Welcome Dear Colleagues! I am honoured to have the opportunity to learn with and from you as the "official instructor" of EDCI 773.
I want to be clear that when I speak of a living philosophy of social studies education,I am interested in the purposes of education and not of schooling. They are not the same thing. Education can be accomplished in some limited sense or form by some approaches to schooling, but schooling should not be confused with education. What are the purposes of education? When I ask this question of educators and student educators I often get a hackneyed response, that sounds something like, ‘education is essentially about making a living, getting a job, and preparing young people for the real world!’As if our youth have no idea of the stark and often disturbing realities of the "real world"(they may have a better idea than many school teachers who are often insulated from reality by economic and ethnocultural privilege). Seldom, do I hear anything poetic, playfully subversive, or just plain grounded in the lived reality of non-dominant contemporary and historic communities. In my philosophy of education, which some of the well schooled amongst you will probably parrot uncomfortably in future assignments(In search of the holy grail of schooling, a high grade, as we all know of the subjectivity of the red pen) the purposes of education are health, happiness, peace, cooperation, freedom, social, economic and ecological justice or what I refer to as Red Democracy? The purposes of education for me, Red Democracy, are the core ideals that I strive for everyday, that I use to measure all aspects of my work as an educator. I ask is there anything else worth striving for, other than an Ideal? As educators you must continually keep your eyes on this great prize. You must judge even the most mundane decisions you make as an educator by your ideal. I always ask myself how does this reading, discussion or lecture get us closer to the ideal? How does this action or decision create the scaffolding for an emancipatory democratic transformation of the educational space? You should know before we begin our course together that I resist the continued colonization, commodification and inferiorisation of the concept of "democracy," and democracy in education. In my research, teaching and life I am striving to the reclaim an expansive critical participatory democracy, or Red Democracy.Below find a few web based resources that may help you expand your notion of democracy, and democracy in education, and help you construct the main poles of a Longhouse of democracy:
http://www.democracycollaborative.org/The Democracy Collaborative undertakes integrated activities aimed at leveraging the resources of higher education institutions in support of democratic renewal, civic participation, and community building
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/digitext.htmlColumbia university Digital text project on classics in Democracy and Democracy and Education, including Aristotle, Plato, Dewey, Rousseau, Hume, Locke, Kant
http://www.democraticdialogue.com/Democratic Dialogue is committed to the critical exploration of democratic ideals in education and society through a program of international collaborative research and dissemination.
http://www.youthrights.org/Children organizing for political rights will probably be treated initially with ridicule and derision, and then with misunderstanding and perhaps eventually violence if the experience of the struggle for women's suffrage is any precedent. Undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to be overcome is the adult refusal to acknowledge that children suffer political discrimination and exclusion. Adults do not perceive children as a minority group but as helpless, inexperienced, defenseless young people who need protection. Adult paternalism seeks to protect and if in this process it curtails freedom, truncates potential and destroys civil liberties this is taken to be incidental. The belief in the legitimacy of paternalism justifies and cements the existing power relationships between adults and young people. This attitude must be confronted, challenged and refuted if young people are to secure their political rights...
http://www.unicef.org/voy/Unicef's voice of youth website
http://www.campusdemocracy.org/The 180/Movement for Democracy and Education is dedicated to helping build a campus-based movement for political empowerment and participatory democracy. Through education and organizing we hope to encourage a radical political presence in our schools to transform them and our communities into truly democratic spaces.
http://www.ohiou.edu/ide/start.htmlInstitute for Democracy in Education (IDE) was born in 1985 at Ohio University. It was founded by a group of local teachers dismayed that the debate over public school reform overlooked the historic purpose of public education -- the development of participatory citizens who have cultivated democratic habits of heart and mind. Promoting democratic education became the group's focus.
http://www.freechild.org/SNAYR/The SNAYR is the most comprehensive database of information on youth rights available today
http://freechild.org/student_rights.htmstudent rights directory
http://prorev.com/schools.htmProgressive Youth and Education News
http://www.teachingforchange.org/Teaching for Change provides teachers and parents with the tools to transform schools into socially equitable centers of learning where students become architects of a better future. Teaching for Change is a not-for-profit organization based in Washington, DC
http://www.pencilsdown.org/news.html is the meeting place for parents, educators and citizens concerned with the miseducation of children in the name of higher standardized test scores. We plan to use grassroots organization, public education, civic participation and humor to stem the destructive tide of the standardized testing craze.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/Some articles and comment from "schooling" and "testing" pundit Alfie Kohn
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9410-education.htmlNoam Chomsky Mellon Lecture,Democracy and Education, Loyola University, Chicago October 19, 1994
http://www.zmag.org/ZNet is a huge website updated daily to convey information and provide community. About 300,000 people a week use ZNet's articles, watch areas and sub-sites, translations, archives, links to other progressive sites, daily commentary program, and more
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