This is a short review of David Hursh’s High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning.  Hursh’s book is important because it achieves three important aims: 1) to detail how the personal and the political intertwine at the level of schools and schooling, 2) to show how standards-based reform is based on an economic agenda, namely neoliberalism, and 3) to show that alternatives to neoliberal schooling are possible in all respects and that such alternatives can be created by politically-organized parents and teachers.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

This is a book review of Benson, Harkavy, and Puckett’s book of last year,

Dewey’s Dream (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2007), which picks out a moment in John Dewey’s opus in which he is recommending a rather activist model of schooling.  The authors of Dewey’s Dream then criticize Dewey for deserting this vision, largely to be found in Dewey’s (1899) text The School and Society, and suggest that Dewey’s leaving Chicago (and his experimental school) was a disaster.  I agree, and further suggest that there are insights to be found in Dewey that go beyond those to be found in Dewey’s Dream.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

This is a rhetorical critique of the anthology Ecosocialism or Barbarism, edited by Jane Kelly and Sheila Malone, an introductory text in ecosocialist thought apparently meant for European audiences.  In it, I suggest that its main problem is that it skimps upon the presentation needed to anticipate objections to its main arguments, and so I suggest amendments here.

Since almost all of you forgot to read my diary of last February about Hutchinson, Mellor, and Olsen’s The Politics of Money, I’m going to try to encapsulate the wisdom contained therein in a series of bullet points, with links added.  Maybe I was too long-winded back then.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

(crossposted on Big Orange)

This is a new review of Bill McKibben’s book of last year, Deep Economy, from a critical-theory perspective; it’s informed by a fair reading of McKibben’s opus, observance of a recent speaking appearance by the author, and a reading of his DKos diaries.

There are a lot of citations of Bill McKibben on DKos; kudos to hof1991 for an oh-so-brief review, and to Gmoke for his 350 ppm or bust diary.  And of course to Bill McKibben himself.

posted on Flickr by lollyknit

This is a politicized summary of a project I’ve been doing at the Pomona College Natural Farm, an urban one-acre farm in southern California and the subject of a previous essay here.  The focus of this essay will be mustard, and mustard-growing.  There will be more such essays.

This diary was suggested by two recent pieces on abrupt climate change: Joseph Romm’s piece on Salon.com (The cold truth about climate change), and a paper in the journal Risk Analysis which was seized upon by columnist John Tierney in a column for the New York Times: “Global Warming Paradox”?  I discuss these articles in order to suggest that there is a general state of denial as regards the social and economic causes of abrupt climate change, thus to suggest that therein lies the discovery of social and economic solutions.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

This is a review of Hutchinson, Mellor, and Olsen’s The Politics of Money, a critique of the money system that contains lots of good material, especially insofar as the authors’ discussion of the money system can be used to debunk the Republican dross about the sacredness of capitalism, but also insofar as the authors suggest a number of alternatives to the money system we currently have.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

This is my take on Duncan Earle and Jeanne Simonelli’s (2005) book Uprising of Hope, an ethnography of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico.  I conclude by suggesting that there are political lessons to be learned from Zapatistas, especially insofar as they go about their everyday lives.

(original photo taken by “Alma_Roma”, San Cristobal de las Casas, August 12, 2006.)

Zapatistas, Wikimedia public domain

(Now crossposted at Big Orange!)

This is a review of Nick Henck’s book on Sup Marcos, the military leader of the EZLN, the subversive movement in Mexico.

(Photo from the account of Whodisan215)

(Crossposted at Big Orange)