Education Archives - Keeping Democracy Alive: Recent Episodes
Burt Cohen
There’s a mountain of electoral gold which, for the first time, is being mined: graduates of regional public universities. Many of them men. Colleges with “state” in their name. Our guest Washington Monthly editor in chief Paul Glastris talks about
The post Tim Walz’s Unique Appeal to Young Men’s Masculinity appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.
Today’s guest is Dr. Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, author of the new book The Chosen We. She’s a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy a U.Wisconsin-Madison. Over a period of ten years she interviewed 105 Black women from five selected cities about
The post How Liberation is Only Found In Community appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
If you have cared about equality in education in recent decades, you know of the work of America’s foremost advocate for public schools Jonathan Kozol. In schools named after Martin Luther King Jr, he sees a new punitive autocratic pedagogic
The post The Irony of Racism in Decrepit MLK Urban Schools appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
It’s so much easier to break things than to build them. The right wing group Moms for Liberty claimed that “Parental rights do not stop at the classroom door,” but their real goal was to destroy public education. On this
The post The Rise and Stunning Fall of “Moms for Liberty” appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
In the Scopes Trial of 1925, William Jennings Bryan spoke against teaching evolution, saying “I have all the information I need to live and die by.” Today’s intense fight against teaching Critical Race Theory is more of the same. To
The post Critical Race Theory: Scopes Trial Redux? appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Is command and control from the top down bureaucrats the best method for teaching kids? How about critical thinking skills? Much of the best results of public education come from democratizing schools, welcoming input from those who best know what
The post Is Education Quantifiable? appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
The pressure to prevent active curiosity is a curious thing in a democracy. Our guests today are authors Perry Zurin and Dani Bassett whose new book is Curious Minds, The Power of Connection. As they say, acquiring information is insufficient,
The post Why Do They Fear Curiosity? appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
As another school year kicks off, skepticism about quantifying is appropriate. That measure is command and control from the top down bureaucrats. But much of the best results of public education can’t be seen but come from democratizing schools, welcoming
The post The Folly of Quantifying Education appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
It’s almost time for the start of schools. Of course all parents want to protect their children from inappropriate material. But when “parental rights” mean teachers are forbidden from mentioning homosexuality or racism because that means teachers are “grooming” kids
The post As Schools Open Again: The Moms for Liberty Nightmare appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
America’s suburbs came into being as a way to keep white school kids at the top. But what’s happening with Asian-Americans in upscale places like the sample “Woodcrest” High School? Asian American kids are catapulting to the top. Should teachers
The post Suburban High Schools Race At the Top; Between White and Asian Kids appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Of course all parents want to protect their children from inappropriate material. But when “parental rights” mean teachers are forbidden from mentioning homosexuality or racism because that means teachers are “grooming” kids for pedophilia or Chinese communism, liberty is under
The post The “Moms For Liberty” Nightmare for American Schools appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Rather than just keeping one’s head down and staying safe, addressing that which is uncomfortable can bring new insight and a more complete sense of being. The often rigid structure of colleges is not enough, mentoring: listening, respecting is a
The post Sister Resisters appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
They hide under the cover of academia. They claim to be local grassroots. But behind the faces we see on the news, there is an interconnected network of fossil fuel and evangelical interests in a very efficient soup-to-nuts approach to
The post Organized to Destroy Democracy appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Since Plato’s allegory of the cave, tyrants have successfully manipulated the projected images the public sees. On January 6th, Trump told the insurrectionists they were being patriots. And they believe him. On this show, philosophy professor Andrew Fiala talks about
The post How We Passively Enable Tyranny appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
If it can’t be seen, it can’t be measured, and it doesn’t count. But a lot of the best results of public education can’t be seen. Quantifying was put there to assure command and control from the top down bureaucrats
The post How Measuring Education Fails appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
It’s been normalized. Americans who are neither Christian nor white may not necessarily feel open discrimination, but privilege underlies everyday life. The starting point is not neutral, as we’d prefer to believe. On this show Dr. Kyati Y Joshi talks
The post Pervasive Yet Invisible White Christian Privilege appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
It’s not about education reform; Republicans like Florida’s DeSantis and others are actually out to end public education. On this show, New Republic editor Kathryn Joyce looks behind such appealing phrases as Parents Bill of Rights to reveal a long
The post Republican Goal: End Public Education, End Democracy appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
In the Scopes Trial of 1925, William Jennings Bryan spoke against teaching evolution, saying “I have all the information I need to live and die by.” Today’s intense fight against teaching Critical Race Theory is more of the same. To
The post Critical Race Theory: Scopes Trial Redux? appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Is it the revenge of the “deplorables?” We’ve seen how a culture of resentment affected Germany in the early 30s, and it has brought us dangerous Trumpism today. On this show, professor of history emeritus Walter Moss looks at the
The post The Power of Resentment and The Threat to Democracy appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Grades 1 through 12 education may have been adequate to the 20th century. But not anymore. With emerging technology and a global economy, at least a two year community college degree is essential for America’s common good. On this show
The post Free College: We Are Getting There. Really. appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
When one thinks of people in poverty, what judgements come up? Did you know that the vast majority are working often two or three jobs? When you go to a bank or a mortgage, do they ask you how much
The post Broke In America: Policies Not People Are To Blame appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
He called our current history education in our schools “a form of child abuse.” Teaching critical thinking and the real history of America would be shut down in Trump’s “Patriotic Education.” The popular 1619 Project and Zinn’s Education Project which
The post How Trump’s “Patriotic Education” is Anti-American appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Democracy requires an educated populace. That means more than just pressure and STEM education, not only well qualified and competent, but we need good moral kids. Private tutoring and other franchises are doing quite well, but they are serving to
The post Hyper Education: Are We Missing the Point? appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
How is it that we don’t see four and a half million young Americans? Kids who have fallen through the cracks,not connected to either school or work. People between the ages of 16 and 24 living in their parents basements
The post Why The Runway To Adulthood is Longer Now appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
All too often, schools function as a pipeline to prison for troubled kids. Kicking out troublemakers, punishing for bad attitudes leaves kids feeling they are disposable. Authoritarian models too often make schools feel like locations for punishment, when they can
The post The Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
We traditional Americans are doing what we can to take on oligarchy, plutocracy, and patriarchy.But our effectiveness is limited if we do not figure out the whys and hows of what our guest Melanie Joy calls “powerarchy.” Her new book
The post The Psychological Base of “Powerarchy” appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Safe comfortable myth is so soothing, but art, by its nature, is often about challenging the viewer. You may have heard of the controversy about large Depression-era murals on the walls of San Francisco’s George Washington High School. After 80
The post Erasing Unsettling Truth: The San Francisco Mural Controversy appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Well into the 21st century, everything has changed except our way of thinking, which remains rooted in 19th century values which unnecessarily hold us back. Millions of people hate their jobs and are relegated to living as passive consumers when
The post An Optimistic/Realistic 21st Century Vision appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Many reject science and embrace myth instead. But just as technological advance depends on knowledge gained through science, so the future of America relies on knowledge of our history. Until recently it has been tough times for History departments. While
The post The Rise of History: Vital for Our Future appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
As it did in the 1920s with the Scopes Trial, the American right hates science. It presents them with truths they need to deny. Clearly on climate change but also when it comes to enabling the social change needed to
The post The Science of Both Racism and Social Change appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Liberal-initiated efforts to eliminate poverty have been top down for about 50 years. But to be successful, development can’t be done to them from on high; it has to be done by the people most affected. We shouldn’t have low
The post Sparking Prosperity for Everyone appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
America’s public education still relies on grading practices geared to the industrial revolution of the early 1900s. This antiquated system undermines effective teaching and learning and inadvertently filters students based on privileges. In his new book Grading for Equity: What
The post Grading for Equity: Teaching Humans, Not Rats appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Remember your not-so-great high school days? Remember wanting to be respected while being consistently treated as less-than? According to author Eric David Dawson, “the system is set up to be destructive of everybody.” His new book, Putting Peace First: Seven
The post High School Kids Leading Us All, Not Waiting to “Grow Up” appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
The pervasive myth of kids just needing “grit” and lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps is false and is doing real harm.Our guest today Linda Nathan spent fourteen years as founder and co-headmaster of Boston Arts Academy, Boston’s only
The post Grit Is Not Enough: Structural Barriers Remain To High School Kids appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Both parties in recent decades have bought into the idea that letting private business needs dictate the direction of public schools will help education. According to Noliwe Rooks, director of American Studies at Cornell University, de facto segregation in public
The post Business and Public Education = Segrenomics appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
The forces currently in power may actually believe that by killing democracy they are saving America. Or they may just be driven by simple greed. In his new book: Kill It to Save It; An Autopsy of Capitalism’s Triumph Over
The post Kill It To Save It appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
How dangerous is it that Americans are adjusting to truths changing by the hour? What is official truth now may not be so tomorrow. It’s all up to Trump’s White House. We mere citizens must accept and believe the dictate
The post Truth is the Beliefs of the Strong: Trump and 1984 appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
We all focus on the top, the presidency and then congress. But more than you may think is at stake at the state level. Top corporations are focused where they can accomplish a lot for themselves relatively cheaply. A little
The post While We’re Not Paying Attention; Remaking State Governments appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
“Just following orders” is no defense. In a democracy we assume that individuals in society will take personal responsibility and disobey immoral commands. But as many experiments have shown, people rarely question orders from authorities. Our guest on this show
The post Intelligent Disobedience: Democracy Depends on It appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
At for-profit universities, they’re not admission offices, they’re sales forces. It’s no accident that today for-profit colleges and universities are proliferating. They exist to turn a profit for investors, and that means maintaining a class of low income people. Instead
The post For-Profit Colleges Maintain Economic Inequality appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Sometimes citizens must break the law to uphold the law. History shows that sometimes patriotic resisting requires taking personal risks. But how to determine which risks are worth it and will yield the results we want? For a long time,
The post Time to Defend the Republic Against The Government appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
The Vikings were brave explorers and they found wondrous new things. Today Scandinavia holds promise of how America can become happier and more free. George Lakey, author of the new book Viking Economics, talks about struggling toward something rather than
The post Scandinavia Got it Right, So Can We appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Generally American cites are dumped on: Budgets cut, services eliminated, schools ignored. But 80% of us live in cities and despite the pressure from uncaring financial interests and their politicians, we are close to a tipping point where an urban
The post Saving Our Cities: Transforming Urban America appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
It was a disastrous day for Democrats. Senior strategist and media advisor to the Bernie Sanders Campaign Mark Longabaugh (remember that great “America” ad?)talks about opportunities ahead for traditional liberal Democrats. He argues Trump’s victory was less about hate and
The post Bernie’s TV Ad Creator: Reviving the Democratic Party From the Ashes appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Is there a worse crime than child abuse? Is the complicity by knowing adults just as bad? Is there something about the very nature of authoritarianism in schools? Guest on this show is Amos Kamil, author of Great is the
The post Harm to Kids from Authoritarian Schools appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Populism has been part of our country’s identity since before the Constitution. It looked like there was a great populist uprising this year. Now, with the scare of Bernie Sanders behind them the corporate-serving Democrats are back to their “happy
The post Populism: Where To Now? appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
They call it “youth development programs.” Seven hundred million of our tax dollars are being used to lure kids into the schools-to-soldier pipeline. The mainly poor students are presented the image of exciting video games, which millions of kids love.
The post Army Ranger Opposing Child Soldier Recruitment in America appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
How many women do you think have run for president? Of the 200 or so who have done it, there are three before Hillary who made a difference. In her new book, The Highest Glass Ceiling; Women’s Quest for the
The post Smashing the Glass Ceiling: Those Who Went Before appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Independence day: Many Americans see our freedom to choose as consumers as what independence is all about. But recovering corporate CEO and Huffington Post columnist Richard Eskow on this show shines a light on how far we’ve veered from what
The post Would Our Founders Recognize Today’s “Independence?” appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
They sought a better life from the Jim Crow South and freedom, but what they found was something else. It may not be bricks and mortar prison, but black citizens have been intentionally limited to specific areas on the map
The post Spatialized Blackness In Chicago appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Girls of color make up 16% of female high school students, yet they make up more than a third of all girls with a school-related arrest. They are systematically pushed out of the education system, and that helps no one.
The post No Space For Black Girls To Heal appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Our founders knew how essential education is to have a functioning democracy. Teachers today face challenges more than one might imagine: balancing community demands with needs of individual students. In their new book, Dilemmas of Educational Ethics, authors Meira Levinson
The post An Ethical Toolkit for Educators: It Matters to Us All appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Are we watching a train wreck in progress? Journalist Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories, offers his insight into how the 2016 Democratic Party may have ignored important lessons from the 1968 crack up. There will be
The post The Coming Democratic Crack Up appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Adam Hochschild has written best selling books about a Belgian King’s holocaust in the Congo and another about the brave British women who fought against the insanity of the first world war. His new book is Spain in Our Hearts:
The post The War Left Out of Your History Books appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
To research for his new book, Thomas Frank specifically went to pro-Bill Clinton sources. Yet what he found left a profoundly negative impression of his presidency and what it did to the Democratic Party. Author of 2004’s What’s The Matter
The post New Democrats Their Own Worst Enemy appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.
Between 1945 and the Reagan era, Americans understood that work benefited all and when productivity when up, all stakeholders shared in the rewards. Of course that all changed. But in his new book “Shaping the Future of Work: What Future
The post The Future of Work: We Can Make It better appeared first on Keeping Democracy Alive.