We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Kevin Kumashiro on Chicago teachers' strike

Click here to access brief article and audio player to hear this professor talk (from 9:25m to 19:00m on the player) about the real issues related to the current Chicago teachers strike, how they are being framed by major media in conformance with leading neo-liberal advocates of both political parties, that these views on education are based on ideology and not on research, and how the framing of educational issues is being carefully limited to narrow, commonsensical constructs to distract from the larger issues of poverty, racism, class size, and widely varying school resources. 
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