Tag: Education

Over 55,000 Canada’s education workers strike in defiance of ‘draconian’ law

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More than 55,000 education workers in Ontario have walked off the job, pledging to strike for “as long as it takes” in defiance a “draconian” new law amid a bitter fight with the provincial government over pay. The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents custodial staff, early childhood education and education support workers, launched the strike on Friday, despite legislation fast-tracked by the Ontario premier, Doug Ford, that bars it from striking and unilaterally imposes a contract on employees.

Ontario fast-tracked passage of Bill 28 earlier this week, which fines striking workers C$4,000 ($2,955; £2,260) a day – nearly a full month’s salary for the average employee. “An important piece of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is being shredded before our very eyes,” the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, warning that Bill 28 shatters the norm of governments restraint in invoking the clause and putting other rights – free speech, freedom of religion – at risk.

— source theguardian.com | 4 Nov 2022

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Teachers Union in Ohio Went on Strike for Students—and Won

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Students, teachers, and support staff in Ohio’s largest school district returned to the classroom on Monday after the Columbus Education Association won a new contract and ended its weeklong strike. Gathered at the local minor league ballpark on Sunday, CEA members voted 71% to 29% to approve a three-year contract with Columbus City Schools that satisfies most of the union’s demands, which revolved around improving students’ learning environments and opportunities. In addition to much-needed improvements to learning and working conditions, the roughly 4,500-member union—representing teachers, librarians, nurses, counselors, and other education professionals—was able to secure better pay and benefits.

— source commondreams.org | Aug 29, 2022

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Grades Are Capitalism in Action

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The capitalist economic system has major failures. It generates extreme, socially divisive inequalities of wealth and income. It consistently fails to achieve full employment. Many of its jobs are boring, dangerous and/or mind-numbing. Every four to seven years, it suffers a mysterious downdraft in which millions of people lose jobs and incomes, businesses collapse, falling tax revenues undermine public services, and so on. If these failures were widely perceived as the inherent failures of the capitalist system, the desirability and thus sustainability of capitalism itself might vanish.

How, then, has capitalism survived? Its persistence can best be explained in terms of ideology. The system produces and disseminates interpretations of its failures that blame these problems not on capitalism itself, but on other altogether different “causes.” Institutions have developed mechanisms to anchor such interpretations widely and deeply in the popular consciousness.

One key example is the concept of “meritocracy.” Schools are a key institution that teaches and practices meritocracy via the mechanism of grading. From primary school through

— source truthout.org | Richard Wolff | Aug 5, 2019

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Teachers’ Forum Condemns NCERT’s Decision to Remove Chapters on Climate Change

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After widespread outrage, a teacher’s forum has also stepped in to criticise NCERT for removing crucial chapters concerning climate and weather change from students’ syllabus and has urged a rethink on the issue and reintroduction of the chapters. In a statement released recently, Teachers Against Climate Crisis (TACC) highlighted said chapters on the greenhouse effect, weather, climate and popular environment movements from syllabi for classes 6th to 12th were crucial and should not have been removed.

The deleted chapters include an entire chapter on the greenhouse effect from the Class 11 geography syllabus, a chapter on weather, climate, and water from the Class 7 syllabus, and information about the monsoon from the Class 9 syllabus. The forum also voiced concern that information about popular people’s movements like the Chipko movement and the Narmada Bachao Andolan had been removed from the “Democratic Politics” syllabus as part of the “Popular Struggles and Movements” course.

— source newsclick.in | 12 Jul 2022

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The Origin of Student Debt

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With the vociferous debate over President Joe Biden’s announcement that the federal government will cancel a portion of outstanding student debt, it’s important to understand how Americans came to owe the current cumulative total of more than $1.6 trillion for higher education.

In 1970, Ronald Reagan was running for reelection as governor of California. He had first won in 1966 with confrontational rhetoric toward the University of California public college system and executed confrontational policies when in office. In May 1970, Reagan had shut down all 28 UC and Cal State campuses in the midst of student protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. On October 29, less than a week before the election, his education adviser Roger A. Freeman spoke at a press conference to defend him.

Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.” According to the Chronicle article, Freeman

— source theintercept.com | Jon Schwarz | Aug 25 2022

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Indian Boarding Schools Were Part of “Horrific Genocidal Process” Carried Out by the U.S.

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A new report by the Interior Department has documented the deaths of 500 Indigenous children at Indian boarding schools run or supported by the federal government in the United States, but the actual death toll is believed to be far higher. The report also located 53 burial sites at former schools, which were run for over a century. The report marks the first time the Department of Interior has documented some of the horrific history at the schools, known for their brutal assimilation practices forcing students to change their clothing, language and culture.

And as you could hear in the voices of the people, Secretary Haaland, this is a very emotional experience for a lot of Indigenous people in this country. And it should be an emotional experience for non-Indigenous people in this country. This is quite a historic moment in time. Although it’s not new news to Indigenous people, it might be new news to those who are hearing this horrific genocidal process that has taken place.

I think, you know, there’s a reason why the forcibly transferring of children from one group to another group is an international legal definition of genocide. That’s what we’re talking about, because taking children, or the process of Indian child removal, has been one strategy for terrorizing Native families for centuries, from the mass removal of Native children from their communities into boarding schools, as this new report lays out, from their communities into their widespread adoption and fostering out to mostly white

— source democracynow.org | May 13, 2022

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After Over 4 Decades of Failure, Time to Ban This High-Stakes Standardized Testing Regime

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Standardized tests were supposed to be the magic remedy to fix our public schools.

They were supposed to make all students proficient in reading and math.

They were supposed to ensure all students were getting the proper resources.

They were supposed to ensure all teachers were doing their best for their students.

But after more than four decades, standardized tests have not fulfilled a single one of these promises.

In fact, all they’ve done is make things worse at public schools while creating a lucrative market for testing companies and school privatization concerns.

— source commondreams.org | Steven Singer | Apr 9, 2022

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