Friday, January 15, 2010

Resist, Mobilize, Transform

Please click through the image above (or link beneath to read Nick Bygon's comments on his poster for the March 4th Day of Action in Defense of Public Education and all Public-Sector Services, supported and endorsed by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), the California Faculty Association (CFA), AFT 2121, UESF, the San Francisco Labor Council, Community College students and unions, and dozens of public education and public-sector unions.

"Resist, Mobilize, Transform" surely applies to the New Faculty Majority's mission as well as it does to protecting higher education ~ which we, especially as "The New Majority," are part of too.

Do you recall that well-used and by now well worn favorite of pundits: "as goes California, so goes the county"? It's not just an old pundit's tale. California's higher ed dilemma is either coming to your campus or has already arrived.

If you don't feel you can support the proposed actions (not place to tell you what to do or how ~ and vice versa), at the very least you owe to yourself and your profession to be as well informed as possible, which means reading more than just the mainstream media and the established/ establishment academic press.

The following are my personal picks from the many excellent independent online sources out there:

To be sure there are more ... all worthy of listing. And who knows, may well get their hat tip or even a blogroll of their own.

Do you have favorites to recommend? Please submit them, preferably annotated...

11 comments:

  1. http://www.eumed.net/entelequia/pdf/2009/e10a10.pdf

    "Online or University Education?"
    from the journal Entelequia
    University of Barcelona

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  2. nice communist looking poster.can only wonder how radical this is

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  3. Anonymous, subjective ~ all in the eye. I wonder though, could your reality be out of date.

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  4. - I'm pretty sure the graphic in question was designed by a student at the Annenberg School of Journalism, pretty mainstream

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  5. I live in an area with a lot of Amish-Mennonite population in Western New York State along lake Ontario. Often we do business with the Amish and we buy and sell various products or services from one another. I know a lot of them well - they are indescribably the nicest, loving, honest and decent people I know.

    I’d like to take at random 100 SENIOR students from public “educated” schools from anywhere in the USA and sit them down to an Amish school math test the Amish school gives to 10-13 year olds. It’s simple practical math. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, long division, decimals, fractions ETC…

    The budget set aside for most public school’s GYM CLASS would build entire school houses for the Amish-Mennonites here. I bet those 100 “PUBLIC” educated Seniors could not score anywhere near as high as these Amish children.

    No, the Amish children COULD NOT upload videos to you tube, they more than likely couldn’t use an ipod…that is not my point. These Amish kids learn more from PENNIES per day being spent on their education than the hundreds of dollars per day, per student spent on public educated students.

    The “GIVE-ME, GIVE-ME, GIVE-ME!” attitude from the growing number of SPOILED BRAT Americans is killing this country in my opinion.

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  6. I can see we wouldn't agree on a number of points and getting into it, especially in comments on a old post, doesn't seem especially productive.

    The Amish example is interesting but neither original nor particularly relevant. My father grew up on a dairy in Northern New York state and walked though the proverbial snow to a one room school house. He put himself through St Lawrence University during the depression playing cards for fun and profit. I raised two children on low wages without child support or welfare and could not finish college until they were grown.

    Neither example is relevant either, except perhaps the latter since completing college depended on access to affordable public education, likewise having been awarded a Humanities Institute research assistantship for graduate work at UC Davis.

    Spoiled brat Americans come in all ages. Some students are but not all ~ the claim such is a sweeping and unwarranted generalization. Teaching at Davis, I saw exceptionally bright, hardworking and talented students who would not have been able to get the quality education their intelligence and aptitudes merited. What a waste that would have been.

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  7. Poster does look communist in color, composition and overall content. Too bad the student who designed this (from a mainstream journalism school) could not be original with his/her intent.

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  8. Don't confuse period elements with ideology. The poster is just as fascist and falangist - if not more so - in color and composition as it is communist. That pinko Thomas Jefferson thought education was a human right and transformative too

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  9. Wouldn't it be appropriate to address design comments to the artist? The post, assuming readers could read, opens with a request to "please click through the image above (or link beneath to read Nick Bygon's comments on his poster for the March 4th Day of Action."

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  10. Here are the artist's comments:

    I created this poster to help unify the March 4th Protest against Budget Cuts in the State of California and to help organize any group suffering a similar injustice. It is a Creative Commons piece as always so it is free to use in any way that you choose as long as it serves to advance the movement.

    If you would like to print this document make sure you select the CMYK version and if you would like to use it to display on your computer or another electronic device please use the RGB version. Please add this as your icon for any social networking site such as Facebook or Myspace to help build solidarity and expand awareness for the movement.

    Cheers
    Nick Bygon

    P.S. The slogan "Resist Mobilize Transform" was taken from Nigerian environmentalist activist and poet Nnimmo Bassey.

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  11. NOTICE: closing comments on this thread. The original message, posted mid January was to announce an event already past and provide a few reference links, garnished with a graphic. Although relevant and current discussion is always welcome, recent anonymous comments have been neither.

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