Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Changhua County Chengkung High School Enrichment




This morning I was asked to teach three demonstrative lessons at a local junior high school. I hope there are teachers there to take some notes on pedagogy or it will merely mean three well-paid substitute classes for me.



  I taught three model lessons at a middle/high school in Chang-Hua yesterday. The students in this rural school benefit from a teacher who cared enough to ask the publisher to have me come. I demonstrated word pictures, sky-earth-water, and CVC vocabulary review to the first class.





A helix grammar pattern review contest to the second class.

An on-board competition of reported speech review after introducing the concept to the class and school to the third class.

 The teacher there was inspired; she had never done any of the above before, indeed, had probably never seen on-board or any other cooperative learning activities or contests in any classes at all. I know the students enjoyed and were challenged by the matrix I introduced. Now it is up to the teachers there to carry the torch.



 Yesterday I taught as many classes as I had in my heyday at FDR H.S., and more 46- minute periods than ever; seven. Of course, I'm not counting the regular twelve-hour teaching days I spent from 1984-89 in the Taipei colleges, Dominican School, Joy, and my own American School English Center. I did my time and don't ever want to go back there.

"The Battle Has Just Started": Activists Denounce Police Killings & Crackdowns on Teachers in Oaxaca

"The Battle Has Just Started": Activists Denounce Police Killings & Crackdowns on Teachers in Oaxaca

JUNE 21, 2016
STORY
WATCH FULL SHOW

TOPICS

GUESTS

GUSTAVO ESTEVA
founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and author of many books, including New Forms of Revolution. Gustavo has also been a columnist for La Jornada.
In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, a deadly police crackdown against teachers has left nine people dead and more than 100 wounded. On Sunday, police descended on teachers in the community of Nochixtlán, where they had set up blockades to protest against neoliberal education reform and the arrests of two teachers’ union leaders last week on what protesters say are trumped-up charges. "As soon as they arrived, they began to attack. And we were few, very few," said a Oaxacan teacher. "Then we started running. But they began to attack right away, instantly. At no time did they give warning to clear the area." We go to Oaxaca to speak with Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and author of many books, including "New Forms of Revolution."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We end our show in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where a deadly police crackdown against teachers has left at least eight people dead, more than a hundred wounded this week. On Sunday, police descended on teachers in the community of Nochixtlán, where they had set up blockades to protest against neoliberal education reforms and the arrests of two teachers’ union leaders last week on what protesters say are trumped-up charges. Democracy Now!correspondent Andalusia Knoll traveled to the area and interviewed survivors of Sunday’s deadly attack. This is a teacher, who did not give her name for her safety.
NOCHIXTLÁN TEACHER: [translated] As soon as they arrived, they began to attack. And we were few, very few. Then we started running. But they began to attack right away, instantly. At no time did they give warning to clear the area. They began to attack right away. And the impotence caused by the media, who said that they did not shoot their weapons. We just went to corroborate with the tire shop about where they fired at us from. We guarded our front side. We still don’t know how they fired at us. And so we guarded our front side. But we realize that if they were positioned like this, then they were already hunting us from afar. Now we understood why. The dead were killed from over there and not exactly from the front.
We are going to stay here until the government is willing to talk. If tomorrow the government is open to dialogue, then the conflict ends. The governor wants what he calls educational reform. And what we want is a dialogue for the kind of change that the people require, the kind that meets their needs. If you go to our communities, there are many needs. How are the kids doing? The children can’t go to school to learn. All they think about is eating, because they don’t eat. No one can learn if they don’t sleep well, if they walked many miles to go to school. So the government should go and see what happens firsthand. And until there is a dialogue, we will not end our protest demanding educational reform. And who will revive our dead? The dialogue won’t bring our dead back to life. And those who are imprisoned, there aren’t just five or 10, there are thousands.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more on the protests in Oaxaca, Mexico, we’re joined by Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca, University of the Land, author of many books, including New Forms of Revolution. Gustavo has also been a columnist for La Jornada. Gustavo, in this last two minutes we have, please explain what happened this week.
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Well, first, we had a very bloody battle. It is—until now, we had a report of nine executed, assassinated, 23 disappeared, at least 21 arrested, 45 in the hospital, more than a hundred injured. It is—was a very bloody, long-announced battle. It was the—it is the beginning of the war. And we are surprised and amazed that the authorities are following the script, literally the script of 10 years ago—first the teachers’ mobilization, then the sit-in, then the repression. This is a very complex war. It doesn’t—it did not start in Oaxaca. The teachers’ struggle, it is a global struggle. It started in Colombia, in Brazil, in Chile, in the U.S.—everywhere. And today we are in a war trying to say a very firm no to this kind of education. It is useless instruction. We are discussing education. We have a plan of education. We can offer an alternative for—of education. And we are saying no very firmly to all the so-called structural reforms that mean basically a change of only ownership. They are selling our land, our territory. The people are resisting. And then we are resisting with them to oppose this kind of operation. This is a very complex war that just started. We are at the beginning of this very complex war against us, against our territory.
AMY GOODMAN: Gus—
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: In this, we are—yes?
AMY GOODMAN: Gustavo, the—I understand the governor ordered the police, said they could open fire. He was at a wedding party in another state?
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Yes. He was in a party. He asked the intervention of the federal police, that those killing people were the federal police, not just the state police. It was an operation combined by the federal police and the state police.
AMY GOODMAN: And we just have 20 seconds. What is happening right now?
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: Right now we have a curfew in Nochixtlán, in the place. We are—this moment, we don’t have any specific activity, but we are waiting for the next scenes of the battle. The battle has just started.
AMY GOODMAN: We—
GUSTAVO ESTEVA: It is not—we are not [inaudible] the battle.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue this conversation and post it online at democracynow.org. Gustavo Esteva, founder of the University of the Land in Oaxaca, author of many books, speaking to us from Oaxaca.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

China Tries to Redistribute Education to the Poor, Igniting Class Conflict


BEIJING — Cheng Nan has spent years trying to ensure that her 16-year-old daughter gets into a college near their home in Nanjing, an affluent city in eastern China. She wakes her at 5:30 a.m. to study math and Chinese poetry and packs her schedule so tightly that she has only 20 days of summer vacation.
So when officials announced a plan to admit more students from impoverished regions and fewer from Nanjing to local universities, Ms. Cheng was furious. She joined more than 1,000 parents to protest outside government offices, chanting slogans like “Fairness in education!” and demanding a meeting with the provincial governor.
“Why should they eat from our bowls?” Ms. Cheng, 46, an art editor at a newspaper, said in an interview. “We are just as hard-working as other families.”
Parents in at least two dozen Chinese cities have taken to the streets in recent weeks to denounce a government effort to expand access to higher education for students from less developed regions. The unusually fierce backlash is testing the Communist Party’s ability to manage class conflict, as well as the political acumen of its leader, Xi Jinping.
The nation’s cutthroat university admissions process has long been a source of anxiety and acrimony. But the breadth and intensity of the demonstrations, many of them organized on social media, appear to have taken the authorities by surprise.
At issue is China’s state-run system of higher education, in which top schools are concentrated in big prosperous cities, mostly on the coast, and weaker, underfunded schools dominate the nation’s interior.
Placement is determined almost exclusively by a single national exam, the gaokao, which was administered across China starting on Tuesday. The test is considered so important to one’s fate that many parents begin preparing their children for it before kindergarten. The government has threatened to imprison cheaters for up to seven years.
The exam gives the admissions system a meritocratic sheen, but the government also reserves most spaces in universities for students in the same city or province, in effect making it harder for applicants from the hinterlands to get into the nation’s best schools.
The authorities have sought to address the problem in recent years by admitting more students from underrepresented regions to the top colleges. Some provinces also award extra points on the test to students representing ethnic minorities.
This spring, the Ministry of Education announced that it would set aside a record 140,000 spaces — about 6.5 percent of spots in the top schools — for students from less developed provinces. But the ministry said it would force the schools to admit fewer local students to make room.
Against the backdrop of slowing economic growth, the plan set off a flurry of protests and counterprotests.
In Wuhan, a major city in central China known for its good universities, parents surrounded government offices to demand more spots for local students. In Harbin, a northeastern city, parents marched through the streets, calling the new admissions mandate unjust.
populous, protesters countered that children should be treated with “equal love.” And in Baoding, a few hours’ drive southwest of Beijing, parents accused the government of coddling the urban elite at the expense of rural students.
“When they need water, land and crops, they come and take it,” said Lu Jian, 42, an electrician who participated in the protests in Baoding. “But they won’t let our kids study in Beijing.”
The government has responded cautiously, censoring news reports of the outcry and ordering the police to contain the demonstrations.
Analysts said the protests posed a delicate challenge for President Xi, whose signature slogan, the “China dream,” is a vaguely defined call for national rejuvenation that many associate with a promise of educational opportunity.
“The traditional Chinese dream is the hope of advancement for children through a relatively open, meritocratic and egalitarian system,” said Carl F. Minzner, a professor of law at Fordham University and an expert on Chinese government. “Popular outrage is triggered when there’s a perception that this is being challenged.”
Mr. Xi has argued that high levels of inequality in China could shake the party’s hold on power, and his government has sought to ease frustration in poorer areas by investing in education, health care and social services. But party leaders are also wary of alienating a growing and increasingly outspoken urban middle class.
“The question is how far are they willing to go in reallocating the privileges enjoyed by established urbanites, many of them state employees,” Professor Minzner said.
Over the past two decades, the government has opened hundreds of new institutions of higher education, and university enrollment surged to 26.2 million in 2015 from 3.4 million in 1998, though much of the growth has been in three-year polytechnic programs.
At the same time, job prospects for college graduates in China have dimmed in recent years. That has left parents worried about wasting their life savings on substandard schools and even more desperate to get their children into the better ones.
Dissatisfaction with the gaokao (pronounced GOW-kow) is also rising. The test, modeled after China’s old imperial civil service exam, was intended to enhance social mobility and open up the universities to anyone who scored high enough. But critics say the system now has the opposite effect, reinforcing the divide between urban and rural students.
The top universities in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing are the most likely to lead to jobs and the hardest to get into. Students from less developed regions are vastly underrepresented at these colleges. That is because they attended schools with less money for good teachers or modern technology and because the admissions preference for local applicants means they often need higher scores on the gaokao than urban students.
“It is a system that benefits the privileged at the expense of the disadvantaged,” Sida Liu, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, wrote in an email. “Without the improvement of schools in these regions, I would not expect any major change in educational inequality in China.”
The government’s plan to address inequality by taking university spots away from local students, though, tapped into frustration among parents in China’s most modern cities who are unhappy with a shortage of high-quality schools.
Xiong Bingqi, vice president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, described the backlash as “an outburst of a long-repressed grudge,” adding that a drastic overhaul of the system should be considered.
A set of national universities could rely on the gaokao to admit students from across the country, he suggested, while provincial colleges could focus on recruiting local students so they would look more like public universities in the United States.
But any change is likely to draw criticism, given limited resources and ethnic and regional prejudices. A common complaint, for example, is that students from Xinjiang, the far western region that is home to China’s Muslim ethnic Uighur population, receive a subpar education and should not get extra exam points.
A group of parents in Beijing has filed a complaint with the education ministry contending that minority students at an elite high school who had been recruited from across China should not be treated as residents of the city, and that, instead, spaces should be freed up in Beijing’s universities for other local children.
In poorer provinces like Henan, public anger is often directed at local governments for underinvesting in education and therefore dooming children in a society with a wide gap between rich and poor.
“When students from Beijing get into top universities and our students fail to do so, some become migrant workers,” said an open letter circulated by parents in Henan last month. “Who is to blame?”
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism

MalcolmXWhen teaching about race and racism, I invite participants to consider the following analogy: Think of racism as a gigantic societal-sized boot.

Which groups do you think are fighting the hardest against this boot of racism?” I ask them. Invariably, participants of diverse races answer that those fighting hardest to avoid getting squashed by the boot are people of Color. (Keep in mind that I don’t ask this question on day one of our study of race. Rather, participants come to this conclusion after exploring the concept of White privilege and studying the history of race and racism in the United States through multiple sources and perspectives.)

If that’s true,” I continue, “then who do you think is wearing the boot?” The participants’ answer (though it often only reluctantly hits the air): White people.

If that’s true, then whose responsibility is it to stop the boot from squashing them? The people of Color already pushing upward and resisting the boot? Or the people wearing the boot–consciously or not–who contribute to a system that pushes downward?

Everyone has a role in ending racism, but the analogy shows how little sense it makes for only those facing the heel-end of oppression to do all the work. It’s time for White America to take on a far bigger role in taking off the boot. 

There are no doubt complexities that come with White Americans working for racial justice. White privilege can lead to a chronic case of undiagnosed entitlement, creating poor listeners, impatient speakers who talk over others, and people unaccustomed to taking orders. Nevertheless, the movement for racial justice needs more White Americans to get involved. And it’s our responsibility to help each other get involved–and get involved productively.

I compiled this list to help White Americans do so. One positive to emerge from these difficult times is the wealth of resources now available for White Americans. Never have I seen so many ideas, options, and concrete steps to take action against racism. And we are making progress: Looks Like White Americans Are Finally Starting to Come Around on Race and Policing. A few police officers are even being held accountable–finally–for their devastating decisions.

But so much work remains.

A few notes about this list:

Reading Articles Written Specifically for White Americans     

7 Ways To Be A White Ally For Charleston And The Black Community, published by Huffington Post on June 19, 2015
10 Things All White Folks Need to Consider about the #BaltimoreUprising, published by Everyday Feminism on April 29, 2015
11 Things White People Can Do to Be Real Anti-Racist Allies, published by AlterNet on April 27, 2015
6 things I wish people understood about being biracial, published by Vox on March 11, 2015 (This one is not specifically addressed to White people but many would benefit from reading it.)
What white people need to know, and do, after Ferguson, published by The Washington Post on November 28, 2014
12 Things White People Can Actually Do After the Ferguson Decision, published by Huffington Post on November 26, 2014
To follow sources that publish such articles, find an extensive listing here. If these articles leave you with unanswered questions, there’s now even a website devoted to answering the questions of White Americans: askawhiteperson.com.

Understanding Whiteness, White Privilege, Microaggressions, and a History of Racial Discrimination

By Barry Deutsch
By Barry Deutsch
Native Americans Get Shot By Cops at an Astonishing Rate, published by Mother Jones on July 15, 2015
Slavery to Mass Incarceration, a five-minute video, narrated by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, that concisely contextualizes mass incarceration as an evolution of slavery, published on July 7, 2015
I, Racist: Why I don’t talk about race with White people, published by Medium on July 6, 2015
The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes, a short video that provides a “haunting” glimpse into the mass abduction, abuse, and murder of Black people that lasted centuries, published by Slate Magazine on June 25, 2015
SouthandNorthWhat Is Whiteness?, published by The New York Times on June 20, 2015
We Need To Talk About White Culture, published by The Daily Beast on June 19, 2015
Historian Says Don’t ‘Sanitize’ How Our Government Created Ghettos, a 35-minute interview with Historian Richard Rothstein, in which he links current racial inequities directly to past governmental policies, from NPR’s Fresh Air on May 14, 2015
If Anyone Ever Questioned How White Privilege Manifested Itself in America This Is The Perfect Illustration, a five-minute video excerpt showing that, though race is a social construction with no scientific basis, governmental policy systematically gave it social and economic significance–all to the benefit of White Americans over the course of centuries–from Atlanta Blackstar on May 2, 2015
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism, published by The Good Men Project on April 9, 2015
Only Part of the Story Is Being Told About the Police Shooting in Pasco, published by Time on March 3, 2015
Our Anti-Immigrant Racism Is Rooted in History, published by Common Dreams on February 17, 2015
Killing in Washington State Offers ‘Ferguson’ Moment for Hispanics, published by The New York Times on February 16, 2015
We Can’t ‘Get Over It’: 4 Ways Understanding Past Wrongs Can Create Better Indigenous Allies, published by Everyday Feminism on January 15, 2015
Why Ferguson Should Matter to Asian-Americans, published by Time on November 26, 2014

Joining Groups

Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites (CARW): a group of white people in the Seattle area working to undo institutional racism and white privilege through education and organizing in white communities and active support of anti-racist, people of color-led organizations. We support the self-determination of people of color, honor their leadership and are held accountable to people of color-led organizations.
European Dissent: A national network of groups with the goal to be a visible force in the creation of a multiracial network of people intent on building working relationships between the white community and the communities of color in the struggle for a just society.
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ): A national network of groups and individuals organizing white people for racial justice.

Parenting Racially-Conscious Children

The Hard Talk: White Parents Discussing Racism with White Children, published in Uprooting Criminology on June 20, 2015
.
BreeNewsome
Facing this country’s racist past and present will likely stir up a lot of feelings for many of us. Guilt may be among them. In dealing with guilt, I encourage you to read the words of Audre Lorde:
.
.I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness. 
.
Instead of spending your energies on guilt, I encourage you to spend them seeking inspiration to act. There’s no shortage of inspiration. For a moment on June 30th, in the wake of terrorism in Charleston, you could even find it on a flagpole at the South Carolina State House.

Less than two weeks after Bree Newsome’s act of resistance, the governor of South Carolina signed a bill into law removing the Confederate Flag from the State HouseChange is possible.