Reading from #adjunct, #EdBlogNet, etc blogs…featuring @PlashingVole on public #media #education

…and more from the PF blogrolls including (but hardly limited to) Dave Greene on How AFT blew it, Rich Moser on The Green Party and the 2016 Election, Bryan Alexander on How students choose majors during recessions and Steven Krause on Twitter, tenure and what students don't know (nor the general public either). All domestic...

The vole's Bye Bye Beeb takes it global, addresses #ShockDoctrine too in case anyone has been sleeping through the international news and still doesn't realize all the assaults on public education or anything smacking of the public good are happening everywhere. 

The Plashing Vole writes:

#ReclaimEducation…#PublicEdNation event, links & videos

...from National Public Education Network's #PublicEdNation event, October 11, 2014. For an event recap that also talks about both education blogging and involving higher education in the quest to #ReclaimEducation from corporations and "education privateers," read Russ Walsh's "Hangin' at Public Education Nation" with 200 hundred or so Badass Teachers, bloggers, school administrators, college professors, parents and students. Yes, bloggers are making a difference -- so will connecting more ed bloggers, whether across borders or discipline and category silos. Or as the adjunked professor commands us adjunct and precarious bloggers, blog on!

Public Education Nation videos still MIA: 

Testing and the Common Core: New York Principal of the Year Carol Burris leads a discussion  with educators Takeima Bunche-Smith, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen and Alan Aja.

Support Our Schools, Don’t Close Them: Chicago teacher Xian Barrett moderates a panel featuring education professor Yohuru Williams, Hiram Rivera of the Philadelphia Student Union, and a representative of the Newark Student Union.

...and the not to be missed closing event, Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown, In Conversation: The event finished off with a conversation between leading community activist Jitu Brown and Diane Ravitch (both pictured above), who talked about building a movement for real improvement in our schools. Until the video is archived, here's a Bill Moyers interview with Diane Ravitch. You can fill in some gaps following the #PublicEdNation tag on Twitter. @CPFA_forum, @AddieJunked, @precariousfac and @VCVaile followed the event from afar, retweeting posts of particular interest to our "ad-junked nation,"

What’s Eating Public Education?

…not just #highered either…K-12 is in a state of siege. It's issues are our issues. Look at Chicago, teacher bashing, charter schools, de-funding and more. The problem is complex: solutions possibly more so. Understanding is a start. Perspectives on background and history  abound. Here's one set among many. Robert DeWitz writes,

Our public education is under attack! K-12, Adult Ed, Community Colleges, Cal States, and UCs are undergoing systematic destruction to make way for privatization. The failings of public schools can largely be attributed to external pressures, largely from the corporate world, at the national, state, and local levels. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the attack on Public ED and our common struggle to save it. For the sake of simplicity I will focus on California.

Students on the Front Lines of Class War

So what does that have to do with #adjuncts, #academiclabor & #NFM's #highered mission? In my opinion, plenty. Perhaps Juan Cole's Truthdig essay How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War will help explain why we should be there with them. If not, then at least include it in discussions about our purpose and where it fits in the current cultural, economic and higher education landscape.

Joe Wolf (CC-BY-ND)

By Juan Cole

The deliberate pepper-spraying by campus police of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis on Friday has provoked national outrage. But the horrific incident must not cloud the real question: What led comfortable, bright, middle-class students to join the Occupy protest movement against income inequality and big-money politics in the first place?

The University of California system raised tuition by more than 9 percent this year, and the California State University system upped tuition by 12 perceity.


Follow the link to read the rest of How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War.


Juan Cole,  a celebrated Mideast scholar and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, also blogs at Informed Comment. His Truthdig column appears every other Tuesday.