teachers

The Crisis of Democracy

This week we look at the current turmoil in South America, where the so-called “pink tide” is beginning to recede in Venezuela and Brazil as the United Snakes seeks to exploit political and economic crises for its geopolitical gain.
For the musical break, we’ve got Calle 13, with La Bala.
Next up, we pay homage to the Oaxaca Commune, ten years later…. and finally we wrap things up with an interview with Cesar Chavez, a teacher from Oaxaca from Section 22 of the CNTE.

College Teaching on the Periphery

Throughout 27 years of teaching classes in Cross-cultural Psychology, Critical Thinking, Brainwashing, Propaganda and Rhetoric and Social Psychology at universities and community colleges, I’ve been only dimly aware of how the decline of capitalism and its increasing instability has affected my teaching experience. Contrary to the way college teaching is often presented in liberal la la land – as being a special field in which teachers and students care about each other – these “gigs” are, in most ways, no different than other kinds of alienated work.

WATCH: Texas Teacher Arrested, Slapped Student While Yelling “Idiot Ass” in Classroom

A high school teacher in Texas was caught on video slapping a student on the head five times while calling him an “idiot ass,” leading to her arrest.
Mary Hastings, 63, who teaches geometry at Ozen High School in Beaumont, was charged with assault.
She apparently had unspecified issues with the student that she assaulted because the video shows professional educator Mary Hastings in a furious rage walking in the student’s direction and swiping papers off his desk.
Then she began slapping him in the head.

Bringing Democracy to our K-12 Public Schools

If graded in terms of encouraging and developing a well-rounded and informed citizenry in a democratic country, the best most public schools I am familiar with would be a “D”.  Put simply and bluntly, our public primary and secondary schools, our community colleges and universities are bureaucratic institutions whose main social and intellectual aim and achievement is the indoctrination of students in the prevailing corporatist-consumerist-racist-sexist social norms and whose primary institutional interest is self-preservation.