Dear Friends,
The Rouge Forum Blog is updated here.
Remember Proposals are Due, April 15, for the Rouge Forum Conference.
Send Your Articles, Photos, Cartoons, for the RF News to Community Coordinator Adam Renner ([email protected]).
Now, a note from Steering Committee Member Doug Selwyn, author of the recently released Following the Threads, Bringing Inquiry Research into the Classroom, (Peter Lang Publishing):
Hello Rougers,
We are approaching testing season here in the North Country, and I assume all around the country, when we engage in our annual ritual of abuse.
Many of us have taken some actions, had many conversations, written letters, essays, signed petitions, attended conferences, and while we may have helped some others become more aware the tests still continue.
The voices least often heard in these conversations are the voices of the students themselves, those who are forced to take the tests, year after year. I wonder if it would have an impact if we could collect stories from children related to testing. They could be straight ahead stories of how bad it really is, but could also be stories of the absurd, of resistance, the ridiculous. Or stories of the lessons students are learning. Whatever students might be willing to share related to testing.
I am asking rougers and others to send stories to me ([email protected]) and Iāll pull them together in some form or another (and Iām open to ideas of how best to do this). To be clear, I’m not asking for stories from adults about testing experiences, but am most interested in hearing from the students themselves.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Doug Selwyn
E. Wayne Ross is Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. He research interests focus on the influence of social and institutional contexts on teachers' practice as well as the role of curriculum and teaching in building a democratic society in the face of antidemocratic impulses of greed, individualism, and intolerance. In recent years he has examined the influence of the educational standards and high-stakes testing movements on curriculum and teaching. His most recent research investigates the surveillance-based and spectacular conditions of (post)modern schools and society in an effort to develop both a radical critique of the "disciplinary gaze" and a means by which teachers, students and other stakeholders might resist its various conformative, anti-democratic, anti-collective, and oppressive potentialities. He has published in a wide variety of academic journals as well as the popular press, including Z Magazine. His books include: Neoliberalism and Education Reform (edited with Rich Gibson); The Social Studies Curriculum; Race, Ethnicity and Education; Defending Public Schools, and many others.Ross is a co-founder of The Rouge Forum, a group of educators, parents, and students seeking a democratic society. He is also editor of several academic journals, including Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, Cultural Logic, and Critical Education. A former secondary social studies (grades 8-12) and day care teacher in North Carolina and Georgia, Dr. Ross was Distinguished University Scholar and Chair of the Department of Teaching at the University of Louisville prior to his arrival at UBC in 2004. He has also been a faculty member at the State University of New York campuses at Albany and Binghamton.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate
