Beautiful Pedagogy…Foxfire Style

A bit of inspiration for all of us trying to stay grounded in our big fight over public school education and working toward a better society for everyone.

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Thanks to Lew and JoBeth for telling me about the NY Times piece…

Social class back in the Times

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a gorgeous piece in the New York Times about “the economy” and its effects on the already-struggling-to-make-ends-meet-in-the-good-times people.

Jane Van Galen has it linked on her blog along with some excellent quotes and pointed commentary. (Thanks to Andrea N. for telling me about it on Jane’s blog!)

Ehrenreich’s piece is the first in a series – so let’s hope the next ones are just as straight forward and educational (at least to those who don’t know it already).

NYT often has great pieces on social class – one series ended up as a great little book I’ve used in courses, Class Matters.

Creative wills to make money – know your rights:)

She stopped me in the parking lot of a convenient store and popped open her trunk, “Does your little girl like Barbie?”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“But look, it’s a great little basket – you have a sand bucket and shovel, some Barbie stickers and paper for writing. Cute, huh? Eight bucks.”

“Hmmmm…we really don’t need it.”

“Five bucks.”

“Okay. I’ll take it.”

I’m from a place where creative ways for a head of a family to make a buck are used by most people I know. Cutting someone’s grass, shoveling some snow, selling make-up, selling left over prescription pills, cutting hair, setting up a flea market booth, having a yard sale, fixing a car, repairing a roof, making and selling jewelry, taking someone’s picture, cleaning someone’s house, giving someone a ride for gas money, betting on a horse, playing pool, grooming someone’s dog, collecting aluminum cans, standing on the corner with a pizza advertisement, working at a food pantry to get the leftovers. You name it, I’ve seen it done, and done a lot of creative stuff myself to make money. And those were in good times.

Now times are less than good – and people have doubled and tripled their creative efforts to make money. I had never been stopped in a convenience store parking lot to buy a cute bucket for kids, nor have I ever seen so many yard sale signs, so many crafts laid out in front yards with “for sale” signs on them (I saw a really cool wooden clubhouse for kids in a yard that had been handmade – but it would have never made it back to Georgia), so many cars for sale in driveways, furniture sitting out with signs on it, and on and on and on and on and on.

It never ceases to amaze me how much hustle people have in them when the cards are down, how they do what they need to do to get food on the table and the rent paid, and how people shift money around from person to person, family to family to help others get food on the table and the rent paid.

My great uncle works in a food pantry and brings extra food to my grandma and her brother – he told me about all the “strangers” suddenly coming for food, not the usual folks who tended to be older and on social security drawing very small monthly checks. “It must really be bad,” he said.

Indeed.

And I think of the Barbie bucket I bought in the parking lot and the signs – dozens and dozens of signs – advertising items and services for sale. Hustlin’ we call it in my family – hustlin’ to make a buck – and so rarely does that hustle happen in the official economy, that one that is above ground, above the table, counted in government statistics and weekly reports. It seems to me more people are hustlin’ out in the open when they used to be more underground. But the underground economy is sagging too, so the creative efforts are coming out from everywhere. These are folks who have either rejected the official economy because of the devastatingly low wages (I mean, really, does anyone think you can feed yourself, much less a family, on $7.00 an hour?), bullshit red tape (have you applied for jobs lately? nearly everything – even foodservice – requires online applications), humiliating drug tests (does anyone really think that someone who smokes a joint on the weekend should not be allowed to cook a hamburger on Wednesday?), or have taken up hustlin’ as a second or third job (should it really take two or three jobs to live a modest life?).

But they know their rights, and they know they have the right, and the responsibility, to make money for rent and food, so they do it. And I also know that if the government could tax them on their Barbie bucket sales out of their trunk, it would. And that $5.00 sale, with a cost of items at at least $4.00 would leave a $1.00 profit, a .30 tax, and .70 left for her hustle. Not quite worth it…unless of course .70 is exactly what you need to buy that loaf of bread that will feed your kids half the week.

Reminds me of a verse from a song – Know Your Rights by The Clash:

And Number 2
You have the right to food money
Providing of course you
Don’t mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitation

God, Politics, and Public Schooling: Interrogating the Separation of Church and State

This is such a hot issue in the media lately…perhaps we can all take advantage of it and help our students explore what the separation of church and state means on paper and how messy things play out in practice. A bit of personal commentary then onto some great resources to use with students, family, friends, and foes:

For several years folks have been telling me that right-wing Evangelicals were getting themselves into strategic positions to influence federal policy. Call me slow, but I shrugged a lot of this crazy talk off. We have a separation of church and state in our nation, right? Don’t most people respect that separation? Didn’t people flee to our country to escape religious persecution? Isn’t this the land that is open and respectful of all religious beliefs (including the belief that there is no God)?

Religion and national politics, however, seem to go hand-in-hand nowadays. Obama was practically bullied into outright separating himself from his church because of comments made by the leader of that church, and now there are videos all over the web of Palin giving a speech in her former church talking about “God’s Will” and “God’s Plan” regarding such things as the Iraq war, the pipeline in Alaska, and the need for Alaskans to be right with God in order for good things to happen there. Really? Really?? And is it God’s Will that our society be so devastatingly unequal that little children are going to bed hungry tonight in all of our cities? Is it God’s Will that Cubans are fighting for their lives tonight because of the devastation they’ve experienced this hurricane season? And what about those innocent Iraqis and Pakistanis that suffer because of world politics?

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about the hypothetical separation between church and state, and I offer some food for thought in the following resources – some of which I’ve used in courses and others I consider in the privacy of my own home:

An excerpt from Our Spirits Don’t Speak English - a brilliant film about Indian Boarding Schools and the explicit intentions to civilize and Christianize U.S. indigenous people from the 1600s through much of the 1900s while stripping them of their native languages and forcing English-only policies and practices. I have used sections of this film in a course to consider whether and how these three purposes of education still operate in public schools today.

An excerpt from Jesus Camp - another terrific film documenting the inner tensions of Christianity in the United States between what I would call “radical” God-fearing right-wing Christians and Christians who strongly disagree with the former group’s teaching of hatred, fear, and even violence to young children. Connecting such radical beliefs to advocating for right-wing policies (including appointments to the Supreme Court) and “preaching” in church that tells members of the church what they should do with their personal votes is clearly action against the separation of church and state. I particularly enjoyed the insightful comments of the Christian radio talk show host in this documentary as he tries to make sense of how the roots of Christianity has bred such hate. Disclaimer: I have not used this in any course…I’ll let you know if I decide to.

And “Shouting Across the Divide” from This American Life - A heartwrenching audio story of a Muslim family’s experience with a public school teacher, principal, and system following September 11, 2001. I have used this in a course (thanks to my colleague Amy Parks!) and it provoked lots of important discussion around religion, politics, public education, and Christian-based public school curricula.

I’d love to know what you folks do with students around these issues…

welfare brat by mary childers

I’ll be adding this book to my list of terrific reads that explore the complexities of social mobility through education. Childers’ memoir is beautifully written even when she’s writing about her teenage rage directed at her mother and painful realizations caught up in the tricky web woven between gratitude and desire, loyalty and resentment, love and fear, school and home. Some of the most insightful moments for educators might be in her writing about language use, clothing, and eye contact as she crosses the threshold into middle-class Manhattan to work as a teen and downplays desires to attend college to maintain peer relationships. Interchanges between Childers and her guidance counselor would also make for interesting dialogue, as well as the variety of ways her siblings experience mobility – and how sexuality, lies/truths, language, and relationships buttress such mobility.

Brava Childers!

Fabulous new film

La Misma Luna/Under the Same Moon This fabulous new film in independent theaters portrays the life of a young boy in Mexico living without his mother who has illegally immigrated to the U.S. I won’t give away any details, but bring your tissues and rally signs. It could make even the most conservative anti-immigration person reconsider dehumanizing laws that break the hearts and spirits of tenacious, driven, hard-working Mexicans. I haven’t yet used it with any of my courses but I will – and I will ask students to pay close attention to issues of language, literacies, and power within the intricate complexities of U.S.-Mexico relations. I will also ask students to consider the broader context of contemporary immigration around the globe and how capitalist economies and globalism is impacting social class relations beyond national borders.

What is education for? Getting beyond “a good job”

Only recently have I turned my ear toward the discourse of “why” students need or should want an education. I’m stunned, however, by the saturation of the topic with the “to get a good job” discourse.  Most of you out there are likely reading this wondering what rock I’ve been hiding under…but here I am shaking my head in bewilderment wondering what business second graders, fourth graders, sixth graders have thinking their whole life of schooling is for a “job.”

After being in many classrooms, talking to teachers and my university students about what education is for, and hearing many parent-child and teacher-student conversations like “stay in school…get a good job” from all social class backgrounds, I’m trying my best to insert some equally-important options within this otherwise authoritative discourse on what education is for:

What about creativity? Can education be about learning to create? Learning the possibilities of what a creative mind and body can do?

What about social action? Can education be learning about social injustices and working to organize and change those injustices?

What about self-fulfillment? Can education be finding something that makes us happy, filled with passion, willing to work and work at it because it’s fulfilling in and of itself?

What about the journey of becoming a whole person? Can education be about learning and doing in ways that helps me continue on the journey to become a whole person, with knowledge about myself, my history, my shared experiences with others, my interests, my dreams – and the know-how to follow those dreams (whatever they may be)?

What about freedom? Can education be about studying, researching, gaining knowledge and multiple perspectives of that knowledge to be emotionally and intellectually free from the oppressive structures in our society? And to work against anti-freedom practices, beliefs, structures.

These are just a few possibilities off the top of my head – I’d love to hear about others that have been, and can be, overtly inserted into the discourse of education. It would be great if children, teachers, adults, and all of us could have a robust vocabulary around what education is for…beyond getting “a good job.” All good jobs, my friends, don’t lead toward feeling whole, fulfilled, powerful, etc. In fact, many jobs don’t. So let’s let education be a place where the “job” doesn’t restrict ideas of what a person can be.

Learning from Denmark? Rethinking compulsive consumerism and the “American Dream”

Sunday evening’s 60 Minutes (CBS) reported on the “happiest people” on earth. The Danes have, again, been reported as the “happiest.” Reporters wondered why given that a neighbor, Norway, is richer and another neighbor, Sweden, is healthier.

This story  tells of some unthinkable (at least in the U.S.) social services in place in Denmark that may (?) promote persistent happiness:

1. Average work week of 37 hours with 6 weeks vacation a year

2. State-paid paternity leave for 6 months

3. State-paid education through college degree (students take as long as they want/need to complete their college education)

4. “Security” from birth until death (financial, education, social)

What’s the catch?

Perhaps the taxes paid…around 50% earnings.

Would we, in the U.S. be willing to contribute 50% of our earnings to ensure the well-being of all our citizens?

I would.

The story also reported that some of the most unhappy people live in the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S. (Upper Eastside of Manhattan was one example). What might this tell us?

“Stuff” won’t make us happy. Stop the compulsive consumerism and judgments based on possessions.

What advice did the interviewed students give to U.S. folks looking for “happiness”? Don’t depend too much on the American Dream.

Denmark Ministry of Social Welfare