questions raised by researchers, writers, and bloggers around the country.  I'd do it because preventing cancer seems like a good thing.  But, that decision would also be complimented by age-appropriate information about sex and sexuality.  It would be part of a larger family discussion about sex.  And that would be my decision to make as a parent. 

Instead, Texas is barreling forward with this policy--making it tough for parents to easily opt out--with what motivation?  The glaring contradiction makes me wonder:  from the state that inspired No Child Left Behind (and McGraw Hill's huge profit from increased standardized testing), comes Merck's estimated cash cow ($70 million in sales and rising--Vioxx anyone?).  So, is it about our girls' health or the bottom line?   This vaccine is terribly expensive at $360.00.  Add to the concerns about parental rights the obvious issues of class--what about low income families without medical insurance?  How are they going to pay for this?

Gardasil vaccinations should not be mandatory, especially not from a state that has proven that it's less than progressive about reproductive health choices.  Instead, there should be a state-sponsored educational campaign aimed at informing parents about the benefits and risks of vaccination.  And parents should get to choose to opt in.   

What's Cervical Cancer? from the American Cancer Society
About HPV Vaccines from the National Cancer Institute
Texas Abstinence Only Textbooks
Merck's Profits

Disabling Diplomas: Media Synergy

In an odd synergistic moment of media brain, my "Sped Shed Feminism 101" piece, which I wrote over the weekend, appeared on this blog just as WNYC began a very interesting series on "Disabling Diplomas" about special education in New York City.  Beth Fertig investigates many of the disparaties in the New York City special education program.  Not only is it an interesting look at race & class assumptions, it's an also unusually revealing report about politics and education.  Fertig interviews Beth Harry, a professor of special education at the University of Miami. 

In the category of mental retardation, which really refers to mild mental retardation we generally find African American kids being represented at 2 and a half times their presence in the school systems.

Harry continues:

The bias shows itself in inferior schooling. Larger class sizes than you would get in better off neighborhoods. Less qualified teachers. Very often more rigid discipline rather than emotional support. Those characteristics are typical of a lot of inner city schools that serve a lot of these kids. So it’s true you can say a kid came to school with disabilities possibly, at age 5 or 6 but it’s very hard to tease out the role of the school in making those issues worse or better.

This report offers the beginnings of some comprehensive investigation into special education and the need for reform in many special education programs.  It also raises questions about why some students are placed in special education and how that connects to economic class and social expectations.

Follow the whole series here:
Yamilka's Journey
Race and Class

Sped Shed Feminism 101

Dramatis Personae:

The Divine Tremor (aka Male Parental Unit, M.Div.) 
The Quixotic Tremor (aka Female Parental Unit, Ph.D.)
The Artistic Tremor, my younger sister
The Purple Tremor, my youngest sister
The Protean Tremor, my baby brother
Lingual Y, my better half, who although he does not appear in this story, is always important to every story!

While I regularly write about feminism and disability studies in my academic work, this is my first foray into biographical writing about my family, feminism and disability studies.   This post is inspired by Welcome to the Nuthouse's call for posts on feminism and disability for the 16th Carnival of Feminists. 

When I was 16, the Tremor parental units adopted two babies with special needs, both with significant cognitive disabilities.  Our familial rhythm necessarily changed as these two new children changed what we meant by the word family. 

One concrete example of this, and the most compelling to my argument today, is the dining room table.  Before the adoption, our family dinners were consumed by politics and debate.  From a very early age, the Artistic Tremor and I cut our teeth on the fine art of creating an argument during dinner.  That precious time, after NPR and before our parents' rounds of evening meetings was devoted to my sister's and my intellectual development.  And to this day, both she and I regard dinnertime as more than a meal. 

When our new brother and sister arrived, this rhythm was interrupted, first by the needs and paraphernalia of babyhood:  from high chairs to baby food, dinnertime was chaotic between feeding the babies and arguing about abortion politics.

But later, as the littlest tremors began to grow, dinnertime changed as we all worked together to find ways to include them in the larger conversation.  Much of our work as a family has been trying to help them understand the larger world in which they live.  while our conversations had a different rhythm, we did not exclude the Purple and Protean Tremors from those conversations. 

Specifically, we have tried to politicize their education and to offer them a larger world than the one the school system imagines for them.  Feminism and progressive politics have no place in the special needs classroom.  But why shouldn't they?

Bush's Poor Education Policy: Harvard Gives it a D

Harvard Gives it a D.  What do you think Yale would do?

Via Reuters:

Bush's 2001 No Child Left Behind Act was meant to introduce national standards to an education system where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for black Americans and Hispanics.

But instead of uniform standards, the policy has allowed various states to negotiate treaties and bargains to reduce the number of schools and districts identified as failing, said the study by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project.

"There's a very uneven effect. There are no clear uniform standards that are governing No Child Left Behind. If one state gets one thing, another state can do something else," the study's lead author, Gail Sunderman, said in an interview.

In previous posts, I've written about No Child Left Behind and the precarious relationship between the now legacy of standardized testing in K-12 and its move into colleges and universities.  (On this blog, see Mad Lib U Strikes Again and the original, Mad Lib U).

Suffice it to say, the current state of No Child Left Behind is dubious at best.  While the administration claims success, the measures of "success" are largely state-driven and reported.  Accordingly, Texas has gotten a lot of press for how it calculates its numbers, leaving off their drop-out rate.  And, do we really need Harvard to confirm the widespread media reports about the racial divides in our classrooms and the way that high stakes testing exploits that?

NCLB is perhaps one of the most pervasive and insidious educational legacies of our public institution of education.  The testing craze doesn't, in my opinion, lead to better education.  It leads to a nation of children who believe narrowly in a preordained right answer.  Gone from the classroom are the murky ethical dilemmas of where "right" or "wrong" seem like dubious choices at best. 

More on this later.

Technorati Tags:  No Child Left Behind, High Stakes Testing, Bush Education Policy

Mad Lib U Strikes Again: Testing for Everyone!

The Bush/McGraw Hill family ties are old news in K-12 education.  But, there's money to be made in higher education too, so, a new movement (surprise!) is afoot to push standardized testing in colleges and universities.  This move "would be greatly beneficial to the students, parents, taxpayers and employers" according to Mr. Charles Miller, president of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. 

Karen Arenson of the New York Times reports today:

A higher education commission named by the Bush administration is examining whether standardized testing should be expanded into universities and colleges to prove that students are learning and to allow easier comparisons on quality.

 Charles Miller, president of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, advocates standardized tests to measure college learning.

Charles Miller, a business executive who is the commission's chairman, wrote in a memorandum recently to the 18 other members that he saw a developing consensus over the need for more accountability in higher education.

"What is clearly lacking is a nationwide system for comparative performance purposes, using standard formats," Mr. Miller wrote, adding that student learning was a main component that should be measured.

The good old days of Animal House on campus are over!  It's a Kaplan education for everyone (or, make that an Ignite Incorporated education brought to you by the Bush family). 

In addition to standardized tests, Ignite Incorporated is taking standardized curriculum to new levels.  You can also receive curriculum in a box (c.i.b. for teachers too dumb to know how to teach to the test).  Ignite Incorporated's take on c.i.b. is the "COW," or "curriculum on wheels."

It's purple!  It's white!  It has cute, adorable spots!  It looks like a...wait for it...COW!  Yes, I went to school for 12 years past high school so that I could push a button on the COW instead of making up my own lesson plans.  Can't wait to see the COW colors for college.  Maybe we'll be able to order them in our school colors.  Say, red and white cows for Florida State and orange and blue for Syracuse.  Color coded cows (do you think they can code the material by state too--say, a "red" state and a "blue" state cow version?).

And, I kid you not.  The website says: 

The SuperCOW is Easy, Aligned, and Moootivating!

Because nothing defines a good education like standardized tests and "moootivating" curriculum...

Hat tip to Bitch, Ph.D. for the Arenson article.

Earn 10 Pizzas, Piss Off Your Profs and Earn the Love and Admiration of Young Conservatives Everywhere...

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
~Pink Floyd

Forget the Avian Flu. The real epidemic lately is bugs.  Everything from your phone to your e-mail to your classroom is now subject to surveillance. 

Perhaps you've been feeling like you haven't had time to get reading done lately?  Feeling removed from your graduate classes?  Feeling like you don't know "who's who" in academia anymore?  Well, thanks to the UCLA Bruin Alumni Association, I'd like to offer you a quick reading list:

Douglas Kellner
Peter McLaren
Daniel Solorzano
Carole Pateman
Karen Brodkin
Sharon Dolovich
Carol DuBois
Sondra Hale
Eric Avila
Juan Gomez-Quinones

These are only a few of the faculty on the "Dirty Thirty" list compiled by the UCLA Bruin Alumni Association for being "too radical."  Among their "crimes" are the organizations they donate money to, their nationality, their family-relations (one professor is the nephew of Edward Said), the petitions they sign, their publications, and, of course, the content of their courses.

And now, students at UCLA are being paid $100 to hand in tape recordings of their professors' lectures. 

Charlotte Simmons: A Feminist Call to Reform Academia

Late this summer, I posted a few amusing quotes from Tom Wolfe's new tome on academia in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, from the perspective of an up-and-coming member of the new intelligentsia, I Am Charlotte Simmons.

I picked up Wolfe's new book because I wanted a fun read before the semester began;  little did I know how the book would haunt me during a semester when I taught my classes bursting with first year students, wondering who among them was a Charlotte in hiding.

Months later, the book continues to resonate with me as I wonder how American public schools are failing young women,  how colleges and universities fail young women, and how basic gender education fails to make its way into our curriculum.  Almost 40 years after the feminist revolution, I can't believe we find ourselves in a place where Charlotte Simmons, bright and shining academic star of Sparta, North Carolina, is undone by a man.

Because Standardized Tests Ensure Equality

Yes, standardized tests:  the definition of equality in any educator's vocabulary.  Read Greg Palast's discussion of yesterday about New York City tests  and celebrate the fabulous gains of No Child Left Behind (insert sarcastic monotone...)

High School Sucks!

GLSEN (gay, lesbian, & straight educator's network) has released its new study on harassment in schools, "From Teasing to Torment".  The study finds, not surprisingly, that harassment is a major issue in K-12 schools, with many kids feeling truly tormented by their classmates.

Another Reason to Hate Walmart

As if you needed another reason to hate Walmart?  Call it "extreme corporate curriculum":

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service.

Yeah.  The Secret Service and Walmart:  a great taste that tastes great together! 

The full article is here, from The Progressive.

Pack Your Lunch and Your Bible?

Courtesy of Echidne of the Snakes and the New York Times comes today's "Are You Kidding Me?" post.  Now the lucky kids of Odessa, Texas can pack their lunches and their Bibles in preparation for a great school day:

When the school board in Odessa, the West Texas oil town, voted unanimously in April to add an elective Bible study course to the 2006 high school curriculum, some parents dropped to their knees in prayerful thanks that God would be returned to the classroom, while others assailed it as an effort to instill religious training in the public schools.

Where's the Higher Education Act when you need it?  (Just kidding...)

Professor Bush's Sex Ed: Who's Your Daddy?

Take the "President Bush Sex Education Quiz" here!  It's only funny in that black-humour way once you realize this is what our teens are learning in schools today...

Action Steps:  Fill out the on-line letter at the end of the quiz!

Kudos to Sean Massey: Boycott McGraw Hill's Dangerous Sex "Education"

Sigh.  Some days, I just wish I was as witty and bold as I often think I am...or at least as cool and bold as my friend...

Last week, as I was hanging out during my office hours--unusually bereft of students--working on generic, ridiculous memos and who should come to my door but the McGraw Hill book sales representative?  Now, since taking my current teaching position, I have discovered that book reps are the scourge of the earth.  They wander our halls looking for any open door to enter and sell their wares.  It reminds me of the peddler scenes from old movies.  "Wares for sale!  Wares for sale!"  I have a general practice of sending them away, no matter who they are.  I have too much to do to sit around ogling the latest textbook (anyway, I don't USE textbooks.  I use books!).  But this time, I really missed my opportunity.

My friend sent the representative packing over their recent Texas "health" textbook which has redefined marriage as only between a man and a woman;  it also takes an abstinence only position on sex.  I wish I had taken the time to share my own views of McGraw Hill's insidious new textbooks.  Missing that opportunity, I take the time here. 

McGraw Hill has drawn fire for 2 reasons in the last few years.  First, as reported by Stephen Metcalf in a 2002 Nation article, the Bush family and the McGraw Hill family have a long history of working together and "cross-pollinating" one another's work.  In Texas,

over the years, Bush’s education policies have been a considerable boon to the textbook publishing conglomerate. In the mid-1990s, then-Governor Bush became intensely focused on childhood literacy in Texas. For a period of roughly two years, most often at the invitation of the Governor, a small group of reading experts testified repeatedly about what would constitute a “scientifically valid” reading curriculum for Texas schoolchildren. As critics pointed out, a preponderance of the consultants were McGraw-Hill authors. “Like ants at a picnic,” recalls Richard Allington, an education professor at the University of Florida. “They wrote statements of principles for the Texas Education Agency, advised on the development of the reading curriculum framework, helped shape the state board of education call for new reading textbooks. Not surprisingly, the ‘research’ was presented as supporting McGraw-Hill products.” And not surprisingly, the company gained a dominant share in Texas’s lucrative textbook marketplace. Educational Marketer dubbed McGraw-Hill’s campaign in the state “masterful,” identifying standards-based reform and the success of McGraw-Hill’s “scientifically valid” phonics-based reading program as the    source of the company’s eventual triumph in Texas.

The McGraw Hill/Bush connection and synergy around the "No Child Left Behind" legislation has raised liberal concerns for years now.  More recently, HIV/AIDS activists and educators have decried the new textbooks which provide misinformation by censoring health information for kids in Texas schools.

While the Texas education system pleads "abstinence" as the only viable approach to sex ed, the state's HIV rates are climbing.  According to the Texas Department of Health,

The overall AIDS rate for Texas was up in 2003, at 16.9 AIDS cases per 100,000 population, from 13.7 in 2002 (Table 2). Although AIDS case numbers had been falling in the late 90's through 2000, they have recently demonstrated increases: 2981 cases reported in 2001, followed by slightly lower numbers (2,956 cases) of AIDS cases in 2002, then increases of AIDS cases reported in 2003 (25% increase to 3,689).

So, cheers to to my friend for laying out the reasons she won't use McGraw Hill textbooks for her classes.  And, cheers to Binghamton University School of Education and Human Development professor Sean G. Massey who is leading the way by sending McGraw Hill an even stronger message.  He is the author of an on-line petition to boycott McGraw Hill's health "education" textbooks.

Action Steps:
Sign the petition

From the People Who Thought Jerry Thacker Was a Good Idea...Comes Your Daily News!

As a kid, I didn’t grow up in a home where the television news dominated. Instead, my sister and I used to joke that the “lyrics” to the opening notes of NPR’s All Things Considered were “Time for Dinner, Time for Dinner...”   My sister and I were taught that we needed to be "up" on the news and prepared to discuss current events at our dining room table.  Dinner time was a time (and still is, when we're all home) to debate, discuss, and consider new ideas.

So, let’s talk about wave-ja-vous. Increasingly, the mainstream news is a cookie-cutter replication of a master script (come on—you only privilege certain news shows because you like the intonation of a particular voice or the “soft on the eyes” haircut of your favorite blonde spokesperson for the American Way—there’s no real difference here).  Our current administration is not to blame for this, exactly.   

The current trouble, however, is the public’s acquiescence to a sweeping conservative ideology.  They accept news-truths without question.  In print or on screen has come to equal universal truth.  I'm thinking about Mary Poppins and her "spoonful of sugar to make the medicine to down."  What's troubling about the current administration (and previous ones as well) is the way it uses the media to obfuscate basic truths.

THERE WERE NO WMDs.  And yet?  The American public either believes there were or doesn't care that there weren't.  I could go on and on with other salient examples, but forget WMDs. I want to talk about HIV/AIDS. The Bush administration nominated Jerry Thacker to head up its Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS in 2003.  This man publicly said that AIDS was a "gay plague."

The "Condom Fact Sheet" and "Programs that Work" were both removed from the CDC's website.  "Safe sex" in the schools has been virtually removed from the curriculum and replaced with abstinence-only education.  The CDC's highly successful education and prevention programs, created over 2 decades of struggle are being decimated.  The Nation reports: 

The new CDC regulations, published in the Federal Register, are mandatory for any AIDS-fighting organization that receives federal money for HIV prevention, and they finish the job of gutting effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education that has been a goal of the Bush Administration since it took office. Far from trying to "learn" from the Ugandans, the regs demand that any sex-ed "content" include information on the "lack of effectiveness of condom use." In other words, the Bush Administration wants AIDS-fighting organizations to tell people: Condoms don't work. At the same time, the regs mandate the teaching of the failed policy of abstinence from sex until (heterosexual) marriage.

Bush Administration officials, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, have claimed that condoms are ineffective in the fight against AIDS.  This is a lie.  A 2001 NIH panel "concluded that consistent and correct condom use prevents (in addition, of course, to pregnancy) transmission of HIV between women and men and gonorrhea transmission from women to men."  (See

the Guttmacher Report on Public Policy here.)

New To Alternative Media?  Check These Tried and True Resources:
Accuracy in Media
Adbusters
AlterNet
CounterPunch
Feminist Majority Foundation (especially Court Watch)
Independent Media Center
In These Times
Lip Magazine
Media Awareness Project
The Nation
The Progressive
Project Censored
The Propaganda Remix Project
Utne
Z Magazine

This is PBU13 in association with the Progressive Blogger Union.

One thing I think we can do is to rely on sources that know particular topics well.  I can't wade through all of the material on WMDs here.  However, I can, having spent the last 15 years of my life researching HIV/AIDS, say a lot about the ways that the Bush policies are wrong and a new form of propaganda.  I think we should all seek out alternative sources of information and promote them early and often.  And, I think we have to make ourselves experts on the experts.

My point here is that in a culture that gets its news from Fox and the Daily News (oh, I dread the morning commute and seeing those scandalous headlines!), how do you begin to distill any sense of "truth" or "fact"?

You're the Cash Cow: When Student Loans Aren't Enough

As someone who rides the NYC subway everyday, I've become immune to advertising.  You've got to really go to the mat to get my attention.  Those Fox News ads?  Snore.  The random half-clad woman wrapping her body around a beer bottle?  So yesterday's news. 

So, kids, here's today's quiz:  how many of you out there are drowning in student loan debt?  Is your student loan equal to or more than your mortgage or rent payment? Join many in middle-class America who are financing their educations by taking on enormous piles of debt.  And as if your indentured servitude to Sallie Mae wasn't enough?

For the cash-strapped frosh looking for a quick buck, here's the newest way to finance your education:  sell your body.  Companies like "Headvertise" are paying students to wear temporary tattoos during marketing campaigns.  It's an easy $70.00 a week for almost no work.  How many hours would you have to work in the cafeteria washing dishes or slinging mac and cheese to get that?  (of course, when I checked out Headvertise.com, it appears they've been bought out themselves.  It's a dog eat dog world.  Heh. Heh.).  What's next?  Hiring the homeless to hold placards for your pizza joint?  Oh yeah, Pizza Schmizza in Portland already did that one...

An old article, pre-deceased Headvertise
And for more on the corporate "genius" and "philanthropy" of Pizza Schmizza...

Our Racist Classrooms

I've been doing some research on high-stakes testing in community colleges.  How is this not a new form of segregation?  Public institutions are increasingly called on the carpet for their "standards."  This isn't new language--it's something we are most recently familiar with as the public K-12 schools struggle with "No Child Left Behind Act."  This insidious trend of "accountability" in the form of high stakes tests that are increasingly administered by private corporations is now, not surprisingly, moving into our public college and university systems. 

Yet private colleges and universities continue to have the privilege of creating exams that are locally relevant--based on the institution's standards and criteria.  At our community colleges, however, where the faculty and staff often serve the poorest of our students--often students of color, women, and new immigrants--who believe in education as the entry point to the "American Dream," these students increasingly get the message "Access Denied."

Higher Education gets less press than other educational agendas/programs/etc.  (Unless we're talking about the censored professor of the week), and so the opponents of high stakes testing find themselves without press and with difficult arguments to make when standardized testing has already consumed our K-12 system.  More later.