Woman…in song and video

Woman, John Lennon

I am Woman, Helen Reddy

Fabulous parody of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ – Women’s Suffrage

Single, Natasha Bedingfield

 

 

Title IX is 40 years old…when and how do we teach about that in schools?

(Image from the Sports and Entertainment Law Blog)

Have we come a long way baby? Given the fact that Michigan State Representative Lisa Brown, was banned this week from speaking on the House floor because she said “vagina” during her compelling argument against restricting women’s reproductive rights – I think we’ve fallen a long way back in time, way before the 70′s when radical policy changes were made to improve the lives of girls and women in the United States.

One of those radical policy changes occurred forty years ago when Title IX was enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Nixon, and has faced many legal challenges over the years. Most people familiar with the phrase “Title IX” would immediately connect the law to girls’ and young women’s rights to play sports in any school receiving federal funding, but sports weren’t even mentioned in the legislation. The legislation prohibits sex discrimination in “all” of an institutions programs and activities, including sports, but extending well beyond sports. In fact, even sexual harassment of students is prohibited under Title IX, and if sex “bias” includes the way we teach and what we teach, I’m surprised that we haven’t heard about anyone using Title IX as a reason to include pro-women curriculum in schools at any level.

But a pro-women approach to education seems nearly impossible given the current war against women being waged in the U.S. (Even if it’s not just against women, but the pursuit of social control writ large). The attack on women and the persistent questioning of any attention to girls and women in education was gaining steam in 2001, just as the No Child Left Behind Act was being written and enacted. For example, The Heritage Foundation (formed in 1973, just one year after Title IX…coincidence?) describes itself as:

“Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institution—a think tank—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”

And within its “think tank” The Heritage Foundation determined that the Women’s Educational Equity Act was a “waste of money,” an opinion argued in this article, apparently written by a woman but written against girls and women. This article, like many others hitting newspapers and journals throughout the 2000s, highlights girls’ academic achievements in test scores relative to boys’ test scores. The article, of course, doesn’t mention that most girls and women still don’t know their basic rights, don’t know about the history of women’s rights in the U.S. or across the world, can’t recall any woman who is serving in a leadership role in the U.S. government, and have no idea that even in 2012 women still only make .77 for every one dollar earned by a man in the same job. A lot of folks may not even know that the “Paycheck Fairness Act” was voted on in 2012 and defeated. This Act would have made it easier for women to determine whether they were being paid fairly as compared to their counterparts who are men, but that right has been denied.

So where is Title IX in education? I can’t say I have ever heard about or observed any classroom at any level discussing the significance of this legislation in the daily lives and education of girls and women, and I definitely haven’t heard about or observed anyone teaching about women from an anti-discrimination perspective that would reflect the goals of Title IX. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the sex discrimination of our K-12 curriculum, and there are plenty of materials out there to help us all get started, including lots of links in the text above.

Do you teach high school? Check out this syllabus for teaching women’s rights. And NCSS standards are already included.

Don’t teach high school? Well, look over the syllabus to check your own knowledge about women’s fight for basic rights and adapt the material and activities to align with the age of your students.

And be sure to include current events in your teaching. Lucky us, the news is saturated with evidence that there is indeed a war against women being waged, and we get to teach it all, including the awesome performance of the Vagina Monologues in Lansing, Michigan on the Capitol steps , and the op-ed written by Representative Lisa Brown - two big news events this week alone.

We’ve gone a long way back in time baby – but it looks like women just might be waking up and deciding that the battles won in the 1970s, including Title IX among others eroding away, don’t guarantee anything when 40 years have passed.

**Maureen Downey’s Get Schooled has a good overview of Title IX and, as you will see, anti-women rhetoric is commonplace in the comments – a testament to today’s sexist climate.

The Teaching Georgia Writing Collective – check it out!

About the Collective: The Teaching Georgia Writing Collective is a group of educators, parents, and concerned citizens who engage in public writing and public teaching about education in Georgia. Some goals of the collective include: 1) empowering educators to reclaim their workplace and professionalism, 2) empowering families to stand up for their children and shape the institutions their children attend each day, 3) empowering children and youth to have control over their education, and 4) enhancing the education of all Georgians.

 Members of the collective do not have to disclose their participation in any way. However, each collective member can decide when and where she or he informs others that she or he is a member. It is important that all members of the collective respect the right of others to remain anonymous in the collective writing process.

Contact the collective: teachinggeorgia@gmail.com

 

 

Teacher Morale is Low? How Could That Be?

Of course teacher morale is lower than it has been in two decades – no surprise there.

Maybe this recent study will provide lots of educators to jump up, yell, scream, write, speak out, organize, and figure out a way to be powerful once again!

A HUGE kudos goes out to Anabel Fender – one of my former students who wrote about her experiences during an independent study we had together last fall – now she has an editorial on the AJC blog Get Schooled (Maureen Downey) and it’s comin’ out in print too!

For your reading pleasure:

Future teachers – failures before we even start

4:37 am March 7, 2012, by Maureen Downey

Are new teachers undermined before they even step into the classroom? (AP Images)

Anabel Fender is a graduate student in education at the University of Georgia. This is her first essay on the Get Schooled blog.

I think it is terrific and an ideal follow-up to the survey results I posted earlier today. Read them both and you will get a sense of what teachers are experiencing right now.

By Anabel Fender

I am an idealist. A dreamer.

An…Oh-My-Goodness-Scared-To-Death-Future Teacher.

And I am made out to be a failure before I even start.

I am battered and bruised from the war against teachers and I haven’t even started teaching yet.

Scripted curricula tell me that the “higher ups” have no faith in my words. My Words! An integral part of what makes me a teacher is not trusted, so I will be given a script telling me exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. In what other profession do we not trust the words of the professional? Before I start, they make me question my words.

Merit pay initiatives imply that the teachers of America are not working as hard as they can already. In theory this initiative reflects the business world, but in the business world workers design their own goods and services. Teachers no longer have the freedom to design their goods and services – those are ready-made and required from above. It makes more sense to hold those creating the standards, curriculum guides, and scripted curriculum accountable for test scores – they are the ones making the “goods” and “services.” Before I start, they make me question my power.

In an effort to “improve” the teacher with scripted curriculum and merit pay, governors, federal government, and educational “reformers” favor alternative routes to certify teachers. Colleges of education are accused of using students as cash cows for funding research. Flyers for Teach for America hang on bulletin boards in the same universities. I am completely invested and have worked hard for my undergraduate and graduate degrees in education. I have made personal and financial sacrifices for a profession that will not give me great returns monetarily.

And policy makers have the audacity to think that a 22-year old business major spending six weeks of summer training to be a teacher is better equipped for teaching than I am. They help pay her loans, find a job, and offer funding for further education. But me? I graduate with education degrees when no one is hiring, teachers have no job security, and my student loans equal a teacher’s annual salary. Before I start, everyone is questioning my capabilities.

Teachers want what is best for students, but the current war against teachers is enough to wear anyone down. Teachers are constantly being told they are not good enough and then considered a threat when they speak out against injustices in schools.

Teachers’ tenure has been all but eliminated, furlough days are required, salaries are stagnant, and policies are written to fire teachers for being tardy but not to compensate them for their long evening and weekend hours. And since Georgia is a right-to-work state with no union to protect its teachers, teachers do what they must to keep their jobs. Teachers are afraid to speak out as intellectuals. Before I start I am questioning whether I am “allowed” to be an intellectual as a teacher.

I am battered and bruised but I am not going to question my words, my power, and my ability to be an intellectual. I will not let others define me, but I need teacher allies – former, current, and future teachers who will stand up with me and for me against this war on teachers. This is not about competition or jobs or our future. This is about improving our quality of life in schools so we can make schools powerful places for idealists to make their dreams a reality.

–from Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog

 

Getting Clear about Emotion – Teacher Morale, Crying, and Policy Makers

What’s all the crying about? Education policy that requires teachers to engage in malpractice – that’s what.

The secret is out, teachers, and you are not the only one crying over the soul-crushing policies in schools.

The first murmurs I heard about teachers in crisis came from a principal several years ago. Teachers were streaming into his office seeking counseling services. Many were taking anti-depressants. Some couldn’t sleep at night, and some were so anxious and stressed they were worried their families would suffer irreparable damage.

Teachers enter the profession to do what is best for the students in front of them and for society at large. They earn degrees, immersed in rigorous study of how and why humans learn, how to individualize instruction, and how to inspire lifelong learning and engaged citizenship.

But individualization, inspiration, and engagement aren’t in current policies, and neither is teachers’ professional knowledge. Instead teachers must follow pacing guides and move on with assignments regardless of whether students are beyond or behind. Anyone can walk into a teacher’s classroom at any moment and evaluate whether the teacher is following the one-size-fits-all program with “fidelity” and “full compliance.”

The choices are soul-crushing: 1) Slow down, teach creatively and get students excited about a topic, but fall behind the pacing guide and receive a poor evaluation and possible humiliation and job loss; or 2) Move on with the pacing guide and ignore students’ pleas for help or their yearning to learn more, and evaluations might be fine, but students suffer.

Most teachers do a little of both, but their no-win situation is devastating.

And when students’ needs aren’t met because teachers are following mandates, they also cry or cry out in other ways.

I’ve witnessed sobbing children in school, crocodile tears streaking cheeks. Their bodies rejecting the relentless mistreatment they receive from impersonal curriculum, strict limitations on socializing and movement, and harsh punishments for child-like behavior. Students reject dehumanization.

When children hold it together at school they often fall apart at home. Yelling, slamming doors, wetting the bed, having bad dreams, begging parents not to send them back to school.

Some parents seek therapy for their children. More parents than ever feel pressured to medicate their children so they can make it through school days. Others make the gut-wrenching decision to pull their children from public schools to protect their dignity, sanity, and souls. Desperate parents choose routes they have never considered: homeschooling, co-op schooling, or when they can afford it, private schooling. But most parents suffer in silence, managing constant family conflict.

And I cry.

When I spend a lot of time in schools I often cry. Each day when I would leave a particular school in New York, I would find a park bench and have a good cry before heading home on the train. I cried for the children because they were so young and vibrant and constrained to desks for seven hours at a time and they were unable to talk during lunch and they were only allowed outside for ten minutes – if at all – and those ten minutes could quickly evaporate into no minutes if the line to the outside door wasn’t straight enough or quiet enough or fast enough. I cried because I witnessed their crocodile tears streaking their cheeks as they sat silently into space.

I also cried for teachers. They were often threatened by administrators  and humiliated in front of their students, they were told at the last minute that no, they wouldn’t be teaching fifth grade like they have in the past two years – they will be teaching kindergarten and they better damn well be happy they at least have a job. They were told to collect data, look at data, analyze data – and any mention of an individual child’s struggle would be interrupted with some line about “data.”

And I cried for myself and every other parent out there who would never want her or his child treated like a number, a digit on a data sheet, a potential deficit to the school’s reputation. I have hugged and consoled countless parents who were crying and suffering in silence when their children weren’t around to see them. Parents who try to support the school’s wishes and tell their children to do what teachers say, but then fall apart in private because they know their children are miserable, sad, depressed, and crying too much over school.

Some people might say that crying is an expression of emotion and that it ought to be kept private. Some might even say crying is a sign of irrationality, of over-sensitivity, of hysteria – all insults used to pathologize women (most teachers and all mothers) for at least a hundred years.

However, teachers, students, and parents are not the only emotional players in the unbearable game of school.

Policy makers are emotional. Punitive policies forcing the impossible combination of rigidity and test-based accountability are produced out of fear, anger, distrust, and arrogance. They are written in an irrational effort to control the bodies that fill schools every day.

But policy makers don’t have to endure the physical and psychological effects of their policies – those of us in schools do.

It’s time to stand in solidarity against mandated dehumanization in one-size-fits-all schooling and against over-emotional policy makers who have a reckless stranglehold on schools. Demand that humanity be returned to teachers, students, and parents who know how to make schools dynamic, inspirational places where everyone can thrive.

How to Make School Not Suck #1

I’m aching to write a book called “School Sucks,” but I don’t want to be too negative, you know? I mean I am an education professor, surely I should not be preaching about how much school sucks, right? Surely I should be the person waving a banner recruiting people in, being a cheerleader for schools, teachers, education, and schools, right? On the other hand, school does – in many cases – suck. It sucks as a kid when you’re stuck in a chair and get yelled at by the teacher for falling off it after a couple hours of test preparation madness; it sucks as a teacher when you’re finally doing some cool stuff with your kids and the principal comes in and wants to know what standards you’re covering; it sucks as a principal when you want your teachers to do what’s best for kids but the district office will punish you if you don’t meet AYP; it sucks as a parent watching day after day go by knowing that your kid is going off to a place where kids are expected to behave like robots, learn their math facts like computers, follow rules like – well, who follows rules??; it sucks to be a kid and go to  a place every day where you’re not expected to be like a kid at all who would prefer curiosity, experimentation, play, humor, physical movement, friendship, nurturing, kindness, and un-sucki-ness.

So I’ve tried to make the title a little more positive – a little nicer for those who may never read a book called “School Sucks.”

I don’t know if or when it’ll ever become a book, so I decided just to share some of my random thoughts about some things that make school suck for kids here, especially since a friend told me he wouldn’t respect me if I didn’t get started on this project immediately. So here’s my eensy weensy start…

#1
Stop smiling so much at the kids with nice clothes.
You know it happens, the kids who dress “nice,” or as some kids might say, like “preps,” “jocks,” “stuck-ups,” “teacher’s pets,” or “rich kids,” get all the positive attention even when they don’t deserve it. Even when they come to class late, don’t do a good job on their homework, whisper mean things to kids on the playground, and secretly exclude the kids with the not-so-nice clothes, the kids with nice clothes still get treated nice. Stop doing it! This makes school suck for kids who don’t want those stupid clothes, don’t have money for those clothes, or who are trying everything they can to get those clothes. Even kindergarteners notice when the well-dressed kids get all the attention. Stop it. Besides – without even knowing it, you might be promoting materialism and consumerism just by rewarding those who pay big bucks for cheaply made clothing in sweatshops and other subpar working conditions across the globe with your smile and special attention. Smile more at everyone – make school not suck.

#2
Stop gushing over kids who went on exotic trips during spring break.
It sucks, I know, seeing seven and eight year olds trot around the globe like nobody’s business, seeing things in real life that you’ve only seen in books or on television. But stop gushing over it, alright? All this gushing makes school suck for kids who went to a babysitter’s house and thought they had a ball all week until you made a big deal about the trip to Paris little Lucy went on. Make everyone’s spring, summer, fall, and winter breaks seem cool, valuable, educational, and admirable – not just the kids who happen to have been born in a family that can afford to go on expensive vacations. Besides – without even knowing it, you might be promoting an elitist and colonial attitude toward “others” around the globe who are assumed to be there for us middle-class Americans to gaze upon and wonder about. Gush over everyone’s fun and sorrow over school breaks – make school not suck.

#3
Stop saying things like, “He’s never even been to the zoo!”
What kind of school God made the zoo the pinnacle of all experiences that will magically make all our academic dreams come true? It really sucks when all the cool things you’ve done with your family don’t seem to matter to anyone and all that really matters is if you’ve seen caged up animals who are in fake habitats and gawked at all day by well-dressed families trying to do everything they can to give their kid an advantage in school. Besides – without even knowing it, you might be promoting the idea that animals are put on earth to be controlled by humans and to become humans’ entertainment as they live their lives in captivity. Find educational reasons to value everyone’s home experiences – make school not suck.

#4
Stop announcing the names of kids who still haven’t brought in field trip money.
This REALLY makes school suck for kids whose families are barely surviving and don’t have the money for life’s necessities, much less the $6.00 fee to go to the zoo where they keep animals in captivity and we gawk at them for our entertainment. Here’s the thing – if out-of-school experiences mean so much to educational success (and I would agree here that this is true), then tell your school and district to stop wasting millions on test prep materials and testing materials and use that money to pay for field trips that mean so much to educational success. Or, find lots of free field trips to go on. Or, use public transportation so the cost is lower. Or, convince your principal to create a fund that pays for families who can’t afford it (without announcing it). Or, have an open conversation with your students about the fact that because we live in a society that inequitably distributes economic resources, we expect that different families will be able to pay different amounts for field trips and that sometimes means that families are not able to pay anything at one time or another. No big deal. The big deal, in fact, is that our society should make sure it has decent paying jobs for everyone so that everyone could afford the field trip fees. THAT would make school not suck for the kids who don’t have the money to pay and can’t stand the humiliation and shame that comes along with not having the money to pay and go home angry at their parents because they don’t have the money to pay.

#5
Make field day free for all students! At a middle school in Northport, AL, students had to pay $10.00 each to participate in the end of the year field day; those who didn’t or couldn’t bring money were sentenced to study hall. What were organizers thinking when they made these decisions? Field day doesn’t cost anything, but even if there were expenses involved, how could anyone think it would be right to keep non-paying students inside? I’ll be circulating a petition to make Field Day free for all.

#6
Stop privileging school athletes by giving them a day off of school for “athletic day.” While the middle school athletes spent a day at Alabama Adventure Amusement Park, non-athlete members of the geocaching club, chess club, math club (etc. ad nauseum) stayed behind. Why can’t everyone in the school community be invited to go to the amusement park? Do athletes, and athletes alone, deserve a special day? Of course not! It’s absurd!

Exposing a Fertile Stereotype – a narrative

Exposing a Fertile Stereotype

I know what they say about poor girls.
Tryin to get pregnant to keep a boy around.
Havin babies to get a welfare check.
Trappin men by tellin’em they’re on the pill when they’re not.
Hell, I was even in a hospital not too long ago when a receptionist started talkin about the poor girls around town who were taught by their parents to have “no morals” and to start pumpin out those babies as soon as possible to get more money comin’ in.
Of course that woman didn’t know she was talkin to a poor girl inside the woman’s body who had health insurance and classy lookin clothes on. She assumed I was like her – middle class or whatever – and hatin on folks without insurance or with Medicaid or looking for some kind of supposed free ride.
But you know what assumptions do, and they did it right there in the hospital when I was fumin mad about what she was sayin and she just kept on sayin it. Even followed me out to the waiting room to tell me she was raisin her girl different. She was the ass because she wouldn’t shut her mouth and didn’t know what she was talking about, and I was the ass because I was the very kind of girl she was talking about.
Even though she didn’t know what she was talkin about.
I don’t even recognize what people say about poor girls though.
Trying to get pregnant?
All my life I’ve been with girls and women doing everything they could to avoid pregnancy. Well, almost everything, since most of them still had sex. So, I’ll put it this way, the girls and women I knew who were having sex were doing everything they could to not get pregnant. And they talked about it all the time.
This pill.
That pill.
This condom.
That condom.
Pull out.
Watch the calendar.
Count days from your period.
Know your options if it happens.
Let me be clear here. The girls and women in my family think kids are just as adorable as the next person does. We just knew the costs.
Mostly we knew about financial costs like being out of work because you’re sick while you’re pregnant then being out of work because you’re in the hospital havin the baby then being out of work because you’re recovering then being out of work because your kid is sick then being out of work because the babysitter didn’t show up then being out of work because you’re just too damn exhausted to get your ass out of bed on time to go to work.
One day off work could mean the light bill isn’t paid.
Two days could mean rent is short.
Three days? Don’t even go there.
We knew the financial costs because every woman we knew suffered those. We didn’t know anyone who was salaried or got paid personal days, paid maternity leave, paid vacation.
We didn’t know a woman who didn’t worry too much about going in an hour or so late when a kid was sick.
We only knew women who clocked in and clocked out and was only paid for the work their bodies did during the minutes between those two times.
We only knew women who busted their asses on the restaurant floor, behind a bar, on the factory line, cleaning someone else’s house, over the café grill, watching someone else’s kids, poking cash register keys, dry cleaning clothes.
We watched our women come home off the bus, out of a friend’s car, out of a relative’s car, out of a borrowed car, out of a barely-gonna-make-it-but-it’s-my-own car and they were tired. Pooped. Exhausted. And they knew and we knew that still when the check came in or the tips were added up it wasn’t going to quite cover what it needed to cover.
It wasn’t gonna cover the grocery bill after all the bills were paid, it wasn’t gonna cover the field trip money expected at school, it wasn’t gonna cover the new shoes little Sammy needed after his toes burst out the front, it wasn’t gonna cover the drive-in movie she promised the kids on the weekend, it wasn’t gonna cover bus fare or gas or the small payment she gave to her friend who drove every day.
It never quite covered.
Something was always left uncovered.
Exposed.
Poor girls are exposed all the time to the harsh and judging world and their exposures are spat out of people’s mouths, “Look at her, now why on earth would you dress like that?” “What’s she doing with a boy that age? She’s just trying to be like her welfare queen mama.” “Don’t even think about dating her. She’s a gold digger if I’ve ever seen one.”
You’ve heard more of this spewing than me of course, because most of the time I was excluded company when these things were being said.
But my world of you-better-not-get-pregnant-girl and please-god-it’s-me-poorgirl-please-don’t-let-me-get-pregnant and oh-my-god-what-am-I-gonna-do-now weebled from side to side when I realized that some girls tried to get pregnant.
Rich girls though.
And I’d never heard you-know-those-rich-girls-only-tryin-to-get-pregnant one time ever in my life.
Never.
And girls that weren’t so rich, but had more money than I’d ever known, were doing it too.
Yep. I was stunned when I found out that those girls I never knew tried to get pregnant.
Shocked I’m tellin ya.
Shakin my head and blowin through my nose I tried to get a handle on this new world I was discovering.
Not only did some girls (or, women, by the time I knew them) plan to get pregnant, they made it a full-time job to figure out how to get pregnant.
Damn.
They should just talk to some of the girls I knew who seemed to know the secret even when they were tryin everything to avoid it.
But these girls are se-ri-ous. Fertility books, visits to the doctor, prenatal vitamins months before they even thought they would try to conceive, halting their alcohol habits, curbing their caffeine in-takes, thermometers, sex on certain days, calling in their spouses when the temperature was just right, doing all kinds of yoga positions immediately following sex, reading more books, seeing more doctors, getting shots, paying thousands and thousands of dollars to try to get pregnant.
I mean damn.
Again.
This world was so foreign to me.
“You mean you do all this to get pregnant?”
And they think the poor girls are tryin to get pregnant.
But poor girls are so strapped by their finances we can’t imagine a pregnancy, the furniture needed, time away from work, the long-term financial costs, the exhaustion after a double shift, the food, the bottles, the formula, the childcare.
Other girls, to my amazement, seem to have the pleasure and luxury of focusing on the “joy” of pregnancy the “joy” of nursing the “joy” of child-rearing the “joy” of becoming a mother who has the time and resources to make a room for the newcomer to buy all the necessities (plus) for the baby to take time off work to recuperate to visit the doctor without worrying about the bills to take the baby to a pediatrician who works in a colorful, spacious, inviting office in the suburbs rather than wait in long lines at the cold, damp, gray local health clinic to see the one pediatrician who comes each month.
I know what they say about poor girls.
But I think they got it wrong.
I’m 37 years old now and, after giving birth to an unplanned beautiful baby girl who is now seven years old and the love of my life, I’m still trying to avoid pregnancy.
It’s in me.
The fear.
The anxiety.
I have insurance now.
A salary.
Time off when I need it.
And the room for a new baby in the family.
But I know the costs.
And I still feel exposed.

Men Evolving Badly or Class and Gender Stereotypes?

This post on Glenn Sacks’ blog supporting father-child relationships led me to Vanity Fair’s story Men Evolving Badly, a weak feminist attempt (by a man) to reassert and deconstruct the power of the penis among the super rich. Sadly, however, the writer generalizes this power to all men and does not engage with the class hierarchies in the U.S. My letter to the editor:

James Wolcott might claim to be a feminist given his perspective in “Men Evolving Badly” but he would be well-advised to step back and take a lesson or two in radical feminism. Just as he writes “The primary threat to the psychological well-being of most men (and women) isn’t sexual or pop-cultural but economic…” he reveals the limitations of his own class privileges when focusing his attention on the super rich. It may be true that the “odds still favor the penis-bearer” in the wealthy class, but take another look at the working-class and poor ranks in the U.S. and you might find another story altogether. Keep in mind the millions of men behind bars who were largely (90% or better) arrested during a time when they were living below the federal poverty level, and many because they had fallen behind in child support payments while struggling to keep a roof over their own heads. The “roof entry to the helicopter pad” is foreign territory within a context of deindustrialization and the feminization of working-class jobs where many men are lucky to find minimum wage jobs or day labor. Instead of focusing on the devolution of the narcissistic, power elite, take a walk through neighborhoods annihilated by the greed of corporations and financial institutions where fathers are playing soccer with their children in the street or crying behind closed doors because their wives left them, took the kids, and now they can’t afford child support payments. Radical feminism aims to end oppression of all kinds – you can’t look at privileged men in one class without recognizing the sufferings of men in another.

Gender and Education Conference in Cincinnati May 13, 2008

For you folks around the Cincinnati area – the first ever Gender and Education Regional Teacher Conference will be held on Tuesday May 13, 2008. It would be great to see some of you there!

Gender and Education Association: Call for Conference Proposals

Call for Papers
Gender and Education Association 7th International Conference

Theme: Gender: Regulation and Resistance in Education
25-27 March 2009, Institute of Education, University of London

Keynote speakers

Deborah Britzman Raewyn Connell Gloria Ladson-Billings

Plenary Panel 1: Intersectionality, Black, British Feminism and
resistance in educational research

Suki Ali Heidi Mirza Ann Phoenix

Plenary Panel 2: Regulation, resistance and activism: troubling margin
and centre
Bagele Chilisa Sylvia Grinberg Grace Livingston

* How do education and gender regulate?
* How do we theorize, research, talk about and enact resistances
to regulatory practices and gendered power relations in education?

These questions and the conference theme, Gender: Regulation and
Resistance in Education, invite engagement with gender and feminism at
every level of educational practice, including politics, theorizing,
policy creation, research methodologies, pedagogical engagement and
grass-roots activism. The conference draws together an exceptional
range of international speakers working at the cutting edge of
feminist and gender theory and research, and political and
educational activism, including those who are resisting current
contexts of neo-liberal economic reform and increasing global
disparities. Our goal is to create a space for dialogue about gender
and education that spans disciplinary, theoretical, political and
national boundaries.

Proposals

We invite proposals for contributions that critically explore
questions relating to issues of gender regulation and resistance in
education.

These may include the following:
* Power/Governance
* Politics/Policy
* Neo-liberalism/

Neo-Conservativism
* Standards agendas in education
* Histories, genealogies of gender
* Religion, nationality, citizenship
* Globalization /Marketization
* Community /Activism/Struggle
* Agency/ Structure/Subjectivity
* Pedagogy and curriculum
* Primary, secondary schooling
* Higher, further education
* Intersectionalities, race, class, gender, age
* Psychosocial approaches
* Gender, disability, inclusion
* Sexuality and queer theory

The papers might engage with these themes from a variety of fields and
areas of study:

* Feminist Studies
* Women’s Studies
* Queer Studies
* Sociology
* Health
* History
* Literature
* Philosophy
* Cultural Studies
* Media Studies
* Postcolonial Studies
* Development Studies
* Social/Educational Policy Studies

Session Formats
We are interested in a diverse range of formats and welcome proposals
for:
* Papers
* Symposiums
* Interactive Sessions
* Performance pieces
* Roundtables or Posters

Workshops

We are also interested in hearing from anyone who wishes to organise a
stream/theme that runs through the conference.

Education Practitioners

We are keen to include education practitioners in the conference as
presenters and participants. We will be pleased to receive proposals
from education practitioners for standard conference format sessions
(such as papers and symposium) or for more innovative/interactive
sessions such as roundtable discussions and workshops. We are also
looking for proposals for sessions that will be of interest to
education practitioners.

Students

We will be holding a student networking session, for student teachers,
undergraduates, graduates, postgraduates, postdocs and researchers.
The session will address concerns around doing gender research and
finding career paths in gender and education. This session will have a
question/answer component with leaders in the Gender and Education
field in collaboration with the student and postdoctoral reps at GEA.

Submitting proposals

Proposals should offer a summary of the presentation/session being
proposed, including a short rational for the focus and indicting any
conceptual framing and empirical material to be covered or activities
to be undertaken. Proposals for single papers, posters, roundtables,
etc should be no more that one side of A4 (approx 300 words).
Proposals for larger sessions, such as symposium or workshops may be
up to 2 sides of A4 (approx 600 words). We anticipate a standard
allocation of 20 minutes per presentation and 80 minutes per session,
however, we are open to proposals that suggest alternative uses of
time – please state this clearly in your submission.

Please include:
title; author name(s);
institutional affiliation/country; technical requirements.

Closing date for abstracts: 30 September 2008
Send submissions to: genderandeducation09@ioe.ac.uk
Further details are available at: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/

fps/genderconference09