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Showing posts with label Social Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Justice. Show all posts

Sunday, January 28, 2024

‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade, by Nicholas Confessore, New York Times | January 20, 2024

This attack against DEI is a totally work-shopped, strategic-planned, well-orchestrated, well-heeled attack, as laid bare by this New York Times investigation by Nicholas Confessore that consists of Freedom of Information requests of those in the center of this extremist, anti-civil rights agenda. Their "observations" are sprinkled throughout the document and are well worth reading, but you do have to subscribe to the newspaper to read them. Spoiler alert. Here is a statement in just one exposed email:

America is under attack by a leftist revolution disguised as a plea for justice [...] This is, in fact, the goal: to produce swarms of anti-American zealots who will work to reshape the culture, customs, and political principles of the country, using strategies reminiscent of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution (Ryan P. Williams, President, Claremont Institute, Claremont, California).

THIS IS A LIE and it's SO OFF BASE that laughter was my initial response. Note: There are a bunch of other doozies, too.

I'll not spoil it anymore for you. 🤭

The irony is a strong critique that I and many others have had of our higher education institutions being so incredibly conservative. After all, higher education institutions are dominated by elites and the knowledge that is produced within them overwhelmingly reflects the interests and preferences of this very class!

Ever heard of the term, the "Ivory Tower?" Exactly. Elitism is what that phrase means. Were this not the case, we as minoritized researchers and faculty—where we are woefully underrepresented—wouldn't be fighting from the margins for substantive inclusion in the higher education curriculum. Not that we've not made a modicum of progress, but rather that we are a far cry from a "leftist revolution."

Moreover, to regard the left within academia as "anti-American zealots" smacks of what we REALLY should be concerned about, namely, "Red Scare politics," that this attack represents—with its scurrilous, irresponsible rhetoric with echoes of McCarthyism, and the late Sen. Joe McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee.

Moreover, these extremist think tanks, donors, politicians, and leaders hypocritically decry activism within academia while failing to own up to their own.

And boy, are these folks activists, manifesting a fear that makes them say ridiculous things that reveal their deep-seated anxieties. That's precisely what this NYTimes piece is about. If they weren't so dangerous, I'd feel sorry for them. A life filled with fearing the "other"—or "an-other"—that actually doesn't want to hurt you or take anything away from you sounds so unnecessarily hard of a life to live.

From the diverse side of the anti-diversity equation, there is so much to appreciate, honor, and celebrate that these folks are willfully missing out on. The truth is obviously not all unicorns and rainbows, but as the Good Book says, the truth does set us free. Plus, they totally miss the mark of what a 21st-century, world-class K-12 and higher education system could be, one that provides general uplift to all of God's creation.

Instead of seeking to engineer antagonistic perspectives toward the "other"—or "an-other"—let's do what Jesus would do and discover love, caring, and compassion instead. Love vibrates at a higher level anyway, as opposed to hate-filled rhetoric that will not motivate another generation. This is especially true if theirs is about repression through this raw exercise of power. What they propose isn't appealing to most Americans and never will be.

I wish I could cut and paste all the email comments that populate the NY Times interactive piece because they pull down the curtain on the current moment, revealing the cowering and conniving proverbial Wizard of Oz, together with the fear, resentment, and machinations that drive their behaviors and agenda. So pathetic. So sad.

This New York Times article is a keeper. I'm sharing it with my students and everyone I know who could use a bit of clarity regarding what's afoot in higher education politics today.

-Angela Valenzuela

‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade 


By Nicholas Confessore, New York Times | January 20, 2024




In late 2022, a group of conservative activists and academics set out to abolish the diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Texas’ public universities. They linked up with a former aide to the state’s powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick,1 who made banning D.E.I. initiatives one of his top priorities. Setting their sights on well-known schools like Texas A&M, they researched which offices and employees should be expunged. A well-connected alumnus conveyed their findings to the A&M chancellor; the former Patrick aide cited them before a State Senate committee. The campaign quickly yielded results: In May, Texas approved legislation banishing all such programs from public institutions of higher learning.


Long before Claudine Gay resigned Harvard’s presidency this month under intense criticism of her academic record, her congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and her efforts to promote racial justice, conservative academics and politicians had begun making the case that the decades-long drive to increase racial diversity in America’s universities had corrupted higher education. Gathering strength from a backlash against Black Lives Matter, and fueled by criticism that doctrines such as critical race theory had made colleges engines of progressive indoctrination, the eradication of D.E.I. programs has become both a cause and a message suffusing the American right. In 2023, more than 20 states considered or approved new laws taking aim at D.E.I., even as polling has shown that diversity initiatives remain popular.


Thousands of documents obtained by The New York Times cast light on the playbook and the thinking underpinning one nexus of the anti-D.E.I. movement — the activists and intellectuals who helped shape Texas’ new law, along with measures in at least three other states. The material, which includes casual correspondence with like-minded allies around the country, also reveals unvarnished views on race, sexuality and gender roles. And despite the movement’s marked success in some Republican-dominated states, the documents chart the activists’ struggle to gain traction with broader swaths of voters and officials.

Centered at the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Trump movement and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the group coalesced roughly three years ago around a sweeping ambition: to strike a killing blow against “the leftist social justice revolution” by eliminating “social justice education” from American schools.

The documents — grant proposals, budgets, draft reports and correspondence, obtained through public-records requests — show how the activists formed a loose network of think tanks, political groups and Republican operatives in at least a dozen states. They sought funding from a range of right-leaning philanthropies and family foundations, and from one of the largest individual donors to Republican campaigns in the country. They exchanged model legislation, published a slew of public reports and coordinated with other conservative advocacy groups in states like Alabama, Maine, Tennessee and Texas.


In public, some individuals and groups involved in the effort joined calls to protect diversity of thought and intellectual freedom, embracing the argument that D.E.I. efforts had made universities intolerant and narrow. They claimed to stand for meritocratic ideals and against ideologies that divided Americans. They argued that D.E.I. programs made Black and Hispanic students feel less welcome instead of more.


Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Whatever happened to Foxfire? Still glowing? by Carl Glickman, Phi Delta Kappan

This is a blog about Ethnic Studies for white people who may feel left out of the Ethnic Studies conversation, and that's unfortunate, as we all need to know each others' histories, cultures, and stories. To this end, this is a powerful story published in the Phi Delta Kappan of a social justice curriculum in one such community that I was reminded of at a Kappa Delta Pi Diversity Summit that I attended this morning. I just located this wonderful piece by my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Carl Glickman, that documents the 50-year impact of this social justice curriculum in the Appalachian town of Mountain City in Rabun County, Georgia, otherwise termed, "Foxfire." It's important that we share these stories as they are educative in and of themselves. However, they further illustrate how those of us of all backgrounds have a stake in the Ethnic Studies movement. Enjoy! 

-Angela Valenzuela 

#EthnicStudiesNow

Whatever happened to Foxfire? Still glowing?

Carl Glickman | February 1, 2016





Fifty years later, Foxfire’s practices are often embraced by educators, even if they no longer know its name.

A first-year teacher was frustrated over the behavior of his bored and belligerent high school students, many from the small Appalachian town of Mountain City in Rabun County, Ga. He confronted them about their behavior and asked them what would make English class more interesting. After some discussion, students agreed that they would rather learn the state-required English curriculum of composition, punctuation, and sentence usage through a class project.

Together, the teacher, Eliot Wigginton, and students decided to create a community magazine and call it Foxfire, which was named for the glowing, green fungus found on decaying trees in the adjacent forest. The year was 1966.

What began as one teacher’s pursuit of making learning interesting for one small group of students helped change beliefs about the potential of ordinary students to become deeply involved in school learning. The teacher’s approach put to action John Dewey’s progressive premise that classroom learning should be a form of democratic life in which students actively demonstrate their knowledge and skills by immediately using them to improve society (Wigginton, 1985).

Foxfire was perhaps the best example of this premise for its time. Said researcher Julie Oliver about the school, “Foxfire is distinctive in the history of American education owing to its legacy of . . . student work outside the classroom. One might argue that Foxfire did this as well as any other pedagogical program for public school students in the history of American education” (Oliver, 2011, p. 125-126.).

The Foxfire magazine was intended to help preserve local Appalachian culture including history, labor, music, crafts, arts, and spiritual and religious beliefs. Students contributed feature articles, interviews, drawings, and photos of neighbors and family members to the magazine. The first magazine sold for 50 cents, and the cost of production was 65 cents. The classroom experiment would soon go broke, but after positive reviews by editors of local and state newspapers, increases in price, and grants from local merchants, the project was saved.

By 1972, the magazine had attracted widespread interest from outsiders who wanted to know more about living on the land, self-sustaining farming, and the pioneer ways of everyday life. That year, students selected their best stories from previous issues and compiled them into what was to become an annual Foxfire book published by Doubleday Press. The first volume made The New York Times best-seller list.

Then came more best-selling books (over 9 million copies sold), a nationally distributed movie, a 32-building Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center on Black Rock Mountain in Georgia, multiple archived collections of Appalachian life, and three decades of courses and workshops on the Foxfire Approach to Teaching and Learning for teacher education students, practicing teachers, and school leaders across the country. Royalties and donations over the years have accounted for more than $1 million in college scholarships to Rabun County high school students, and new scholarships continue to be given every year. Foxfire — both the magazine and the broader part of its work — became a national phenomenon with a well-endowed, nonprofit organization to support its work. But later tumultuous times threatened to wipe out the organization.

Foxfire had an enormous influence on the students in Rabun County, Oliver said. “Foxfire provided . . . extraordinary opportunities for students to build communication skills. By requiring students to conduct interviews, speak on behalf of Foxfire at various organizations, . . . students were given opportunities that most high school students would never receive in a more conventional curriculum program. . . . Students learned, through their work with Foxfire, to appreciate and better understand the older generations and the past. . . . Students developed a greater appreciation for their native culture and with that developed the confidence that they could carry themselves proudly as mountain people anywhere. The result was that Foxfire students became more productive citizens in our democracy” (Oliver, 2011, p. 208).



Evaluating Foxfire

I returned to Black Rock Mountain recently after an absence of more than 20 years and couldn’t help but think about the issues of sustainability in education and whether Foxfire could be judged as a success or failure. In the mid-1980s, I headed a University of Georgia network of public schools called the Georgia League of Professional Schools, which focused on democracy, education, and public purpose (Glickman, 1993). We partnered with Foxfire to provide professional development to K-12 classroom teachers eager to engage their students in learning activities that extended into their communities. That collaboration with Foxfire continued until 1992.

In every education endeavor, unilateral claims of success and failure are highly suspect. Education is a social science, not a hard science of strictly controlled studies, and a major element is the period of time in which the program is evaluated — its first five, 15, 30, or 50 years. I chose the longest term since this year marks Foxfire’s 50th anniversary. So has Foxfire’s approach to education been a success?

As Oliver pointed out, Foxfire clearly benefited many students in Rabun County and continues to do so today. As an outreach effort to influence classrooms and schools throughout the nation, according to teacher survey responses, Foxfire had a major effect on individual classrooms in schools that were members of the Foxfire Regional Networks in the 1980s and 1990s. But today, the name Foxfire is no longer used to describe education practices that support student activity, audience, and service to the community. I reviewed the research on current activity-centered programs that have kinship to the core practices of Foxfire. Those programs have titles such as project-based learning, place-based education, deep learning, academic service learning, experiential learning, and civic learning. These programs boast many examples and studies showing student success in academic achievement, higher interest in learning, lower dropout rates, and progress beyond school in both higher education and professional careers, and greater participation as adult citizens in local and state affairs. Few of them, however, credit Foxfire with showing that these practices could work in real schools.

Can an education approach to learning be successful if nobody uses its name? I think the answer is yes. Foxfire influenced many of the current, progressive education practices. The downside is that these practices have not become as widespread as they should. Educational approaches that promote student engagement and student contribution remain a glaring need for all students. Unfortunately, such experiential, inquiry-oriented learning is often only found in honors classes or in those with gifted students and in schools with a preponderance of students from middle to high socioeconomic backgrounds. The students who need an active and contributory education most are the ones who receive it least (Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, 2011; Levinson, 2012; Levine, 2007).

Navigating troubled waters

I alluded to tumultuous times with Foxfire. How these difficulties have been navigated is particularly relevant to education and schools and communities of the future.

For many reasons, Foxfire has no business to be still standing and planning for its next 50 years. After Foxfire reached its national iconic stature, Wigginton was named Georgia Teacher of the Year in 1986 and received the MacArthur “genius” award in 1989. But, in 1992, he was indicted for child molestation, pleaded guilty, served prison time, and was ordered out of state, and removed from any further involvement with the program. He was convicted on a single count, but prosecutors contended that his victims numbered many more.


Due to public outrage, Foxfire was nearly disbanded. But current and former students took it upon themselves to post notices on the windows of downtown businesses asking the community to keep the program and museum alive.

It was tough going for many years. A Foxfire board member volunteered his time to negotiate legal settlements, which helped the organization avoid bankruptcy. But then the program encountered other financial problems, which forced former students, staff, community and board members to make difficult cuts in Foxfire’s expenses and to reorganize staff to protect the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center, the Foxfire class in the local high school, and a different, trimmed-down education program for teachers taken over by nearby Piedmont College. The essence of the Foxfire premise survived (Rechtman, 2015). The local community, students, and Foxfire board and staff never stopped believing in the worth of their students who have made such a difference in preserving the past and countering the negative stereotypes of mountain people.

I surmise that Foxfire, less known nationally as a reform approach to teaching and learning, will remain vibrant in the place it was created. It belongs to the community as an irreplaceable contribution to the world showing the staying power of students, classrooms, and schools partnering with their community to make education a contribution to both. This past October, Foxfire received a 2015 Georgia Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities for its sustained contributions to the welfare of schools and communities. It is unrealistic to think that every classroom and school along with its community could replicate what happened over 50 years ago in Rabun County resulting in best-selling journals and books and a vast museum. Yet it is realistic and imperative to expect that students today can apply what they are learning in English, math, science, history, and the arts to making their communities healthier, more caring, economically viable, and aesthetically better places to live. That would be the ultimate success for Foxfire and for our country.

References

Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. (2011). Guardian of democracy: Report of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. Silver Spring, MD: Author. www.civicmissionofschools.org.

Glickman, C. (1993). Renewing America’s schools: A guide for school-based action. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Levine, P. (2007). The future of democracy: Developing the next generation of American citizens. Medford, MA: Tufts University Press.

Levinson, M. (2012). No citizen left behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Oliver, J. (2011). The story and legacy of the Foxfire cultural journalism program (Doctoral dissertation). University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.

Rechtman, J. (2015, November 2). Jamil’s Georgia: Foxfire, still aglow — after catastrophic event, an organization’s lessons learned. The Saporta Report. http://saportareport.com/foxfire-still-aglow-after-catastrophic-event-an-organizations-lessons-learned/

Wigginton, E. (1985). Sometimes a shining moment: The Foxfire experience, 20 years teaching in a high school classroom. New York, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday.



Foxfire Core Practices

Modified over the years, the Foxfire Core Practices include these:From the beginning, learner choice, design, and revision infuses the work teachers and learners do together to fulfill all curricula givens.
The teacher serves as facilitator and collaborator.
The work teachers and learners do together clearly manifests the attributes of the academic disciplines involved, so those attributes become habits of mind.
The work teachers and learners do together enables learners to make connections between classroom work, the surrounding communities, and the world beyond their communities.
Active learning, in an atmosphere of trust and equity, characterizes classroom activities.
The learning process entails imagination and creativity.
Classroom work includes peer teaching, small group work, and teamwork.
The work of the classroom serves audiences beyond the teacher, thereby evoking the best efforts by the learners and providing feedback for improving performances.
The work teachers and learners do together includes challenging, ongoing assessment and evaluation that then guide subsequent work toward higher levels of achievement and understanding.
Reflection, an essential activity, takes place at key points throughout the work.

Source: The Core Practices. http://paws.wce.edu/mherzog/foxfire.htm

Citation: Glickman, C. (2016). Whatever happened to Foxfire: Still glowing? Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (5), 55-59.

CARL GLICKMAN (cglick@uga.edu) is university professor emeritus of education, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. He is a member of the board of the nonprofit Foxfire Fund, Inc. This essay is not an official position or statement of Foxfire Foundation.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

10 Tech Issues that will Impact Social Justice in 2017

This piece by Wilneida Negrón from the Ford Foundation merits a close read.  Some of us often think of the democratizing potential of social media and the Internet, however, as you can see below, free and open expression are grievously at risk here and beyond.

The access to our lives that our own government has should be a matter of grave concern not just to ourselves, but also in terms of social justice causes locally and worldwide.  

It is disturbing to consider how our own government spies on its own citizens, let alone folks in other countries.  On this note, I just saw the movie, Snowden, and strongly recommend it.  It focused, in particular, on the NSA’s PRISM program that Snowden exposed and that Negrón mentions below.

The access that our government already has to our private lives is unsettling.  But let's not be afraid.  Let's organize and let's act.  To that end, Negrón provides very useful suggestions in this piece below.  

Thank you, President Darren Walker, Wilneida Negrón, and the Ford Foundation, for all you do to expand civil and human rights.  Best of wishes in the new year and Happy MLK Day!

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
College of Education, Education Policy and Planning

University of Texas at Austin

Wilneida NegronIn our increasingly complex and interconnected world, innovations in technology and data are inching us closer to a reality driven by automation, prediction, personalization, surveillance, and the merging of our physical and digital lives. This is taking place at the same time that the world is experiencing transformative cultural, demographic, economic, and political shifts. In the face of so much uncertainty and change, the independent watchdog group Freedom House reports that globally, Internet freedom has declined for the sixth consecutive year, “with more governments than ever before targeting social media and communication apps as a means of halting the rapid dissemination of information, particularly during anti-government protests.” At the same time, Civicus has highlighted the many threats facing democracies, representative institutions, and civil society as a whole.
As we begin a new year and a new political administration takes office in the US, let’s take some time to consider some pressing issues that exist at the nexus of technology and social justice—and think about how we as social justice advocates can address them most effectively. Even amid so many unknowns, we can be certain that these issues are among those that will shape 2017 and the years and decades beyond it. And they will be central to the work of building a free, open, and transparent future.
1. Online hate crimes, harassment, and discrimination are increasing
In 2016, we saw an increase in the number of reported online hate crimes and harassment targeting Muslims, immigrants, and LGBTQ people, as well as groups working to protect reproductive rights and strengthen racial justice. At the same time, Internet and other communication technologies are being used to promote the online radicalization and organization of hate groups. 
2. Fake news, campaigns of misinformation, bias, and propaganda proliferate
During the 2016 election, the use of intelligent Twitter bots, targeted advertising, and search engine manipulation affected what Internet users saw on specific platforms and search engines. “Filter bubbles” and algorithms have been blamed for failing to separate real news from fiction, and researchers have noted an escalation in bias, propaganda, and misinformation online. Together, these factors contribute to increased polarization, and hamper the free flow of accurate information that is essential for civil discourse, policymaking, and ultimately democracy.
3. Trolling threatens democracy and free expression
During the 2016 US presidential election, online trolls were credited with influencing political discourse. This kind of trolling is also a global epidemic. Freedom House reports that across the world, state-sponsored trolling operations (aka “troll farms”) attack government critics and independent media often by posting thousands of comments at a time, polluting online dialogue through hate speech and disinformation. Hampering free speech, trolling is often aimed at journalists and activists, along with political protest and other forms of expression.
4. Reduced regulation creates risks for consumers
2017 may see the deregulation of the largest cable and phone companies, and the weakening of hard-won consumer protection laws. These reduced federal regulations could undermine a free, open, and secure Internet
and undercut a variety of hard-won initiatives, protections, and services that benefit low income individuals and households. These include net neutrality wins, federal guidance and regulation of the Internet of Things, Lifeline and broadband subsidies for low-income households, and efforts to regulate prison phone costs.
5. Governmental databases put pressure on minority groups
As technology and data processing power gets more sophisticated, government databases such as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, deferred action, or gang databases could be used to discriminate against or target vulnerable groups. At the same time, the expansion of biometric technologies in the immigration system and other areas may raise concerns about government monitoring and data sharing.
6. Increased surveillance puts vulnerable groups under a microscope
The expansion of legislation such as the Patriot Act, along with the use high-tech surveillance tools including drones, facial recognition software, automated license plate readers, stingray tracking devices, and the NSA’s PRISM program can lead to increased surveillance of citizens. This raises particular concerns for vulnerable groups including Muslims, immigrants, and LGBTQ communities.
7. Less attention to issues of algorithmic bias and online discrimination creates opportunities for abuse
The White House’s Big Data Initiative has studied big data’s potential to discriminate, especially when it comes to housing, employment, credit, and consumer issues.  Legislation including the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2015 and an amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act were intended to govern the collection, use, and distribution of consumer data, and extend the standard of protection for online and digital content. But under a new administration, the fate of these rules and regulatory attention is unclear.
8. Advocacy groups need digital security protections
In 2017, advocacy groups and social movements may be subject to a greater degree of surveillance and/or harassment. As a result, they will need a strong digital security infrastructure to help protect them against potential threats, as well to support them in developing strategies for responding to attacks as they arise.
9. Technology and data initiatives provide important support for social justice work
Increasingly, technology will play a central role in strengthening a progressive agenda. To achieve this, organizations might focus more on developing strategies for organizing and base-building across different sectors, building strong progressive narratives, and supporting open data initiatives at the state and local level to increase transparency and accountability.
10. Developments in open government and transparency impact advocacy work
Since the 2000s, open government initiatives have sought to identify ways to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to enhance governance. In support of these efforts, the Obama administration developed Data.gov, a central online location for all US government data. This year, we will see whether the new administration will continue to maintain this useful resource, as well as whether the US will remain in the multilateral Open Government Partnership, and how the government will handle the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), including reforms that Congress passed in 2016.
Topics

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Growing critically conscious teachers by A. Valenzuela (Ed.) is out!

I am happy to report that Growing critically conscious teachers: A social justice curriculum for educators of Latino/a Youth is out!

This was a collective effort, a labor of love that draws on the actual work that so many of us are doing in the area of teacher preparation, participatory action research (PAR), and  social justice. 

We hope that this book will inspire better and deeper thinking on how best to educate not only Latino/a youth—and youth of color, generally—but also future teachers of Latino/a youth since that's where the education for a linguistically and culturally diverse demographic should optimally begin.
 
You can order the book here: http://store.tcpress.com/0807756830.shtml

All royalties will go to our national organization, the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAP) in support of our grow your own Latin@ Teacher Education Institutes Initiative in 5 cities in 5 states at present. Contributors: Carmen Mercado Barbosa​Adele Arellano, Jennifer Ayala, Margarita Margie Ines Berta-Avila​, Julio Cammarota​, José Cintrón, Barbara Flores, Melissa Rivera, and Louie Rodriguez​. Thanks to Sonia Nieto​, Christine Sleeter​, and Antonia Darder for the foreword, afterword, and blurb, respectively.


Thanks to all the great folks at Teachers College Press at Colombia University, beginning with Marie Ellen Larcada who has since retired but who encouraged this work at the beginning and also to Sarah Biondello who has been superb throughout the volume's many stages.  

Thanks, as well, to gifted artist Tanya Torres​, for the book's beautiful cover that captures the spirit and intent of the whole book, namely, to not only create a pathway for teachers into the teaching profession, but to also grow their critical consciousness--together with our own--through the rooted, organic, community-based curriculum and model that we collectively devised. This book represents literally years of work and hundreds of years of wisdom.  You'll see....

Angela Valenzuela
c/s