I was pretty heavily involved in the election that was held in Australia on the 21st August. I helped in the campaign of the local Australian Labor Party Member, setting up polling booths and handing out how-to-vote cards. I also had the opportunity to scrutineer whie the vote was being counted.
 

The Creativity Crisis
For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.

If news reports from the last three decades should check clean, Black and Brown males only number the Criminal Justice System today because they choose, of own free will, to turn the ways of crime and disorder; perhaps also because they seem to come from stock inherently deformed and defiled—unable to adapt to a civilized world where barbarism is unacceptable.
 

I've been reading a lot about critical education and the links between it and education for democracy, at the moment. It's a fascinating subject, and very closely associated, I believe with Critical Pedagogy and Freire's work. One of the best texts on it that I've read is 'Democracy at the Crossroads', edited by Cameron White and Roger Openshaw, which is an excellent collection of articles about the role of education in developing critical - or not - citizens. Although there is a bit of a bias towards Australia and New Zealand (which was good for me) I've no doubt that it'd be useful for all kinds of critical educators.

On April 8, 2010, Henry Giroux took on Roosevelt Auditorium at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, to let out some frank truths about the world we live in and the future awaiting youth.
 
Giroux's talk, "Shattered Bonds: Youth in a Suspect Society and the Politics of Disposability," railed unambiguously against neoliberalism, against the "mindless, stupid" practice of teaching to the test, against the contempt with which society often treats youth (and more so those cut across class and color lines), against casino capitalism and against a culture of cruelty that insists "any form of dependency whatsoever is somehow a weakness."
 

What are we doing in space right now?  How can we go ahead with space exploration to the tune of $6BILLION dollars when the Earth is such a shambles and there's no money for social services?  What's really going on here?
 
Obama Outlines US Space Program

Later in the day, President Obama traveled to Florida, where he defended his new space exploration policy in a speech Thursday to NASA employees at the Kennedy Space Center. Obama emphasized his commitment to the human exploration of space, announcing he will add $6 billion to NASA’s annual budget over the next five years.

There have been highly worrying symptoms at the Australian National University (ANU) where I study as an undergraduate and what entails below is one account of a deepening situation which seems to be getting worse.

The renowned comedienne Wanda Sykes unleashed the following in I’ma Be Me, her latest HBO special: “We really do need to revamp our education system. It doesn’t work. It does not work. … We don’t learn anything. It’s not comprehension—it’s just retention, it’s just rote. That’s it. We just keep it long enough to spit it back out—pass the test, and we get rid of that sh--. … It’s like our brain’s a big Etch-A-Sketch.
 
At this Wanda began rattling her head vigorously, in like manner of a kid erasing scrawls from an Etch-A-Sketch pad, leaving audience members bent over from cracked ribs. But in jest, as is often said, much truth is told.
 

This movie was recommended to me by a former professor of mine who uses the film in his Teacher Education courses.
 
Though billed as a comedy, Ciao Professore, touches on serious issues. Set in rural Italy, the film explores the idea of compulsory schooling, pragmatic education and portrays the teacher as both educator and "educatee". It also makes the important distinction between education and schooling. The main character, Marco Spirelli, hails from an urban background and struggles, at times, to overcome the cultural divides that separate him from his students.
 

One thing that has caught my interest in recent weeks that simply cant go without mention is the development in Australia of the McDonald’s sponsored ‘Maths Online’ web tutorial program. Designed as ‘... a high quality, independent online maths tutoring program based on Australian state curricula for Years 7 – 12’, it caught my eye as being something more than the many (some corporately sponsored) web based education programs available.

They went to school expecting to learn the wonders of the world and acquire the academic skills requisite for a successful career; instead, they were “indoctrinated” into the Cult of Obama, brainwashed into praising the politics of Hitler’s reincarnation.

For some, the first five months of Obama’s presidency have marked the dawn of a new era; a time when governance is filtered through the channels of pragmatism and diplomacy. For others, these five months have confirmed a belief long-held before candidate Obama overtook Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee - that he was not the change-agent he had so eloquently claimed to be.