Tag: resistance

What is the most important thing to me as an educator?

On By paulmcguire2013In governance and public education, Hope, MADPD, Speaking Truth to Power, Teacher Political Voice, teaching as resisting1 Comment

This question was put out on Twitter today:

It’s a good question and I wonder how this will be answered today. This is what I said.

The most important thing to me right now is protecting public education from governments who truly do not see the value in strong, independent school systems. When a system is under attack and young teachers are losing their jobs, little else matters.

I have the advantage of being retired and because of that, I don’t have to worry about what my employers think about what I write. At one point I did and I suspect this is what stops many people who play prominent roles in education social media from speaking out.

Many educators think they shouldn’t speak out and that is sad. I really think this is a time when people should work in solidarity with other educators, mainly young ones with no seniority to oppose what the right-wing government here in Ontario is doing.

The current approach to governing in Ontario is basically slash and burn. Cut away public health, education, trees, music programs, public transit, legal aid, libraries – the list grows every day. There is growing resistance to this approach to governance and more people are beginning to push back as illustrated in this Toronto Star opinion piece – Ford ill-prepared to be the great disruptor:

When you go out of your way to offend people, you invite a bitter counteroffensive. Which is what’s happening with federal cabinet ministers, municipal councillors, medical experts, educators, parents and students.

Some people don’t seem to realize how good we have it in Ontario and how bad things could get. I have talked with teachers in El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico about their systems and it is incredible how fragile public education is in these countries. Even in the United States, it is really frightening to listen to the pressures educators are under. I talked to one teacher last year from New York City who told me they really had to dress warmly in the winter as their boilers were no longer functioning. To get replacements the school has to raise a public bond, something the local ratepayers were not willing to do.

People here don’t seem to understand sometimes how things could change in this province. It is like we live in a protected bubble here in Ontario and many still think we can go on as before and other people will fight our battles for us.

Fortunately, others are. If the Toronto Star piece is to be believed, there is continuing protest against cuts to public spending. The opposition has to be constant and it has to be universal. As I wrote in an earlier piece – you can’t just wait until they come for you, you have to stand up for the ones losing their jobs right now.

We are actually dealing with a true bully right now. I am not saying this to be clever or to score political points. Doug Ford has learned – probably from the politics of the current American government – that bullying works. People will not stand up on a prolonged basis to a bully. Somehow, that is someone else’s job.

That is not what we teach in schools. The bystander plays a key role in removing the audience from the bully. The bystander can suck the oxygen out of the room.

I mentioned the names of some educators in my last piece – What Do You Say When Our Social Institutions Are Under Attack? who are doing a really important job of leading the opposition to the PC government. More are joining them and even more should. This is not a momentary crisis. It will not end with the summer. It will never be business as usual as long as students are being crowded into classrooms and young teachers lose their jobs and their futures.

Maybe what I am saying will make some people uncomfortable or even angry. I really don’t mind that. But if you want to get angry at someone, why not direct your ire at the people who are willfully taking apart the public education system we have all benefited from?

Now that is a pretty important thing to do as an educator!

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Teaching as Resisting: Using Social Media in Difficult Times

On By paulmcguire2013In 31 days of posting, teaching as resistingLeave a comment

“Schools should not, in other words, be responsive, welcoming, or servile in the face of change, but should be bulwarks against it. Schools should be the high point from which to watch the flood.”

Gary Chapman The Not School discussion of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death

I read Neil Postman’s book Teaching as a Conserving Activity when I was in teacher’s college.  Something stuck with me, although I haven’t read it in over 31 years. To me, there was an important message in this book.  Education needs to stand in resistance to the dominant culture.

I have always seen the educator’s role as that of a subversive.  We need to resist the dominant culture and teach our children to be critical thinkers.

This is more important now than ever.

For most of us, we are living under a truly evil leader for the first time. This happens, it just hasn’t happened to us before.

Donald Trump is not something that we have seen before in an American President. Denying refugees safe haven and painting them all as dangerous subversives is simply wrong and we who teach need to stand in opposition to this type of thinking.

How do we resist?

I would suggest that this is the time to really embrace social media and teach our children how to use it responsibly.  I can no longer stomach those who say that social media is dangerous and has no place in the classroom.  Those who say our students use social media just to keep up with the Kardashians are really missing the point.  The Kardashians are simply the Flintstones of a new generation.

An older generation's version of the Kardashians
An older generation’s version of the Kardashians

Let’s move on.

Social media is the best way for all of us to resist the evil that now exists in our society.  Remember this, most of us have never lived under a Pinochet, a Franco, a Mussolini.  In the days of these and other dictators, there was no light that you could shine on their evil and have it viewed by others.

Our one hope is that the power of social media means we finally have a weapon to deal with ignorance and hate.

In 2007, a group of protesters in Suchitoto, El Salvador were abducted when they were protesting against water privatization. Their capture was caught on film and quickly uploaded to Youtube.  Ten years earlier, these protesters would have disappeared never to be seen again.

Because of social media, there was an international protest against the illegal capture and eventually, the Salvadoran Government was forced to release the protestors.

If you know anything about the slaughter of civilians during the civil war in El Salvador this was an incredible event.  International pressure fuelled by social media certainly saved the lives of these people.

Now, in 2017 we are faced with a government system that has all the earmarks of the oppressive Salvadoran regime of earlier days.  But we have the tools and as educators, we need to use them as a way to stand in opposition to racism and bigotry.

Look what is coming out daily through social media:

Ontario’s minister of health and long-term care says the province will offer to provide life-saving care to children whose surgeries have been cancelled in the United States as a result of recent travel restrictions.

“Given that this is a critical time for these ill children, our ministry and Ontario’s specialized children’s hospitals, which provide best-in-the-world care, feel the responsibility to act quickly,” Eric Hoskins said Friday.

Hoskins said it has come to the government’s attention that some critically ill children are being turned away at the U.S. border solely because of where they were born and that Canada has an obligation to respond.

CBC Ontario to provide life-saving health care to children affected by U.S. travel ban

Today, Uber also bowed to public pressure and distanced itself from the Trump government.

2017-02-03_0936

So, resistance, peaceful and respectful works.  Let’s really be educators and teach our children that this is an important time.  Tell them to use social media in an intelligent way and resist.