Subjects Archives: Education

Romanticized, demonized, celebrated, denounced — among activists in the United States and Canada, academia is all of these things. It is a gate-keeping institution that shapes and is shaped by relations of power and privilege. It is a site of intense struggle: those who are structurally excluded battle for access, while those who study there fight for affordable and relevant education, and those who work there demand dignity, respect, and living wages. It is a place both where people develop radical politics and transformative visions and where people seclude themselves in insular, disconnected ivory towers. These contradictions are stark. Yet radicals have tried to make use of the academy. Since the 1960s, in particular, graduate school has become an attractive pathway for many activists, but also often an isolating and depoliticizing one. This is still true today, as radicals active in a variety of movements are choosing to go to grad school.

  Annual Fundraising AppealFriends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]

  Annual Fundraising AppealFriends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]

Peter McLaren, Rage and Hope: Interviews with Peter McLaren on War, Imperialism, and Critical Pedagogy (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 394 pages, paper $32.95. “One morning they gave us a guinea pig.  It came to the house in a cage.  At midday, I opened the door of the cage.  I returned home at nightfall and […]

RELIGION AND THE HUMAN PROSPECT by Alexander SaxtonBUY THIS BOOK I first met Alexander Saxton in 1997 at a conference on the “problem of whiteness,” held at the University of California, Berkeley, at which we were both speakers.  Although we had never met, I considered him a mentor, particular his book, The Rise and Fall […]

The left does not address public education often enough.  When it does, the focus is on financial inequities, racial segregation, or the testing fetish.  These are critical issues, but there is another of even greater significance.  If tomorrow we were to abolish the tests, remove the inequities, and integrate the schools, the educational system itself […]

In case you’ve been too stunned by other newsworthy disasters to pay proper attention, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was just signed into law.  This law gives the U.S. government legal permission to do things they’ve been doing sub-legally for years, such as: designate people as “unlawful enemy combatants”; deny these people the right […]

  Prodded by Amnesty International (AI), the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Asian Human Rights Commission, Reporters Without Borders, and other international organizations, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recently cobbled a group to look into the allegations of massive human rights violations — over 729 victims of extrajudicial killings, and 180 involuntary “disappearances,” by the latest count — during her […]

IRAN: A THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES? Issues to be addressed include: The century-long history of big power intervention in Iran. The US-Iran conflict over Iran’s nuclear energy program.  What are the international legal issues?  What do the Iranian people think? Impact of sanctions or US military intervention.  What is the likely impact on Iran […]

Peter McLaren David Gabbard and Karen Anijar Appleton, “Fearless Speech in Fearful Times: An Essay Review of Capitalists and Conquerors, Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism, and Teaching Peter McLaren,” MRZine, 30 October 2005 Peter McLaren is Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of […]

On February 22nd, the Chinese government shut down the China Workers’ Website and Discussion Lists because, according to the order of closure, the owner of such a website must make a 10,000,000 Yuan (US $1.2 million) deposit to register it as a legal one.  The editorial collective responded that they would not be able to […]

  “Predictions are suspect.  But something new is happening. . . .” — Paul Buhle1 A people’s movement against the “class war from above” is beginning to crystallize across Thailand.  Students and unionized workers have suddenly emerged as a new force in the streets in helping to organize a broad-based people’s alliance to oust the […]

  [This essay is a winner of an essay contest held by Left Hook and sponsored by Monthly Review. — Ed.] During the last two summers, I did not spend my days relaxing on a beach reading great novels and poems.  I did not write the grand story I promised myself I would write.  Instead, […]

  A young man by the name of Erik Hartmann graduated from Evergreen Park Community High School in Evergreen Park, Illinois in June of 1976 without having a clue of what to do beyond that. He had played sports in all four of his high school years and was quite the physical specimen. He was […]

As a rule, corporate advertising expenditure in the United States at least keeps pace with the growth rate of the U.S. economy.  This explains why ads are constantly grabbing more space and appearing in new places, such as the fronts of grocery-store shopping-carts, above men’s urinals, at the bottoms of golf holes, and inside movie […]

  Capitalists and Conquerors: A Critical Pedagogy against Empire by Peter McLaren (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy by Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) Teaching Peter McLaren: Paths of Dissent, by Marc Pruyn and Luis M. Huerta-Charles (New […]

  UPDATE, 13 October 2005, 8:45 PM, EST A BC Supreme Court judge ruled that the teachers’ union cannot use its own financial reserves, donations from supporters, or other assets for strike pay or other strike-related purposes, and appointed a monitor to oversee the ruling. On Friday, October 7, 38,000 teachers in public elementary and […]

  Introduction Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, this beautiful island in the Caribbean has aroused passions everywhere in the Americas.  Since its inception, the revolution has had a profound impact on the popular classes throughout Latin America and haunted the political elites and wealthy classes in the United States […]

  Introduction to My Panama Journals From 1972 until 1999, each field trip I made to Loma Bonita was a time of isolation from my family and friends. Telephone or computer communication was not an option, since electricity did not [and still does not] reach Loma Bonita. Nor did the postal service provide a dependable […]

The education gap in the U.S., like the wealth chasm, is growing ever wider, and equal educational opportunity, the perennial dream of working-class and progressive people, is being undermined by neo-conservative forces.  Although free universal public education was adopted early in U.S. history, equal opportunity has never been realized.  Since colonial times, education has been […]