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Education for Debt

Education for Debt

THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY: GENDER, CLASS, AND SEXUALITY

AMSTERDAM RESEARCH CENTER GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Conference: ‘Social Class in the 21st Century’

Panel Call for Papers: Deadline May 29th 2015

Panel on: The Neoliberal University: Gender, Class, & Sexuality

This panel intends to investigate processes of bureaucratization and business-afication of the university and the role that these have in re-shaping the interrelations of class, gender, and sexuality; and the specific ways that the change from educational pedagogy to business model has impacted classed, gendered, and sexual practices and relationships.

The rise of neoliberalism coincided with the increase of enrollments in universities and this panel proposes to investigate these two in relation to each other. The scale of the university has increased in terms of rising numbers of students enrolled. Also, as university has become more accessible to larger numbers of citizens, the importance of higher education as a marker of class has become, relatively, more available.

In the light of these shifts, the question is how the (increasing) importance of the university as a site of emancipation takes on questions of gender norms and practices, as well as forms of sexuality.

On the one hand, universities can be seen as sites of normative structures regarding gender, sexuality, race / ethnicity, class, age and more, shaping normativity from aesthetics to (gendered) harassment on college campuses.

On the other hand, universities have also been the sites for social justice and emancipation, regarding gender and sexuality, by the way of Women’s & Gender studies, LGBT studies and Queer Theory.

This panel seeks to bring together a collection of papers on the role of the neoliberal university in shaping, marking, and creating new expressions and relations of gender, class, and sexuality. In this way, it opens up the discussion to allow for the varied ways that universities implement and allow possibly opposing development of providing spaces for emancipation as well as reproducing normative spaces in terms of gendered, sexualized and classed possibilities.

Papers should seek to elaborate on both theoretical elements and empirical cases (from the Global North and South) and aspects of the role of the university in the 21st Century and its impact on gender, class, and sexuality.

http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/panels/panels/panels/content/folder/the-neoliberal-university-gender-class–sexuali.html

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/conference-cfp-the-neoliberal-university

Conference Website: http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/social-class-conference.html

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Education

Education

HANDBOOK OF GLOBAL EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Call for Chapter Abstracts

Handbook of Global Educational Reform (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017)

This edited volume examines educational reform from a global perspective. Currently, a number of trends are converging to fundamentally reshape the policy and practice of educational development globally. Transnational institutions such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), World Bank, World Trade Organization, and powerful transnational corporations such Pearson, Knowledge Universe, and Edison Learning are promoting an interconnected set of global educational reforms that seek to align national systems of education with the demands of transnational capital and ruling economic and political interests. Foremost, neoliberal rationalities and policy prescriptions that take the market as the dominant organizing principle of human and institutional affairs have rapidly expanded. This has functioned to promote standardization across national educational systems and private sector and market-based models of educational policy. In poor countries, private fee for service educational franchises (many of them owned by transnational actors) are being promoted, while in rich countries public educational systems are being defunded, privatized, commercialized, and subject to new forms of corporate managerialism.

The dominance of neoliberal rationalities in public policy over the last three decades has tended to reshape educational systems in ways that undermine democratic social relationships, institutions, and public spheres that foster cultures of dialogue, dissent, and collaboration necessary for democratic life inside and outside of schools. By situating educational reform in terms of the broader structures and ideological contests animating educational policy and practice, this volume is concerned to examine reform without being “reformist.”  That is, we do not see reform of existing institutional arrangements as being the only or central aim of engagement. Rather, this volume situates reform in the service of broad-based social transformation. In short, what is at stake in comprehending educational reform today is setting the agenda for educational and social development that serves the interests of the public, that fosters cultures of questioning, reflection, engaged self-governance, and egalitarian and sustainable forms of living.

We are interested in abstracts of no more than 300 words that explore a variety of theoretical and empirical issues in global education reform from a critical and transformative perspective. We are particularly interested in abstracts that engage issues across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Areas of investigation include:

1. The historical, ideological, organizational, and institutional foundations of global education reform policies, networks, movements, actors, institutions, and agendas across diverse international contexts highlighting in particular the intersection of reform and new articulations of power, governance, and contestation.

2. How the ideologies and infrastructures underlying reform are deployed as concrete policy and in educational reform trends locally, nationally and globally through case studies of reform initiatives within specific contexts.

3. The new managerialism in educational reform including the standardization of national systems of educational governance, curriculum, teaching, and learning and new systems of privatization, accountability, audit, big-data, learning analytics, biometrics, and new technology-driven adaptive learning models.

4. How practical policy is grounded in particular epistemological assumptions such as positivism, standardization, and instrumentalism that are lived through class, race, gender, sexuality, language, culture, and bodies. In other words, the subjective and intersubjective experiential dimensions of educational reforms.

5. Alternative transformative pathways for global, national, and local educational reform tied to the ethical imperative to reimagine education for human flourishing, justice, ecological sustainability, and equality. Of particular interest is how grassroots movements are involved in contesting dominant reform trends and charting new paths for education and sustainable democratic futures.

If you are interested in contributing to this edited collection that is under contract with Wiley-Blackwell please submit an abstract by June 1, 2015 of no more than 300 words to: globaleducationreform@gmail.com. We anticipate final manuscripts being due June 1, 2016 with early 2017 publication. Manuscripts will be between 8,000-10,000 words.

Information on Co-editors:

Kenneth J. Saltman is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. His research examines the political economy and cultural politics of public school privatization. He is the author and editor of numerous books on educational policy and politics including Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public SchoolsThe Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture PhilanthropyThe Edison SchoolsEducation as Enforcement: the Militarization and Corporatization of SchoolsThe Failure of Corporate School ReformThe Politics of Education: A Critical Introduction, and Toward a New Common School Movement.

Alexander J. Means is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Psychological Foundations of Education at SUNY Buffalo State. His research examines educational policy and governance in relation to political economy, urbanization, human security, social inequality, and radical democratic theory and politics. He is the author of Schooling in the Age of Austerity: Urban Education and the struggle for Democratic Life (Palgrave, 2013), which won a 2014 Society of the Professors of Education Book Award, and Toward a New Common School Movement (Paradigm, 2014) with Noah De Lissovoy and Kenneth Saltman. His work has also been published in numerous international research journals such as Critical Sociology, Journal of Education Policy, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Policy Futures in Education, Foucault Studies, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, and Critical Studies in Education.

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 

Education Crisis

Education Crisis

UNICONFLICTS

UNICONFLICTS In Spaces of Crisis: Critical Approaches In, Against and Beyond the University

International Open Gathering

11–14 June 2015

At the Department of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Encounters and Conflicts in the City

Details: http://urbanconflicts.wordpress.com/

 

Calling

The group “Encounters and Conflicts in the City” calls radical research groups, critical workshops and researchers, students and collectives that are placed in, against and beyond the neoliberal university in an open gathering on the 11-14th June 2015 at the Department of Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Through this gathering, we aim to create a public space of dialogue transcending divisions among academic and scientific disciplines and to critically approach the urban issues of the era of crisis, through a dialectic, intersectional and postcolonial approach.

The central questions that we wish to raise are two:

  1. What is the role of knowledge, of the university and of researchers in the era of crisis?
  2. What are the critical epistemological and methodological tools for studying the spatial expressions of the ongoing crisis at multiple scales?

Within this context, we seek to examine the ongoing crisis not just as an over-accumulation crisis but also as a crisis of social disobedience and of the inability of the circulation of capital, patriarchy and nationalism. Moving against the mystification of the crisis, we are interested in critical approaches that focus on the spatialization of social relations and examine the spaces of dissent. Particularly, we wish to examine the articulations, the limits, the contradictions and the dialectic relation of commons, enclosures, inclusion, exclusion, insurgency and counter-insurgency as well as their hybrid intermediate forms, which emerge in and through physical space, modes of communication and the constitution of communities. Overall, we aim to break the North/South or East/West dichotomies and to focus on the fields of gender, race, class and culture.

Building on the critical evaluation of social relations, the circulation of social struggles and subjects and communities in motion, we search for their contentious spaces and their spatial transformations, limits, possibilities and contradictions in the era of crisis. Moreover, understanding education as a unity of theory and practice, we seek these epistemological and methodological tools that emerge from and aim to the deepening and the circulation of social struggles and social movements. In the context of today’s global and local crisis, we note that while a plethora of social struggles and insurgencies emerge, the academic research often appropriates and commercializes their ideas. It is exactly here that we identify the dead-end.

Hence, we seek to surpass the so called academic activism and to set as a main target of this open gathering the critical examination of the following:

A. The role of knowledge and of researchers in the university and in social movements

The neoliberal University and the educational system constitute strategic mechanisms for the production and reproduction of social relations. In particular, within a dynamic process of neoliberalization, the university studies are intensified and are linked more and more to the labour market. Within this context, we wish to examine issues such as the production of knowledge, knowledge as a common, the neoliberalization of the University, the new educational enclosures and the concept of Anti-university.

The transformation of knowledge into private property and consequently into a commodity creates new enclosures in the field of knowledge. These new enclosures in neoliberal education are expressed both through the commodification of the physical space of the universities and through the objectification of human abilities. Some indicative examples are the increase of studying costs, the studying loans, the control of access to information, the commercialization of academic papers and books, the securitization of the University space, the criminalization and the rhetoric against student mobilizations, the suppression of the struggles of university employees and the restriction of the freedom of speech.

However, since 1960s and 1970s, the universities are spaces of collective emancipatory movements, of social struggles and of radical experiments of self-organization for the production of knowledge. As a response to these movements, since 1980s, a number of educational reforms have been introduced. These reforms seek to promote the marketization of the university, aiming to produce the appropriate competitive workforce and to supress student movements.

Yet, during the last decade, many dynamic student movements have emerged in France (2006), Greece (2006-2007), the USA (2009-2010), the UK (2010), Italy (2010-2011) and so on, which targeted the enclosure of knowledge and were connected and inspired many other urban social movements.

 

Axes of Discussion

A.1 Social education and emancipatory movements in the universities

-Student movements: limits and contradictions, connection with other urban movements, confrontation of their suppression and criminalization

-Perspectives of a radical pedagogy towards the knowledge as common

-Ideas and practices of free–‐autonomous universities beyond the education of the neoliberal university

A.2 Control and commodification of knowledge

-Public, state and private education in the neoliberal era

-Politics of knowledge enclosures and copyrights

-The suppression of academic freedom and of the freedom of speech

-Knowledge as private property and commodity for the production of value and surplus value

-Student loans and study costs as mechanisms of disciplining

-The cultural politics of the neoliberal university

-Paid and unpaid work at the University

A.3 The role of the researcher

-Lifelong education, competitiveness and the precarious status of the researcher

-The researcher as producer of dominant discourses and her/his role in the reproduction of power

-Competitiveness, academic carrie and academic divisions and hierarchies

-The biopolitical character of the neoliberal education and the construction of new identities

-Education as praxis, understood as a unity of theory and practice

-Researchers, networks and groups against and beyond the neoliberal university

 

B. Critical epistemological and methodological tools for the study of the crisis’s spatial expressions at multiple scales

Against the privatization and commodification of the academic knowledge and the intended hegemony of the neoliberal perspectives, we seek those critical epistemological tools of knowledge production that encourage social emancipation.

During the last years, urban movements and a plethora of visible and invisible practices of resistance and emancipation offer a variety of tools for the destabilization of the dominant ideologies, ways of disaggregation of power, negotiation of contradictions and visibility of differences. In parallel, today there is the urgent need for the promotion, circulation and deepening of these critical perspectives and their linking to social struggles. Thus, we aim to discuss epistemological and methodological tools, such as the following:

B1. Dialectic critical urban theory

Which are those critical approaches that assist us to perceive and examine the multiple dimensions of urban space? How do dialectic approaches and critical urban theory contribute to the understanding of the spaces of social movements and the spaces of capital, racism and patriarchy?

B2. Intersectionality and urban space in the era of crisis

How does intersectionality contribute to the study of the urban space? Which are the intersectional crossings of the multiple systems of domination, oppression and discrimination such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, dis/ability, age, cast, language, culture, body size, education level or citizenship?

B3. Cultural and postcolonial approaches

How do cultural and postcolonial studies contribute to the understanding of urban space and the conceptualization of body, identity and modes of communication. How does the criminalization and the suppression of alternative modes of culture, information and lifestyle operate as mechanisms of control, disciplining and normalization? What is the role of social media in the communication of social struggles? We seek the expression of the ongoing crisis through the spaces of architecture, art, media, and internet.

 

Within the above context, we call critical research groups, workshops, collectives and individuals to participate in a gathering during 11-14 June 2015. If you would like to participate, please provide us with your abstract (300 words) by 1 March 2015 at the latest, to the following e-mail: urbanconflicts@gmail.com

Participation is free and we will try to provide accommodation for as many participants as possible.

 

“Encounters and conflicts in the city” group

Costas Athanasiou, Eleni Vasdeki, Elina Kapetanaki, Maria Karagianni, Matina Kapsali, Vaso

Makrygianni, Foteini Mamali, Orestis Pangalos, Haris Tsavdaroglou

Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki

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 Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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Crisis

Crisis

Education Not for Sale

Education Not for Sale

NEOLIBERALISM AND THE DEGRADATION OF EDUCATION

Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research

VOL 26 (2015)

Edited by Carlo Fanelli and Bryan Evans

Contributors to this anthology trace how neoliberalism has impacted education. These effects range from the commercialization and quasi-privatization of pre-school to post-secondary education, to restrictions on democratic practice and research and teaching, to the casualization of labour and labour replacing technologies, and the descent of the university into the market which threatens academic freedom. The end result is a comprehensive and wide-ranging review of how neoliberalism has served to displace, if not destroy, the role of the university as a space for a broad range of perspectives.

Neoliberalism stifes the university’s ability to incubate critical ideas and engage with the larger society. Entrepreneurship, however, is pursued as an ideological carrier serving to prepare students for a life of precarity just as the university itself is being penetrated and occupied by corporations. The result is an astonishing tale of transformation, de-democratization and a narrowing of vision and purpose.

Contents: http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/issue/view/1590/showToc

Current Issue: http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/issue/view/1590

Alternative Routes: http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism

Education Crisis

Education Crisis

THE ACADEMIC MANIFESTO: FROM AN OCCUPIED TO A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY

Willem Halffman and Hans Radder

 

First published in Krisis: Journal of Contemporary Philosophy, 2013, Issue 3 (in Dutch)

Now available in English: translated by Jan Evertse

 

Willem Halffman and Hans Radder

The academic manifesto: From an occupied to a public university

 

1 The occupied university

The university has been occupied – not by students demanding a say (as in the 1960s), but this time by the many-headed Wolf of management.1 The Wolf has colonised academia with a mercenary army of professional administrators, armed with spreadsheets, output indicators and audit procedures, loudly accompanied by the Efficiency and Excellence March. Management has proclaimed academics the enemy within: academics have to be distrusted, tested and monitored, under the permanent threat of reorganisation, discontinuance and dismissal. The academics allow themselves to be meekly played off against one another, like frightened, obedient sheep, hoping to make it by staying just ahead of their colleagues. The Wolf uses the most absurd means to

remain in control, such as money-squandering semi- and full mergers, increasingly detailed, and thus costly, accountability systems and extremely expensive prestige projects.

This conquest seems to work and the export of knowledge from the newly conquered colony can be ever increased, but inland the troubles fester. Thus, while all the glossed-up indicators constantly point to the stars, the mood on the academic shop floor steadily drops. The Wolf pops champagne after each new score in the Shanghai Competition, while the university sheep desperately work until they drop2 and the quality of the knowledge plantations is starting to falter, as is demonstrated by a large number of comprehensive and thorough analyses.3 Meanwhile, the sheep endeavour to bring the absurd anomalies of the occupation to the Wolf’s attention by means of an endless stream of opinion articles, lamentations, pressing letters and appeals. In turn, the Wolf reduces these to mere incidents, brushes them aside as inevitable side effects of progress, or simply ignores them.

Although our description and evaluation were written from the perspective of Dutch universities, the gist of our account (and quite a few details) applies to other countries as well, especially in Europe.4 While management’s occupation may not be as advanced in the Netherlands as it is in England (Holmwood 2011), it has already established a powerful continental bridgehead (De Boer, Enders and Schimank 2007). To show how these developments are more than just incidents, we list six critical processes and their excesses below. We will then proceed to analyse causes and suggest remedies.

 

Notes:

This article is a slightly updated and edited translation of the Dutch original, which appeared in Krisis: Tijdschrift voor actuele filosofie 2013 (3), pp. 2-18. We are grateful for helpful commentary on that version by the Krisis editorial team, in particular René Gabriëls. We would also like to thank Ilse and Jan Evertse for translating the Dutch text into English.

2 According to accepted clinical norms, a quarter of Dutch professors of medical science (especially the younger ones) suffer from burn-out (Tijdink, Vergouwen en Smulders 2012).

3 See, e.g., Ritzer (1998); Graham (2002); Hayes and Wynyard (2002); Bok (2003); Washburn (2003); Evans (2005); Shimank (2005); Boomkens (2008); Gill (2009); Tuchman (2009); Radder (2010); Krijnen, Lorenz and Umlauf (2011); Collini (2012); Sanders and Van der Zweerde (2012); Dijstelbloem et al. (2013); Verbrugge and Van Baardewijk (2014).

4 See Lorenz (2006 and 2012); Krücken (2014). In line with the situation in most European

 

See the full article in English at: https://www.academia.edu/9923660/The_academic_manifesto_From_an_occupied_to_a_public_unversity

Krisis: Tijdschrift voor actuele filosofie: http://www.krisis.eu

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

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Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism

NARRATIVES OF ASPIRATIONS WITHIN NEOLIBERALISM

Dr Laura Harvey

Lecturer in Sociology, University of Surrey

Speaking at the University of East London

8 January 2015, 5 – 6pm

ED 2.02, Cass Building, Stratford Campus

We would like to invite you to attend our Research Seminar on 8 January 2015, details below.   You will be very welcome but please let Daniel Blackman, D.Blackman@uel.ac.uk, know so we have an idea of how many people to expect.

Regards

Veronica Burton

Administrator for Research and Knowledge Exchange

Cass School of Education and Communities

University of East London

In this presentation we will explore the stories that young people tell about their aspirations and imagined futures at a time of deepening social inequalities.   We will examine how neoliberal discourses of individualism, self-responsibility and enterprise feature in young people’s everyday talk about ‘success’ and ‘failure’. Our analysis draws on interview data with 14-17 year-olds across England from an ESRC-funded study of ‘The role of celebrity in young people’s classed and gendered aspirations’. We will highlight the pervasiveness of neoliberal discourses of individualism, meritocracy and hard work within young people’s accounts. But we will also unpack the contradictions, ambivalences and ambiguities within neoliberalism as it works within and through the messiness of everyday practices.

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Education Crisis

Education Crisis

NEOLIBERALISM AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA

CALL FOR PAPERS

Since the globalization of the neoliberal economic model began during the 1980s, higher education systems have entered a phase of accelerated mercantilization throughout much of Latin America. If the first post-Soviet decade was marked by the new social movements as the main expression of opposition to late capitalism, the second saw uneven but often more prominent student uprisings. The capitalist crisis begun in 2008—variously interpreted as a global financial crisis, a structural or cyclical crisis, or exhaustion of the prevailing model—has accelerated protest. By 2010 secondary or university students had risen en masse against aspects of the neoliberal system in Chile, France and Greece (all 2006); the U.S. (California, 2009); Italy, England and Puerto Rico (2010); and finally, in the context of the Arab Spring, in several countries in the Middle East, starting with Tunisia and Algeria (2010). It is no coincidence that Chile—the world’s first country to adopt the “Chicago Boys” doctrine—has from 2011 been shaken by the largest student mobilizations since the 1960s, contesting the effects of the near-complete privatization of the education system.

Under the promise of democratization of access for the masses to higher education, governments and education corporations on a worldwide scale have transformed an area which was a state responsibility for much of the Twentieth century into one more frontier for the expansion of corporate capital and accumulation of private profit. As the product of neoliberal demands, the expansion of higher education has been accompanied by a transformation of the way the university and other higher education institutions define themselves and justify their existence. In this process, the liberal idea of the university as a space open to free intellectual debate with emphasis on autonomy, research, and contributing to the intellectual and moral formation of the nation has been assailed by market demands which prioritize productivity and performance indicators.

​The meanings and practices associated with this paradigm shift in higher education have permeated the diverse political-economic regions of the planet and have been instrumentalized by governments of both right and left. This has been particularly evident in Latin America, where such policies have combined privatization and government control. In Brazil, for instance, under the same argument of expansion and massification of higher education’s reach, policies quite different in appearance but not necessarily in consequences were tried by the administrations of presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Instead of promoting the expansion of higher education combining increased privatization with the drastic reduction of the salaries of academic staff and functionaries, and of the maintenance funds of public institutions—as did Cardoso—Lula promoted privatization while also investing in public higher education. Although statistically his government has funded private education even more than his predecessor, Lula’s government protected itself politically with the creation of new public institutions of higher education and the expansion of existing vacancies. But it has rendered such institutions increasingly less autonomous and subject to ever-increasing state control.

The aim of this special issue is to investigate how neoliberalism has transformed the university in Latin America, and concurrent expressions of resistance to this process. In brief: what kind of university has neoliberalism produced, or does it intend to produce? For whom, with whom and for what purposes?

We invite articles that present national or comparative studies panoramically and those that reflect on the new university structure, intellectual mission (e.g., curriculum, research) and/or culture in political, economic, ethnographic or historical perspective.

Topics which are particularly welcome, although not intended to preclude others, are:

  • The conditions of knowledge production under neoliberal policy and practice in Latin America.
  • The university as a new frontier of global capitalism (for example, via for-profit higher education, including on-line course delivery, corporate research agendas, student loans).
  • The instrumentalization of public universities by governments and the state, including transformation into an instrument for policy legitimation and implementation.
  • University autonomy under the pressures of state, national and international sponsoring agencies (Ford, Mellon, Rockefeller, IAF, CNPq, CAPES, etc.), and the effect of those agencies in defining research agendas and reshaping university curriculum.
  • The significance of new modalities of partnership between the public and private sectors.
  • Expanded higher education – democratization or massification? Transformation or reproduction of social hierarchies?
  • Neoliberalism, social inequalities and the university – the effect on university access of social disparities in public and private primary and secondary education; affirmative policies for marginalised or disadvantaged student groups (the poor, black and indigenous peoples.), including responsiveness to their particular intellectual and cultural needs.
  • Student and staff resistance movements; university reform movements; students and anti-neoliberal movements.
  • Universities as political actors including concepts of citizenship and relationship with student and popular movements.
  • The university in countries with anti-neoliberal governments.

Please submit inquiries about possible submissions to the issue editors:

Bernadete Beserra (bernabeserra@gmail.com)

Robert Austin (rwaustin64@gmail.com)

Rémi Lavergne (rfl2009@gmail.com)

Instructions for manuscript submission are available on the LAP website: http://latinamericanperspectives.com/

​Deadline for submission of articles: 30 September 2015

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cfp-convocatoria-chamada-para-artigos-neoliberalism-and-higher-education-in-latin-america-ingles-castellano-portugues (Go here for Portuguese version)

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Education Crisis

Education Crisis

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION V – 2015

Analyze, Educate, Organize: Critical Education for Social and Economic Justice

ICCE V: International Conference on Critical Education

June 15 – 18, 2015, Wroclaw, Poland

Conference website: http://www.icce.uls.edu.pl/icce

The International Conference on Critical Education (ICCE), previously held in Athens (2011, 2012), Ankara (2013) and Thessaloniki (2014), is a forum for scholars, educators and activists committed to social and economic justice.  The 5th ICCE: Analyze, educate, organize. Critical education for social and economic justice will take place in the Polish city of Wroclaw from June 15 – 18, 2015.

At a time of economic crisis, when education is under siege by neoliberal capitalism, (neo)conservatism and aggressive nationalism, when teachers and academics are being proletarianized, youth criminalized, schools and universities turned into commodities, and when different forms of fundamentalism are growing, critical education, as a theory and as a movement, is gaining in relevance. International communities of critical educators build resistance to these processes and are engaged in fostering social change leading to a more just, equal and fair society.

We invite emergent/new scholars, teachers, activists as well as those more experienced to submit abstracts that explicitly engage with these issues. The languages of the conference are English and Polish. Simultaneous translation will be provided during plenary sessions and selected parallel sessions.

Please send proposals written in the English language of maximum 150 words, including your name, a title, affiliation, contact information to iisce@dsw.edu.pl by March 20, 2015 (please indicate the language in which you will present – ENG/PL).  For more information, please visit www.icce.uls.edu.pl.  If you are presenting in another language, such as Turkish, for example, you will need to provide your own translator.

Keynote Speakers

Peter McLaren (Chapman University, California, USA)

Antonia Darder (Loyola Marymount University, USA)

Joyce Canaan (Birmingham City University, UK)

Hana Cervinkova (University of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw, Poland)

Adam Chmielewski (University of Wroclaw, Poland)

Anna Dzierzgowska (Jacek Kuroń High School, Warsaw, Poland)

Panagiota Gounari (University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA)

George Grollios (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)

Gail Edwards (Newcastle University, UK)

Dave Hill (Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK)

Aygülen Kayahan Karakul (İzmir Katip Çelebi University, İzmir, Turkey)

Ravi Kumar (South Asian University, Delhi, India) (tbc)

Robert Kwaśnica (University of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw, Poland)

Piotr Laskowski (Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland)

Heidi Mirza (Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, UK)

Lilia Monzo (Chapman University, California, USA)

Ünal Özmen (Journalist/Author, Turkey)

Lotar Rasiński (University of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw, Poland)

Guy Senese (Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA)

Bogusław Śliwerski (Academy of Special Education, Warsaw, Poland)

Kostas Skordoulis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)

Tomasz Szkudlarek (University of Gdańsk, Poland)

Paolo Vittoria (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Ahmet Yildiz (Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey)

Marta Zahorska – Bugaj (University of Warsaw, Poland)

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.co.uk

 

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

 

Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski

INSURRECTIONIST PEDAGOGIES AND THE PURSUIT OF DANGEROUS CITIZENSHIP

Insurrectionist Pedagogies and the Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship

Professor E . Wayne Ross

University of British Columbia

The 6th Annual Mary Hepburn Lecture in Social Studies Education

Department of Educational Theory & Practice, College of Education, University of Georgia

Athens, GA

October 16, 2014

6.00-7.00pm

Lamar School of Art

Room S151

Light refreshments served at 5.30.

It is more important than ever for people to understand birthplace, nationality, documents, and platitudes are not enough to fulfil the promises of citizenship— that is, for example, freedom. Freedom and the fulfillment of its virtues are unfinished, an ongoing dynamic struggle. Too often citizenship education implies docile, conforming, spectator behavior and thought.

Contemporary conditions demand an anti-oppressive citizenship education, one that takes seriously social and economic inequalities and oppression that result from neoliberal capitalism. While we can build upon the anti-oppressive possibilities of established, officially sanctioned pedagogies, that is not enough.

This lecture will explore imaginaries that might serve as the basis for the creation of pedagogies of dangerous citizenship. The pedagogical power of dangerous citizenship, resides in its capacity to encourage us to challenge the implications of own work; to envision an education that is free and democratic to the core; and to interrogate and uncover our own well-intentioned complicity in oppressive educational and cultural practices.

See: https://www.academia.edu/8400387/Mary_Hepburn_Lecture_University_of_Georgia_October_16_2014

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

The Falling Rate of Learning

The Falling Rate of Learning

SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATIONAL ELIMINATIONISM AND CULTURAL COLONIZATION

A HEAT (Higher Education & Theory) Symposium, with John Beck and Matthew Cornford (The Art School and the Culture Shed), David J. Blacker (The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame), and Nina Power (One-Dimensional Woman).

Friday 7th November
2pm – 6pm (followed by drinks reception)
Westminster Forum (5th Floor, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street)

Co-hosted by Institute for Modern & Contemporary Culture (IMCC) and the Higher Education Research Centre (HERC) at the University of Westminster.

David J. Blacker defines educational eliminationism as a state of affairs in which elites no longer find it necessary to utilize mass schooling as a first link in the long chain of the process of the extraction of workers’ surplus labour value but instead cut their losses and abandon public schooling altogether. John Beck and Matthew Cornford have charted the decline of local art schools and concordant rise of the ‘destination’ art gallery, and asked what this tells us about the changing relationship between the function of education and art in the new creative economy. Nina Power argues that current attacks on the education system are part and parcel of a broader war on cognitive and immaterial labour, upon which the art world provides a peculiarly privileged vantage point.

Drawing on the etymological and political association between culture and colonization, this symposium seeks to investigate the currently shifting relationship between education and culture through the themes of eliminationism and colonization.

John Beck is Professor in English Literature at the University of Westminster, director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture (IMCC), and author of Dirty wars: landscape, power, and waste in Western American literature and (with Matthew Cornford) The Art School and the Culture Shed.

David J. Blacker is a Professor of Philosophy of Education and Legal Studies at the University of Delaware, editor of Education Review, edrev.info., and author of The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame andDemocratic Education Stretched thin: How Complexity Challenges a Democratic Ideal.

Matthew Cornford is Professor of Fine Art at the University of Brighton, has a longstanding collaborative art practice with David Cross, and author (with John Beck) of The Art School and the Culture Shed.

Nina Power is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University, regularly writes for the Guardian and New Humanist, co-editor of Alain Badiou’s On Beckett and author of One-Dimensional Woman.

Rsvp to the organizer: M.Charles1@westminster.ac.uk

Poster Link: http://instituteformodern.co.uk/2014/educational-eliminationism-cultural-colonization-nov-7th

See: http://benjaminpedagogy.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/symposium-on-educational-eliminationism-and-cultural-colonization/ and http://hetheory.wordpress.com/

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

The Falling Rate of Learning

The Falling Rate of Learning

MARXISM AND EDUCATION: RENEWING DIALOGUES XXII – AND A PROFESSORSHIP IN EDUCATION

The 22nd MARXISM AND EDUCATION: RENEWING DIALOGUES (MERD) SEMINAR presents:

David J. Blacker, Professor of Philosophy, University of Delaware

The Race to Nowhere: Abandoning the Promise of Universal Education

Universal education is beloved as an ideal while its reality is being extinguished. Heralded as expansions of access where we “race to the top” and “leave no child behind,” initiatives involving marketization, austerity, privatization and student debt combine to eliminate and expel growing segments of the rising generation.

Why is this happening?  And why now?  David J. Blacker outlines a coherent framework for understanding the current onslaught against all levels of public education. It all comes down to deep and troubling changes in the economy that “education reform” cannot touch and that nobody wants to talk about.

Wednesday November 12th 2014, 5–6pm

University of East London, Stratford Campus, CASS School of Education, Room: ED2.04

Convener: Alpesh Maisuria (University of East London)

***

Employment Opportunity:

PROFESSORSHIP IN EDUCATION

CASS School of Education, University in East London.

Details on the UEL website: http://jobs.uel.ac.uk/vacancies.aspx?cat=234

Closing date 5th October 2014.

If anybody would like an informal conversation about the post, please contact Alpesh Maisuria: worthers21@hotmail.com or A.Maisuria@uel.ac.uk

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Education Not for Sale

Education Not for Sale

HOW PUBLIC IS PUBLIC EDUCATION?

TRED Conference 2014

How Public is Public Education?

Call for Proposals
The Transformative Researchers and Educators for Democracy (TRED) will be holding its third Annual Conference, “How Public is Public Education?”, November 14 and 15, 2014, at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Founded in 2011, UMass Dartmouth’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies has grown to four cohorts of future transformative leaders. Ph.D. and Ed.D. candidates in the program have sought to provide a public space for educational researchers and practitioners to engage in critical and transformative dialogues. Through forums, presentation sessions, panel discussions, and informal gatherings, TRED continues its ambition to place the discussion of educational leadership and policy within the dynamics of ideological production that reflect existing power imbalances that perpetuate inequalities within society.

The theme of the 2014 conference, How Public is Public Education?, reflects the critical elements within and beyond the field of education that need to be discussed, heard, and analyzed as we search for solutions. Professors, students, educational leaders, and the public are all welcome to submit proposals and to attend the conference.

Submitting Proposals

Proposals can be submitted to TREDconf@umassd.edu
If you have any questions, please contact us at TREDconf@umassd.edu
Like us on Facebook and look for any new information at Facebook.com/TRED.UMassD
ALL PROPOSALS MUST BE RECEIVED BY: Tuesday September 30th 2014.

Guidelines

TRED will be accepting presentation proposals for papers, symposiums, and research-in-progress roundtables. Upon submission of your proposal, please identify it to one of the following strands:
A. K-12; charter schools, innovation schools
B. Higher Education; adjunct faculty, campus based women’s, gender and cultural centers
C. Public Policy; Race to the Top, high-stakes standardized testing
PAPERS
Paper sessions provide individuals an opportunity to present a condensed version of their study. The research may focus on, but is not limited to, a question from an empirical or theoretical perspective. After all papers within a session have been presented, those in attendance will have the opportunity to dialogue with panelists.
RESEARCH IN PROGRESS ROUNDTABLE
Roundtable sessions are to open critical and insightful dialogue from colleagues familiar with a subject matter to support a developing study. Roundtables will be organized and led by a facilitator.
SYMPOSIUM
Symposiums consist of an integrated set of presentations with a similar topic as the focal point. This format of presenting will be limited to at least three, but no more than five, presentations. The proposal should identify who will be lead discussant or organizer, and, upon review, a TRED committee member may be named as the chair. Proposal Requirements (For all submissions)
1. Cover Page
a. Title
b. Researcher(s)
c. Contact Information
d. Organization/University
e. Panel Category
2. Abstract(300 word limit, not included in 1,000 word limit for proposal)
3. Individual Proposal (1,000 word limit)
a. Presenters (Identify who is the main contact person)
b. Theoretical Framework and Connections to Conference Theme;
c. Purpose;
d. Research Design/Methods;
e. Conclusion/Findings;
f. References
4. Symposium Group Proposal (1,500 word limit)
a. A common objective or theme should be outlined, providing perspectives on the particular topic.
i. 1-2 paragraphs in which the purpose of the symposium and connections among presenter paper’s is defined;
ii. Overview of each paper being presented including: methods, theoretical framework, research topic, and findings;
iii. Briefly describe the format and structure of the symposium
*If your symposium proposal is accepted, only the first author will be notified, and the first author is responsible for notifying all other co-authors*

For questions or comments, please contact
TREDconf@umassd.edu

TRED: http://www.umassd.edu/educationalleadership/delevents/tredconference/

Education Crisis

Education Crisis

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk