Antiracist Solidarity in Critical Education: Contemporary Problems and Possibilities

This paper argues that antiracist solidarity in education remains urgent, but that in framing solidarity projects critical educators have not been sufficiently attentive to the shape and extent of racism as a global ordering of social life. We describe the paternalism that has determined historical efforts at solidarity between African Americans and Whites and then extend our analysis of whiteness to the contemporary context, outlining its expressions in schooling and the challenges they pose for solidarity projects. Drawing on recent work in cultural studies and philosophy, we describe whiteness as a basic ordering of human being as well as a system of material and cultural oppression, and suggest that antiracist solidarity has to involve a reorganization of ways of being and knowing as well as a vision of global coexistence that respects epistemological difference and autonomy. On this basis we identify several key principles that should guide projects of antiracist solidarity in the present. The paper describes the most important implications of these principles for teaching, focusing in particular on the differing costs to teachers of color and White teachers of participation in antiracist activism, and outlining a form of solidarity without guarantees that can orient critical work in schools.     

Challenging the premises of international policy reviews: an introduction to the review symposium

In 2009, a think tank called the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes (IALEI) announced the results of a study entitled Climate Change and Sustainable Development: The Response from Education. Intended for a policy audience, the study offered a glimpse into the status of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and an early look at the emergence of Climate Change Education (CCE), in 10 different nations. As with most international reports, the IALEI report provoked many questions, some of which are more broadly relevant to scholarship and practice. This paper introduces a review symposium that addresses three such questions: (1) How coherent is the concept of ESD across national contexts and what conceptual tensions continue to surround ESD and CCE? (2) Can nation-level analyses tell us anything useful about countries where education is not centrally governed? and (3) In light of the evolving relationship between educational research and policy, how should researchers engage with ongoing policy debates?     

The Wonderful World of Radio-TV

Kenneth R. Sparks' A Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations in Television and Radio (School of Journalism, Newhouse Communications Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y. 13210, $3.50 paperback)

Joseph Keeley's The Left Leaning Antenna: Political Bias in Television (Arlington House, $8.95)

James Aronson's Packaging the News: A Critical Survey of Press, Radio, TV. (Little New World Paperbacks, available from International Publishers, 381 Park Ave. South, New York 10016, $1.45 paperback)

Walter Cronkite and Fred W. Friendly's I Can Hear It Now: The Sixties (Columbia Records M3X 30353, $9.95 for the set)

Phyllis Feinstein's All About Sesame Street (Tower T-075-19, 75¢)

Bruce F. Elving's FM Station Atlas (contact the author c/o WUWM Radio, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisc. 53201, $2.00)

Takeo Furo's The Function of Television for Children and Adolescents (Tokyo: Sophia University: available in this country from Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland, Vt., $9.50)

Richard Averson and David Manning White's Electronic Drama. Television Plays of the Sixties (Beacon Press, $9.95)

Bernard Wilkie's The Technique of Special Effects in Television (Hastings House, $16.50)

Action For Children's Television issued occasionally for a membership fee of $5.00 per year

Cable Television: Communications Medium of the Seventies (Samson Science Corp., Quantam Science Corp., 245 Park Ave., New York 10017, $195)     

Humanizing Instructional Videos in Physics: When Less Is More

Many instructors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are striving to create active learning environments in their classrooms and in doing so are frequently moving the lecture portion of their course into online video format. In this classroom-based study, we used a two group randomized experimental design to examine the efficacy of an instructional video that incorporates a human hand demonstrating and modeling how to solve frictional inclined plane problems compared to an identical video that did not include the human hand. The results show that the learners who viewed the video without the human hand present performed significantly better on a learning test and experienced a significantly better training efficiency than the learners who viewed the video with the human hand present. Meanwhile, those who learned with the human hand present in the instructional video rated the instructor as being more humanlike and engaging. The results have implications for both theory and practice. Implications for those designing instructional videos are discussed, as well as the limitations of the current study.     

Decolonial pedagogy and the ethics of the global

An ethical and democratic globality, and the kind of education that would contribute to it, are only possible in the context of a recognition of the relations of power that have shaped history, and in particular the political, cultural, economic, and epistemological processes of domination that have characterized colonialism and Eurocentrism. Imagining an ethics of the global in this context means articulating a decolonial perspective. Starting from recent work in philosophy and cultural studies, this paper describes key principles of such an orientation to globality, and develops a reconceptualization of education in the context of this framework. The article proposes in particular a curriculum against domination, oriented against the epistemic and cultural violence of Eurocentrism that underlies the politics of content and knowledge in education, and a pedagogy of lovingness, committed to building global solidarity based on non-dominative principles of coexistence and kindredness.     

Preparing New Teachers for Urban Teaching: Creating a Community Dedicated to Social Justice

Focusing on community as a key element in teacher education, this paper highlights the importance of new teachers embarking on their careers with a vision for social justice. Paying specific attention to the need for effective teachers in America's urban schools, the author stresses purposeful development of this vision for social justice alongside practical skills for classroom instruction in teacher education. The Teacher Education for the Advancement of a Multicultural Society (TEAMS) Program at the University of San Francisco is described to show possibilities for offering new teachers this combination. Professional development, networking, and service-learning are highlighted as foundations of TEAMS designed to help new teachers begin their careers with vision and a sense of community.     

Cyberorganizing Everyday Heritage in and around Public Libraries: An Exploratory Study in Illinois

Trends from both within and without public librarianship create new opportunities for libraries to serve the public’s interest in heritage information. Based on a workshop series in Illinois, this article presents exploratory findings on existing public library heritage services and how cyberorganizing can enhance these services. Public libraries offer heterogeneous heritage services in local contexts composed of multiple actors and institutions. Improving this service area involves organizing within libraries, across local institutions, and among individuals with diverse interests. Part of this organizational work involves digital technologies, but people are the core element in organizing everyday heritage services.     

Race,Reason and Reasonableness: Toward an “Unreasonable” Pedagogy

Starting from the contemporary critical-theoretical notion of an objective violence that organizes social reality in capitalism, including processes of systemic racism, as well as from phenomenological inquiries into processes of race and identity, this article explores the relationship between racism and reasonableness in education and society. The category of the reasonable connects the content of particular propositions with the inner truth of the form of thought. At the same time, the reasonable refers to what can be legitimated not only intellectually but practically and morally. I describe how the force of this category, working through neoliberal modalities of appropriation and penality, is an anchor for persistent processes of racial oppression in educational policy and curriculum. Furthermore, if the reasonable is a central figure for ideology, then a kind of thinking that would break with it will show up in the first instance as unreasonable. Thus, I argue that critical pedagogy in the present needs to start from a different and “unreasonable” reason. In addition, taking its cue from interventions by radical educators and students, critical teaching needs to challenge the dominative decorum that forces dialogue on race and racism into the narrow spaces—both material and discursive—of the given.