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November 2008

Reclaiming "Bitterness" for Social Change

Posted Sun, 11/02/2008 - 15:34 by TriciaKress

With the U.S. presidential election a mere 48 hours away, I want to take the opportunity to reclaim a piece of language that I feel has been wrongly taken from the American vocabulary by neo-liberals and neo-conservatives alike and used for the purposes of dividing people and closing conversations. This kind of double-speak is not uncommon in U.S. society, and one need only consider the new connotations of words such as “freedom,” “patriotism,” and “democracy” to get the gist of how words can be distorted and appropriated by power-wielders for unethical purposes. Lately, the word “bitter,” the focus of today’s blog, has gotten a bad rap in American society. I find its recent appropriation to be similar to the ways in which “freedom” and “patriotism” have been distorted into terms that discourage folks from questioning the U.S.

Why isn't the critical pedagogy perspective being taught to undergrads in Education?

Posted Mon, 11/03/2008 - 12:43 by Maria

I was at the Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy when an undergrad student came in. She wanted to peruse the archives because she needed some sources for a lesson plan. I was so happy! She wanted to know why the books weren't available at the main library. Good question. We decided that she could find what she needed here and then have the librarians order the books for her, which they are more than eager to do. As we were speaking I noticed her slowly getting more and more worked up over the fact that none of her Bachelor of Education courses offered any critical pedagogy perspective. She explained that she already had a BA and had decided to pursue one in education because she wanted to make a difference in society. But how was she to do this, she stammered, if none of her classes delved into the socio-political factors involved in education? She seemed quite upset. She felt like she was wasting her time.

Fairness in research

Posted Tue, 11/04/2008 - 23:10 by curleeq3

Greetings everyone,

Please find a some thoughts I had after reading the intoduction to Tuhiwait Smith’s Decolonizing Methodolgoies.

Read more
curleeq3's blog
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The goodness of Obama!!

Posted Wed, 11/05/2008 - 18:50 by Paul R Carr

Obama won!! Of course, the whole world knows this, celebrated this, prayed for this, and is now recoiled in anticipation for great things to happen. Why shouldn’t the world expect great things from the “greatest” country?

Obama is an....... American!!!

Posted Thu, 11/06/2008 - 11:24 by Paul R Carr

I was just conversing with a student, a likable guy who supported McCain, and asked him how he felt about the entire world being so jubilant about Obama's victory. His answer was so prophetic, simplistic and penetrating that I thought it worthy enough to share. He responded by saying that "the world would not be so jubilant when they find out that he is an American".

Wow!!! Obama is, afterall, an American. Will that mean that he cannot, will not and should not be engaged in and with the world? Obama faces an uphill battle in balancing the needs of human decency and maintaining control of the US agenda.

What does it mean to be an American? Can minorities also be "Americans"? (The same questions could be posed using Canadians, French, British, Norwegians, Swedes, Spaniards, Greeks, Italians, etc.)

But, ultimately, there is something in the air, for right now anyway, that is different.

Curriculum in an Increasingly Plural Democracy

Posted Thu, 11/06/2008 - 15:30 by Dave

schools in ontario...

Posted Fri, 11/07/2008 - 12:25 by dodz

Hello all....

I am currently enrolled in a teacher training program at York University. I have been reading a lot of Freire's work lately (of my own accord.....they do not address it in the classroom) and am feeling more and more connected to the logic which lies behind his approach to teaching.

I wonder if there are any particular schools (at any age group) in Toronto or Ontario which foster the ideals put forth in Freire's work? In a way the main requirement to begin to design a program which allows teachers to adopt this process more deeply is simply having the space in which one could utilize the relevant materials to your classroom culture, coupled with the pacing required to allow students to become critical of their known and lived experiences.

Attacks on Leftist Academics in Australia

Posted Sun, 11/09/2008 - 08:52 by Greg Martin

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to go into this in detail. But I thought readers to the Freire Project would be interested in the following, particularly as it relates to some contributors and colleagues. Recently, the Young Liberals (the youth-division of the conservative Liberal Party of Australia) launched its Make Education Fair campaign. The campaign mirrors moves by conservative forces in the United States to identity and purge alleged left-wing bias from universities. In fact, a recent Opinion piece by the National President of the Young Liberals even borrowed the same language as used by Andrew Jones of the “Bruin Alumni Association”. Although it is not affiliated in any way with UCLA, Jones (a former college Republican and graduate of UCLA) targeted “extremist professors” including Peter McLaren who was named #1 on the UCLAProfs.com “Dirty Thirty” list.

Education and Passion

Posted Mon, 11/10/2008 - 00:55 by LACUSFPHD

Education is about passion. It's about loving yourself, your friends, your community, your country, your planet and even your enemies enough to share that passion with others. Civic education is about being passionate about your life here on this planet. Becoming involved with others is required of any democratic form of government. If you are not involved then the system begins to break down. Because you choose not to be engaged then someone else disengages or does not engage, then that spreads until a small number of those involved are making decisions for the majority of people in the country.

The Freire Project