To the Best of Our Knowledge: Arts Education

Arts Education
To the Best of Our Knowledge (Wisconsin Public Radio)

SEGMENT 1:



Eric Booth is one of America's leading teaching artists and trainer of teaching artists. He's also the author of "The Music Teaching Artist's Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator." He talks to Steve Paulson about the current state of arts education in American schools and shares his thoughts on how to engage children through arts education.

SEGMENT 2:



Michael Doucet is the founder of the pioneering, Grammy Award-winning Cajun band, BeauSoleil. The band recently released its 29th album, "Alligator Purse." Doucet also has an extensive background in arts education. He talks to Steve Paulson about educating people about Cajun culture through Cajun music. We also hear some music from BeauSoleil's "Alligator Purse" album.

Katie Salen is a game designer, interactive designer, animator and design educator. She's also the editor of "The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning." Salen talks to Anne Strainchamps about what children can learn from designing and playing games.

SEGMENT 3:



David Gilmour is a Canadian film critic and novelist. He's also the author of a memoir called "The Film Club." In the book, Gilmour writes about his decision to let his son, Jesse, drop out of school, provided that he agrees to watch three movies a week with his father. Gilmour talks to Jim Fleming about the experience. We also hear clips from a few of the films that Gilmour watched with his son

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Human Resources: Social Engineering in the 20th Century (Scott Noble, 2011: 119 mins)

Documentary Stream



Human Resources explores the rise of mechanistic philosophy and the exploitation of human beings under modern hierarchical systems. Topics covered include behaviorism, scientific management, work-place democracy, schooling, frustration-aggression hypothesis and human experimentation.

Sources:

Anarcho -- Anti-Capitalism or State Capitalism?

Beissinger, Mark R. -- Scientific Management, socialist discipline and Soviet power

Chang, Iris -- the Rape of Nanking

Cockburn, Alex and St. Claire, Jeffrey -- Whiteout: The CIA, drugs and the press

Gatto, John Taylor -- The Underground History of American Education; Dumbing Us Down

Goliszek, Andrew -- In the name of science

Klein, Naomi -- The Shock Doctrine

Kohn, Alfie -- What does it mean to be well-educated?; No contest: the case against competition

Lemov, Rebecca -- World as Laboratory: Experiments with mice, mazes and men

Noble, David -- Forces of Production: a social history of industrial automation

Ritzer, George -- The McDonaldization of Society

Shepherd, Harold & Herrick, Neil -- Where Have All the Robots Gone?

Smith, Sharon -- Subterranean Fire: A History of working class radicalism

Szulc, Tad -- The CIA's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Trip Gabriel: Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?

Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn
by Trip Gabriel
The New York Times

The jabs Erin Parker has heard about her job have stunned her. Oh you pathetic teachers, read the online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators. You are glorified baby sitters who leave work at 3 p.m. You deserve minimum wage.

“You feel punched in the stomach,” said Ms. Parker, a high school science teacher in Madison, Wis., where public employees’ two-week occupation of the State Capitol has stalled but not deterred the governor’s plan to try to strip them of bargaining rights.

Ms. Parker, a second-year teacher making $36,000, fears that under the proposed legislation class sizes would rise and higher contributions to her benefits would knock her out of the middle class.

“I love teaching, but I have $26,000 of student debt,” she said. “I’m 30 years old, and I can’t save up enough for a down payment” for a house. Nor does she own a car. She is making plans to move to Colorado, where she could afford to keep teaching by living with her parents.

Around the country, many teachers see demands to cut their income, benefits and say in how schools are run through collective bargaining as attacks not just on their livelihoods, but on their value to society.

Even in a country that is of two minds about teachers — Americans glowingly recall the ones who changed their lives, but think the job with its summers off is cushy — education experts say teachers have rarely been the targets of such scorn from politicians and voters.

Republican lawmakers in half a dozen states are pressing to unwind tenure and seniority protections in place for more than 50 years. Gov. Chris Christie’s dressing down of New Jersey teachers in town-hall-style meetings, accusing them of greed, has touched a populist vein and made him a national star.

Mayors are threatening mass layoffs, including in New York City and in Providence, R.I., where all 1,926 teachers were told last week they would lose their jobs — a largely symbolic gesture since most will be hired back.

Some experts question whether teaching, with its already high attrition rate — more than 25 percent leave in the first three years — will attract high-quality recruits in the future.

“It’s hard to feel good about yourself when your governor and other people are telling you you’re doing a lousy job,” said Steve Derion, 32, who teaches American history in Manahawkin, N.J. “I’m sure there were worse times to be a teacher in our history — I know they had very little rights — but it feels like we’re going back toward that direction.”

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History for the Future: Heather Steffen on the Labor of Universities

Heather Steffen on the Labor of Universities
History for the Future

This week on History for the Future, I interviewed Heather Steffen on the structure of the labor force at American universities. We discussed the increasing use of the casual labor of adjunct teachers, the crisis in the tenure system, and highly exploitative world of student internships. Steffen pointed to the ways that recent changes in the university may serve as a “canary in the coal mine” for broader developments in U.S. capitalism.

Heather Steffen is a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University in Literary and Cultural Studies where she is writing a dissertation entitled, “The Struggle for the University in the Progressive Era.” She also serves on the delegate assembly and the committee on the status graduate students in the profession for the Modern Language Association, and was recently featured in an forum in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the future of graduate education in the humanities

To Listen to the Interview and to Access More Resources

U.S. Rep. Pete Stark Sponsors: National Darwin Day Resolution -- SCA Urges Support for Recognizing ‘Science in the Betterment of Humanity’ on Feb. 12

U.S. Rep. Pete Stark Sponsors: National Darwin Day Resolution
 -- SCA Urges Support for Recognizing ‘Science in the Betterment of Humanity’ on Feb. 12

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) announced today the introduction of H. Res. 81, calling for the designation of Feb. 12, 2011, as Darwin Day in order to recognize the work of Charles Darwin and the importance of science in the advancement of humanity. 



Rep. Stark, the American Humanist Association’s 2008 Humanist of the Year, collaborated with the AHA, a Secular Coalition member organization, to produce the resolution. 



“Darwin’s birthday is a good time for us to reflect on the important role of science in our society,” Stark said. “It is also a time to redouble our efforts to ensure that children are being taught scientific facts, not religious dogma, and to fight back against those who seek to undermine the science of climate change for political ends.” 



The resolution recognizes the importance of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by the mechanism of natural selection, which is further supported by the modern understanding of genetics. The advancement of science and the academic integrity of the nation’s education system are singled out in the resolution as needing protection from those who are unconcerned with the adverse impacts of climate change and who are intent on the teaching of creationism, respectively. 



A recently published survey in the journal Science found that only 28 percent of biology teachers present evidence for evolution as recommended by the National Research Council, while 13 percent “explicitly advocate” creationism. 



The Secular Coalition firmly supports this resolution and urges anyone who supports the advancement of science of reason to call or email his or her U.S. representative and ask that the representative vote in favor of H. Res. 81. You can read the entire resolution here.

To contact your representative using the AHA's Action Center, please click here.