Connexions Resource Centre
Focus on Education, Children
Recent & Selected Articles
This is a small sampling of articles related to education and children in the Connexions Online Library. For more articles, books, films, and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as
education,
children,
youth,
post-secondary education,
film,
and schools.
- Connexions Archive seeks a new home (November 18, 2009)
The Connexions Archive, a Toronto-based library dedicated to preserving the history of grassroots movements for social change, needs a new home.
- Guernica Written With the Hands and Hearts of Children (October 5, 2009)
The keynote speaker at the launch of the exhibition Gaza's childrens' paintings, referred to the paintings as “a toxic cargo of beautiful but unwelcome images which it is necessary that we see and acknowledge.” Toxic because the blockade and assault on Gaza was, and is, toxic. Toxic because the paintings mirror back to our adult world the poisonous environment we have watched develop for these children. The paintings describe aerial bombardment of apartment blocks, mosques, schools, hospitals, ambulances. They portray phosphorous, helicopter and drone attacks on civilians. Gunboats fire inland from the sea. Bulldozers demolish homes. Everything happens in an enclosed space from which there is no escape.
- Spain Excludes Settlement University from Academic Competition (September 21, 2009)
The "University Center of Ariel in Samaria" (AUCS) has been excluded from a prestigious university competition about sustainable architecture in Spain. With this move, Spain joins the growing number of European governments taking effective, even though preliminary, steps to uphold international law by boycotting or divesting from institutions and corporations involved in or profiting from Israel's illegal Wall and colonial settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.
- Mobile Schools Help Nomadic Somalis Fight Drought (September 17, 2009)
Mobile schools - secular pre-schools which follow these groups as they move to find pasture and water for livestock - are an attempt to help nomadic communities develop more options as the climate becomes increasingly hostile.
- The Corporate Stranglehold on Education (September 8, 2009)
Rather than challenge the economic irresponsibility, ecological damage, and human suffering, and culture of cruelty unleashed by free market fundamentalism, higher education appears to be one of its staunchest defenders, uncritically embracing a view of itself based on a market model of the academy.
- Brazil: Changing Lives Through the Power of Dance (September 7, 2009)
Founded in 1991 and directed by Dora Andrade, EDISCA is a non-governmental organisation that caters exclusively to children and adolescents from poor neighbourhoods.
- Fighting For The Right To Walk (September 4, 2009)
Israel has denied the residents of Gaza -- children and adults -- Gaza food, medical supplies, clean water, building materials, health care, and pretty much every other element of normal life, and in doing so has violated the most basic standards of human decency.
- Education gap divides Jerusalem (September 3, 2009)
A recent report by an Israeli non-governmental organisation says 5,000 Palestinian children in East Jerusalem will not be able to attend classes this year because there are not enough classrooms.
- Gaza’s Kite Runners (August 11, 2009)
Gazan children’s kites are expressions of defiance, hope and the longing for freedom.
- Israel’s School Apartheid Highlighted By Court Case (August 10, 2009)
Instances of Arab children being denied places at kindergartens and junior schools have become more common in recent years. Now, an Arab couple whose daughter was expelled from an Israeli daycare centre on her first day because she was Arab is taking the case to court.
- Turning Children Into Consumers (June 29, 2009)
Children are naïve about advertising and can easily be manipulated and exploited by marketers to want and demand their products. Corporate marketers believe that over time they can be shaped into lifelong consumers with brand loyalties and that can be profitable for decades to come.
- Keeping Books Safe (April 2, 2009)
Imagine a dystopian horror tale in which virtually all books from the past were destroyed...Books that did not meet the ideologies of the publishers, the demands of the mass market, the trends of the day would be destroyed...That incredible scenario is actually playing out in terms of children's books under a law meant to protect toddlers from lead contaminant in toys. Called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the law was passed in August 2008 -- quickly, without scrutiny and nearly unanimously.
- Race Obsession harms those it is meant to help (March 29, 2009)
Ethnic monitoring does not just produce misleading data. The process of classification often creates the very problems it is supposed to solve. Local authorities have used ethnic categories not only as a means of collecting data but also as a way of distributing political power – by promoting certain ‘community leaders’ – and of disbursing public funds through ethnically-based projects. Once the allocation of power, resources and opportunities becomes linked to membership of particular groups, then people inevitably begin to identify themselves in terms of those ethnicities, and only those ethnicities.
- The Israel Advocacy Push to “Reclaim” York University (March 3, 2009)
York is a longstanding hub for “Israel advocacy” organizations (as they designate themselves). This reality expresses itself in various ways. At the grassroots level, far-right Zionist organizing has been common at York since at least the early 1980s, and seems to have even included direct recruitment for armed settler movements in the West Bank (and more commonly for the Israeli military itself). At the level of university fundraising, York has thoroughly integrated some of Canada’s leading Israel advocacy figures into its main administrative bodies. And at the level of university governance, York has earned a reputation for deep association with the Israeli state and for heavy-handed regulation of campus politics in favor of Israel advocates.
- Academic Freedom Threatened in Ontario Universities (February 18, 2009)
While most academics would agree that a university should be a place where critical debate is fostered, what is academic freedom when the freedom to attend classes without being bombed isn't even assured? Academic freedom falters it seems when it comes to Palestine, whether in the Middle East or in North America. Not only is there no realizable academic freedom for Palestinians, but also, even in North America, students and faculty raising critical viewpoints about Israel find themselves muffled, accused of anti-Semitism, threatened with disciplinary action, or, in the case of former Depaul University professor, Norman Finkelstein, out of a job entirely.
- The Case for Academic Boycott (January 31, 2009)
Academic boycott targets Israel's intellectual leadership, the educated elite whose record consists largely of misinforming Israelis about their history, distorting their understanding of current conflicts, normalizing the racism of their society, and providing to the Israeli military and government the legal, technological, and political tools it needs to facilitate the continued theft of Palestinian land and the containment of its restive population.
- Edward Said's shadowy legacy (May 7, 2008)
So many academics want the arguments presented in Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) to be true. It discourages any kind of critical approach to Islam in Middle Eastern studies.
- Profit motives behind sexualization of 'tween girls (April 25, 2008)
The sexualization of 'tween girls - those between the ages of 8 and 12 -- in pop culture and advertising is a growing problem fueled by marketers' efforts to create cradle-to-grave consumers.
- Free Speech and Acceptable Truths (April 1, 2008)
While we support freedom of speech and academic freedom, we believe that university administrations have a duty to provide a safe learning environment in which students and faculty are protected by incorrect or harmful ideas. To achieve this safe learning environment, it will be necessary for the university authorities to cleanse the university's libraries of harmful books, to block inappropriate Internet sites, to ban guest lectures who hold improper views, and to identify and prosecute students and faculty who are guilty of thought crimes.
- Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage: What is at Stake? (February 27, 2008)
There are good people on either side of the same-sex marriage debate. Unfortunately, however, it has been one of the most divisive issues in society. Opponents of same-sex marriage perceive the other side as part of a cabal of gay activists and social-engineering judges and politicians, intent on making a mockery of important social values. Proponents of same-sex marriage often perceive the other side as "homophobic" bigots or religious fundamentalists who want to deprive gay or lesbian couples of a right enjoyed by others because they hate homosexuals. The debate over same-sex marriage has divided people who share common values and beliefs on many fundamental questions--war and peace, economic security, democracy versus the increasingly anti-democratic and repressive nature of American society. This divisive debate cripples the ability of ordinary Americans to unite around the things that we agree on.
- Who owns knowledge? (September 21, 2007)
The resurgence of a Romantic view of culture poses a real menace to the free flow of knowledge and threatens to corral it into intellectual Bantustans. The ideas of free speech and open debate become meaningless if we fail to defend a universalist concept of knowledge or if we accept the notion of science as but a local view whose factual claims must defer to cultural and political needs. If scientific debate is constrained to express only sentiments with which people feel comfortable, culturally and politically, then science dies as the line between knowledge and myth becomes eroded.
- Health care and children in crisis in Gaza (March 26, 2007)
These days one hears a lot about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, adults who have been specifically trained for warfare, who are nevertheless traumatized by the experience of seeing comrades injured or killed, or suffering injuries or danger themselves. The trauma goes on, long after the experience has ended and they are back in a place of safety. How much worse then for children in Gaza who witness and experience these events day after day, week after week with no end and with no place of safety.
- Strip-Searching Children (March 15, 2007)
Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades.
- My Father Was an Anonymous Sperm Donor (December 17, 2006)
Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies -- conceived in the late 1980s and early '90s, when sperm banks became more common and donor insemination began to flourish -- are coming of age, and we have something to say. I'm here to tell you that emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn't ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It's hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won't matter to the "products" of the cryobanks' service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place. We offspring are recognizing the right that was stripped from us at birth -- the right to know who both our parents are.
- The Academic Boycott Debate (November 28, 2006)
An excellent summary and commentary on a debate at Ryerson University about whether Israel should be subjected to an academic boycott because of its human rights violations.
- Breaking the Spell of Stupid Opinions (2006)
When someone is outside the hold of a stupid opinion, its inanity is so apparent that one wonders how it could ever be held by anyone. But when people are caught believing something that isn't reality-based, most believe it far more rigidly than they believe facts.
- On Handcuffed and Felonious Children (February 9, 2005)
Arresting young children for a crayon drawing, not unlike the games of hangman we once all played, is the ultimate meaning and logic of Zero Tolerance. Zero tolerance involves the application of law in an extreme and uncompromising manner to any activity, violent or not, that is deemed to be anti-social.
- Right-Wing Thought Police Assault Free Speech on Campus (February 1, 2005)
he Orwellian campaign to portray the expression of views in the university that run contrary to those ruling the country as a lack of "academic freedom."
- Disaster and Mental Health (2005)
The continuing Israeli military occupation of Gaza is the cause of deep and widespread trauma for Palestinian children and adults.
- How 'diversity' breeds division (August 19, 2004)
Diversity training is supposed to help 'promote good relations' between different ethnic groups and capitalise on workforce diversity. However, there is warranted scepticism about whether such training alleviates tensions or exacerbates them. Much of the content of this training is overreliant on pop sociology and pseudo-therapeutic techniques. Participants are expected to talk about stereotypes they harbour deep in their subconscious, and disclose feelings of harassment and victimisation. Trainers claim to eliminate stereotypes in the workplace, yet in talking about 'different cultural perspectives' they end up generating new and more insidious stereotypes in their stead.
- Why Are Families Under Attack? (2004)
The media are full of very sophisticated anti-family messages, which can come from both the right and the left. Liberals denigrate the value of families in which children are raised by their real mother and father, and they sometimes suggest that such families are often patriarchies with abusive fathers. Conservatives often call for "family values" in which women are subordinate to men and inequality prevails. Neither liberal nor conservative views reflect true family values of equality and commitment to each other.
- Falsifying History and Ourselves: Anti-Democratic Propaganda in the Classroom (2001)
Contrary to the views promoted by FHAO, the true facts about Germany during the Holocaust show that 1) working class Germans fought the Nazis; 2) anti-Semitism did not come from ordinary people; and 3) anti-Semitism was a weapon used by Germany's industrial and aristocratic elite to attack not only the Jewish minority but the entire working class.
- Ontological "Difference" and the Neo-Liberal War on the Social (2001)
We have today legions of people with a smattering of knowledge turning out reams of books filled with buzz words that could be (and have been) produced by a computer program, and could be (and are) picked up in peer-group shop talk in a few months at the nearest humanities program or academic conference. Everyone these people don't like is trapped in a "gaze"; everyone "constitutes" their "identity" by "discourse"; to the fuddy-duddy "master narratives" that talk about such indelicate subjects as world accumulation these people counterpose "pastiche" and "bricolage", the very idea of being in any way systematic smacking of "totalitarianism"; it is blithely assumed that everyone except heterosexual white males now and for all time have been "subversives" (one wonders why we are still living under capitalism); a crippling relativism makes it somehow "imperial" to criticize public beheadings in Saudi Arabia or cliterodectomy practiced on five-year old girls in the Sudan.
- High Stakes Testing (2000)
The tests are very destructive educationally. They test students on such a broad range of materials that teachers have to rush through the curriculum; they cannot allow real discussion or in-depth study. Education is reduced to memorization of disconnected facts.
- "Take This Test and Shove It!" (1999)
Open resistance to high stakes tests is an important development: it can be the first step in a movement uniting students, teachers, parents, and others against the corporate assault on public education and for a democratic society.
- You'll Never Be Good Enough: Schooling and Social Control (1998)
The remarkable thing about the public schools isn't that some teachers become demoralized and "burned out," or that some students drop out or do poorly, but that so many teachers and students achieve so much in the face of a system designed to fail.
- Learning for the Revolution (November 1, 1997)
Socialist sunday schools were part of a thriving radical culture which included daily newspapers, clubs, lectures, festivals and parades.
- The University of Nike (September 1, 1997)
Nike is just a piece of the bigger puzzle of private donors in public universities, but it is a perfect example of why private money is helping to erode the positive goals of public education.
- School Reform and the Attack on Public Education (July 1, 1997)
The education reform movement is part of a wider corporate and government plan to undermine democracy and strengthen corporate domination of our society.
- Anthroplogy and the Machine (1997)
The first Teach-In against the Vietnam war, held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in March 1965, proved the ideal solution, an event that was at the same time an exercise in learning and a political protest. Its success was to spur a widespread series of similar events, bringing the anti-war message and the realities of U.S. "counter-insurgency" in Vietnam to other campuses. It was not entirely surprising that one of the most innovative and effective strategies for opposing U.S. crimes in Vietnam was initiated by anthropologists. In a discipline sensitive to the problems facing peasant populations due to colonialism and the spread of western market interests, it was particularly difficult to accept at face value the rhetoric of U.S. geopolitical posturing.
- Islam, Children’s Rights, and the Hijab-gate of Rah-e-Kargar (1997)
It has been proved time and time again that pushing back religiosity and religious reaction is not possible except through unequivocal defence of human values against religion. It has been proved time and time again that preventing religious barbarism does not come about through bribing it and trying to give it a human face, but through the fight against reactionary religious beliefs and practices.
- Chomsky on Post-Modernism (1995)
What I find in the writings of the post-modernists is extremely pretentious, but on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate, based on extraordinary misreading of texts that I know well (sometimes, that I have written), argument that is appalling in its casual lack of elementary self-criticism, lots of statements that are trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or false; and a good deal of plain gibberish.
- Rationality/Science (1995)
Chomsky writes: "It strikes me as remarkable that the left today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use."
- The Nazis and Deconstruction: Jean-Pierre Faye’s Demolition of Derrida (1993)
A review of Jean-Pierre Faye's book 'La raison narrative', which traces the Nazi origins of deconstructionist and post-modernist concepts and terminology. Faye shows, for example, that the concept of 'deconstruction' was introduced in a Nazi psychiatry journal edited by M.H. Goering, and he shows how theorists who based themselves on Heidegger's writings, such as Derrida, Lyotard, and Lacoue-Labarthe, whitewashed Heidegger's Nazism, treating it as a mere 'detail'.
- They’re Going to be Stuffing Our Kids (April 1, 1991)
Will technology in the classroom be a boon to educators in the future, or a disaster waiting to happen?
- Connexions Annual Overview: Education, Children (October 1, 1989)
Education is being seen as an essential element of grassroots development both in Canada and abroad. The guiding idea is that education is not merely concerned with imparting knowledge, but with helping people develop the skills and the confidence to analyse and solve problems and thus to act, both individually and collectively.
- The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967)
It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.
- Foreword to A.S. Neill: Summerhill - A Radical Approach to Child Rearing (1960)
A. S. Neill’s system is a radical approach to child rearing. His book Summerhill is of great importance because it represents the true principle of education without fear.
Selected Websites and Organizations
This is a small sampling of organizations and websites concerned with education and children in the Connexions Directory. For more organizations and websites, check the Connexions Directory Subject Index, especially under topics such as
education,
children,
youth,
post-secondary education,
film,
and schools.
- AcademicInfo
An online education resource centre with extensive subject guides and distance learning information. Our mission is to provide free, independent and accurate information and resources for prospective and current students (and other researchers). - People for Education
Working together to defend fully publicly-funded education in Ontario.
Other Links & Resources
Books, Films and Periodicals
This is a small sampling of books related to education and children in the
Connexions Online Library. For more books and other resources, check the Connexions Library
Subject Index, especially under topics such as
education,
children,
youth,
post-secondary education,
film,
and schools.
- Ah-Hah!
A New Approach to Popular Education
AH-HAH seminars are designed to organize groups of comman interests, especially workers, to come to a common understanding.
- Chomsky on MisEducation
Author: Chomsky, Noam; edited and introduced by Donald Macedo
Chomsky critiques the education system and discusses what education could be like in a democratic society.
- Class Warfare
The Assault on Canada's School
Author: Barlow, Maude; Robertson, Heather-Jane
The authors show that the attack on schools has been mounted by representatives of big business who stand to make a fortune by privatizing education, aided by the religious right, who want to control what is taught -- and not taught -- in our schools.
- Descent into Discourse
The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History
Author: Palmer, Brian
Critique of postmodernist and poststructuralist approaches in history.
- How 2 Take an Exam... & Remake the World
Author: Ollman, Bertell
- A Manual on Nonviolence and Children
Author: Judson, Stephanie; Paul, Paula J.
The authors felt that an important way of building a peaceful world would be to develop a program for young children. It would help children and their caregivers develop non-violent attitudes and skills.
- Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship
Author: Chomsky, Noam
Chomsky's classic analysis of the liberal scholarship that justified American foreign policy and aggression during the 1960s.
- The Origins of Post-Modernity
Author: Anderson, Perry
Perry Anderson's book outlines the cultural changes that have accompanied the victory of global capitalism.
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Author: Freire, Paulo
Freire maintains that every human being, no matter or "ignorant" or submerged in the "culture of silence," is capable of looking critically at the world in a dialogical encounter with others, and that provided with the proper tools for such an encounter, can gradually perceive his personal and social reality and deal critically with it.
- Roots of Empathy
Changing the World Child by Child
Author: Gordon, Mary
Roots of Empathy looks at eliminating crime and changing the world by starting with a compassionate environment for children.
- Schooling for "Good Rebels"
Socialist Education for Children in the United States, 1900-1920
Author: Teitelbaum, Kenneth
Teitelbaum captures in detail the spirited devotion and revolutionary fervor of the Socialist Sunday School movement whose themes of solidarity, cooperation, and concern for others are badly needed today. Socialist Sunday Schools were part of a thriving radical culture which included daily newspapers, clubs, lectures, festivals and parades.
- SDS
Author: Sale, Kirkpatrick
- Spying 101
The RCMP's Secret Activities at Canadian Universities 1917 - 1997
Author: Hewitt, Steve
If you attended a Canadian university in the past eighty years, it's possible that, unbeknownst to you, Canadian security agents were surveying you, your fellow students, and your professors for 'subversive' tendencies and behaviour. Since the end of the First World War, members of the RCMP have infiltrated the campuses of Canada's universities and colleges to spy, meet informants, gather information, and on occasion, to attend classes. Why they were there is the subject of this book.
- Street children
New Internationalist April 2005 - #377
A look at the lives of street children around the world. Discussion of the challenges they face day-to-day and what some are forced to do to survive.
- Summerhill
Author: Neill, A. S.
- Vanguard of Retrogression
"Postmodern" Fictions as Ideology in the Era of Fictitious Capital
Author: Goldner, Loren
When one probes the terms of the debate, what is truly amazing is that the ostensibly anti-Eurocentric multiculturalists are, without knowing it, purveying a remarkably Eurocentric version of what the Western tradition really is. The ultimate theoretical sources of today's multiculturalism are two very white and very dead European males, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.
- We Make the Road By Walking
Conversations on education and social change
Author: Horton, Myles; Freire, Paul
Horton, the founder of the Highlander Folk School, and Freire, a Brazilian education leader, are from two different backgrounds, but their shared views on the use of participatory education in bringing about social change are the basis for this thought-provoking book.
Learning from our History
Falsifying History and Ourselves: Anti-Democratic Propaganda in the Classroom - Contrary to the views promoted by FHAO, the true facts about Germany during the Holocaust show that 1) working class Germans fought the Nazis; 2) anti-Semitism did not come from ordinary people; and 3) anti-Semitism was a weapon used by Germany's industrial and aristocratic elite to attack not only the Jewish minority but the entire working class.
Learning for the Revolution - Socialist Sunday Schools were part of a thriving radical culture which included daily newspapers, clubs, lectures, festivals and parades..
Ontological “Difference” and the Neo-Liberal War on the Social - It was 1971. We were in our early 20’s and we were mad. After the seeming prelude to apocalypse we had just lived through, who, at the time, would have believed that we were at the beginning of three decades (and counting) in which, in the U.S. at least, mass movements would all but disappear from the streets? Even today, the evanescence of the world-wide mood of “1968” seems slightly incredible.
The Student Movement of the Thirties - Most of the references one hears to the student movement of the thirties are quite wrong in one basic respect: they speak as if “the thirties” represented a single, homogeneous period for the student movement. But the biggest single fact about the history of this movement is that it went through a sweeping change in spirit, methods, and politics, which changed its face completely in mid-course.
(1965)
Resources for Activists
The Connexions Calendar - An event calendar for activists.
Media Names & Numbers - A comprehensive directory of Canada's print and broadcast media. (CX5857).
Sources - A directory that enables journalists to find spokespersons of organizations. Organizations that list themselves in Sources signficantly increase their odds of getting called by reporters when they are doing a story of their issues..
