The one on a one-dollar bill signifies a quantitive measure of that one's symbolic energy – what we would normally call its value. In the absence of energy, life cannot form. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, we learn to abhor a debt. This... more
The one on a one-dollar bill signifies a quantitive measure of that one's symbolic energy – what we would normally call its value. In the absence of energy, life cannot form. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, we learn to abhor a debt. This understanding of value and debt informs the larger framework of analysis used to examine the seemingly never ending U.S. Presidential campaign of 2016. While many argue that Hillary Clinton represented the maintenance of the status quo, this paper points to evidence supporting a different conclusion. In the first place, to what status quo could they be referring? Second of all, as I argue here, a Clinton presidency would have signaled a coup of sorts. As WikiLeaks summarized it: " There is no election. There is power consolidation. " With the U.S. executive brought into the consolidation of and around energy, what has become the status quo in Syria would have intensified and WWIII would have been unavoidable.
"The Role of Foundations Courses in the New World Order Appeared in the North Carolina Journal of Teacher Education in the Summer of 1996. Much of it resonates today. It is followed by a response from Dr. Marilyn Sheerer, who would become... more
"The Role of Foundations Courses in the New World Order Appeared in the North Carolina Journal of Teacher Education in the Summer of 1996. Much of it resonates today. It is followed by a response from Dr. Marilyn Sheerer, who would become my Dean in the College of Education at East Carolina University and later Provost at ECU. It concludes with my response to her.
Research Interests:
The one on a one-dollar bill signifies a quantitive measure of that one's symbolic energy – what we would normally call its value. In the absence of energy, life cannot form. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, we learn to abhor a debt. This... more
The one on a one-dollar bill signifies a quantitive measure of that one's symbolic energy – what we would normally call its value. In the absence of energy, life cannot form. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, we learn to abhor a debt. This understanding of value and debt informs the larger framework of analysis used to examine the seemingly never ending U.S. Presidential campaign of 2016. While many argue that Hillary Clinton represented the maintenance of the status quo, this paper points to evidence supporting a different conclusion. In the first place, to what status quo could they be referring? Second of all, as I argue here, a Clinton presidency would have signaled a coup of sorts. As WikiLeaks summarized it: " There is no election. There is power consolidation. " With the U.S. executive brought into the consolidation of and around energy, what has become the status quo in Syria would have intensified and WWIII would have been unavoidable.
Research Interests:
The one on a one-dollar bill signifies a quantitive measure of that one’s symbolic energy – what we would normally call its value. In the absence of energy, life cannot form. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, we learn to abhor a debt. This... more
The one on a one-dollar bill signifies a quantitive measure of that one’s symbolic energy – what we would normally call its value. In the absence of energy, life cannot form. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, we learn to abhor a debt. This understanding of value and debt informs the larger framework of analysis used to examine the never-ending U.S. Presidential campaign of 2016. While many argue that Hillary Clinton represented the maintenance of the status quo, this paper points to evidence supporting a different conclusion. In the first place, to what status quo could they be referring? Second of all, as I argue here, a Clinton presidency would have signaled a coup of sorts. As WikiLeaks summarized it: “There is no election. There is power consolidation.” With the U.S. executive brought into the consolidation of and around energy, what has become the status quo in Syria would have intensified and WWIII
would have been unavoidable.
would have been unavoidable.
Research Interests:
Standards for academic and professional instruction in foundations of education, educational studies, and educational policy studies third edition, 2012: Draft presented to the educational community by the American Educational Studies Association's Committee on Academic Standards and Accreditationmore
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT
Neoliberal globalisation is a systemic phenomenon expressing the dynamics of the market economy for liberalised “free” markets, privatisation, and diminishing state power over economic decisions. Those who dedicate serious effort to the... more
Neoliberal globalisation is a systemic phenomenon expressing the dynamics of the market economy for liberalised “free” markets, privatisation, and diminishing state power over economic decisions. Those who dedicate serious effort to the study of the market economy have long understood therefore that although neoliberalism is not just a policy or a kind of capitalist plot, the proponents of neoliberal economic policies are well aware of the fact that liberalised, open and “free” markets and privatisation result in a more thorough concentration of economic and political power. From the neoliberal perspective the expanded role of the state of statist modernity is incompatible with the present internationalized market economy and therefore must be controlled in order to accommodate privatisation and expansion of markets. Nothing exemplifies this better than the recent vague proposals from the Bush administration to privatise Social Security (S.S.), as well as the lesser publicized bill ...
"In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightly discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: There must be countervailing forces... more
"In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightly discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: There must be countervailing forces that defend people's needs against the brutality of profit-driven capitalism. Unfortunately, Marxists have not envisioned how those countervailing forces could be democratic ones."Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader As members of the Marxian Analysis of Schools, Society, and Education Special Interest Group (MASSES) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), we recognize the powerful yet discomforting truth in Dr. West’s remarks. We have, indeed, failed to envision democratic countervailing forces to defend people’s needs and advance their interests against the contemporary forces of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In fact, as Gabbard has argued elsewhere, we frequently berate ourselves for this failure but never move to r...
The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity in the Bush administration's reckless revival of naked imperialism in Iraq belies the fact that investigative journalism in the... more
The Washington Post's recent mea culpa over its participation in the broader media's complicity in the Bush administration's reckless revival of naked imperialism in Iraq belies the fact that investigative journalism in the mainstream press died in the 1970s. The corporatization of the media that reduced reporting to regurgitating the official statements of politicians and their trained handlers, of course, began much earlier. While Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism re-veals the extremes to which private and state power will go in colluding to control the public mind, many of us on the left have always been aware of the corporate media's propaganda role in advanc-ing the interests of the state and private power. That elements of the broader public have grown more sensitized to these issues should not surprise us, given just how brazenly and consistently the Bush administration has lied. Even after Bush de-clared mission accomplis...
Research Interests:
I cannot feign some distanced objectivity in writing this profile of Peter McLaren. Our relationship dates back to 1989, when Philip Stedman, one of my professors at the University of Cincinnati, invited me to accompany him on a visit to... more
I cannot feign some distanced objectivity in writing this profile of Peter McLaren. Our relationship dates back to 1989, when Philip Stedman, one of my professors at the University of Cincinnati, invited me to accompany him on a visit to Peter at nearby Miami University of Ohio. I had read some of Peter’s work, particularly some of his early collaborations with Henry Giroux, who had helped bring Peter to Miami from Canada. No amount of reading, however, could have prepared me for meeting him face-to-face.
Thesis (Master of Education)--University of Cincinnati, 1988. Bibliography: leaves 51-52.
Abstract: Examines specific features of the online Blackboard distance learning platform that enhance the advantages of alternative teacher certification programs, especially with regard to helping teachers develop a culturally relevant... more
Abstract: Examines specific features of the online Blackboard distance learning platform that enhance the advantages of alternative teacher certification programs, especially with regard to helping teachers develop a culturally relevant pedagogy. Focuses on North Carolina's ...
Research Interests:
This essay reviews Kenneth J. Saltman’s new book, Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools (2007), published by Paradigm, breaks new ground in challenging and critiquing corporate involvement in schooling and... more
This essay reviews Kenneth J. Saltman’s new book, Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools (2007), published by Paradigm, breaks new ground in challenging and critiquing corporate involvement in schooling and education, as he dissects the most powerful educational reforms of today, and highlights their relationship to the rapid rise of powerful think tanks and the new brand of edu-business groups. Over the past several decades, there has been a strong movement towards the privatization of public schooling through business ventures. While at the beginning of the millennium, this privatization project looked like it was on its way out, as both the Edison Schools and Knowledge Universe floundered. Unfortunately, privatization is back and stronger than ever!
As illustrated in this article, there are no such things as singular issues in politics. Be that as it may, no one will remember German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s remarks on immigration in October 2010 as being about anything other than... more
As illustrated in this article, there are no such things as singular issues in politics. Be that as it may, no one will remember German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s remarks on immigration in October 2010 as being about anything other than immigration. Her remarks ought to be remembered, however, more for what she didn’t say than for what she did say. Her omission of salient facts regarding the history of the guest-worker agreement between Germany and Turkey shines just a hint of light on what the authors of this article reveal to be a much broader pattern of denial that they describe as playing out in the United States as a form of bad political theatre between Republicans and Democrats. Much of the theatre is only meant to distract Americans from the reality of the Leitkultur that they now share with nearly every country in our globalized world – namely, the market. This article describes the role of this Leitkultur as well as the role of its denial in shaping public perceptions on the issue of immigration, and offers the beginnings of a response to Slavoj Žižek’s call for a new Leitkultur defined in a manner that transcends national borders.
We hear a lot of talk, recently, about America’s deepening “creativity crisis” (Seargeant Richardson, 2011) and what schools can do to resolve it. To whatever extent such a crisis is real (Schrage, 2010), we should not expect schools to... more
We hear a lot of talk, recently, about America’s deepening “creativity crisis” (Seargeant Richardson, 2011) and what schools can do to resolve it. To whatever extent such a crisis is real (Schrage, 2010), we should not expect schools to be part of the solution. From its inception, compulsory schooling in the United States has always served the values of our nation’s dominant institutions and the interests of the social, political, and economic elites who own, control, and benefit most from the social arrangements and relations engendered by those institutions. To organize and operate a set of institutions dedicated to promoting critical and creative thought would run counter to those dominant values and interests by developing the cognitive habits among the population that could render them less susceptible to easy government and corporate manipulation. Therefore, so long as those values and interests remain dominant within the larger society, they will remain dominant within schools, thereby limiting the extent to which schools will ever nurture creativity and critical reflection.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Economic interests, particularly those of the nation's corporate elite, have always dominated the formation of U.S. educational policy. Since the National Commission on Excellence in Education released A Nation At Risk in... more
ABSTRACT Economic interests, particularly those of the nation's corporate elite, have always dominated the formation of U.S. educational policy. Since the National Commission on Excellence in Education released A Nation At Risk in 1983, however, U.S. educational reformers have consistently defined the purpose of the nation's schools in relation to the global economy. In some versions, the reformers hold the alleged failure of public schools accountable for the failure of the U.S. to maintain its economic dominance in world markets. Other reformers explain that, as corporations have taken on a primarily transnational character, they have tended to view their potential labor markets in international terms. Thus, U.S. workers must learn that they are in competition with the workers of other industrialized nations to meet the labor demands of these transnational corporations (T.N.C.s). Since the higher‐paying jobs in the new global economy require higher‐level skills, these reformers blame the steady decline in real wages in the U.S. on the failure of the public schools to provide people with the skills that would attract those jobs to U.S. shores. Regardless of the specific complaints against the schools, the demands of the global economy now drive U.S. educational discourse. While my specific concerns are directed toward educational policy in the U.S., the observations are generalizable to all modern industrial nations.I want to demonstrate how the connections between the global economy and the U.S. system of mandatory schooling run much deeper than even the reform literature suggests. To reveal these connections, I want to compare U.S. educational discourse and international development discourse as elements of a larger historical process—global economization—which subordinates all other forms of social interaction to economic logic and transforms non‐material needs, such as education, into commodities.