Category: Education

Saving Ethnic Studies is my latest enterprise because my home state, Arizona, just can’t shed itself of Jim Crow kind of thinking, going back to long before I was born and all through my growing up in Tucson in the 40’s and 50’s. Then the 60’s came along and the state had to sing a different song. But Jim Crowness doesn’t go away easily.

Someone came up with the idea of honoring Martin Luther King and His Dream with a holiday and Arizonans screamed “No way!” Yet it happened and I thought that signaled that my beloved state had begun to see the way.

But along came SB1070, a law that basically gives cops of every stripe and kind the authority to profile Latinos. And before I could go “What?” Ethnic Studies, via HB2281, were banned in the Grand Canyon State.

By Miriam Raftery / East County Magazine / December 27, 2011

Starting January 1, new California laws take effect. Some give new protections to the public. Buying a used car? You now have a right to know its history. The government can’t snoop into your online reading habits. Your employer can’t peek at your credit report, in most cases. New laws also benefit pregnant employees, organ donors, renters, domestic partners, and bullied gay students.

Other laws impose restrictions. Want to buy popular cough syrups? You’ll need a prescription. If you order items online, you’ll be charged state sales tax. Shark fin soup and beer spiked with caffeine are banned. Employers have new requirements for notifying employees about pay and more. Kids must ride in a booster seat until age 8. Openly carrying a handgun is illegal, even if it isn’t loaded.

JANUARY: The repair work on Sunset Cliffs will finally be finished. The only problem was that during the installation of the new pipes, the cliffs eroded so much that there can no longer be any auto or pedestrian traffic on the street.

FEBRUARY: The post office, in their infinite wisdom has closed the processing center on Midway drive, thus opening the way for Lindbergh Field to take it over for the new runway.

By Anne Geiger / Public Policy Blogger

Refreshing to read Kathleen Parker this morning as she eviscerates the “big” idea of ever-pompous Newt Gingrich to give poor kids the work ethic he believes they lack by firing their school custodians and pay the kids to—- clean the floors, desks, windows and cafeteria tables, scrub and sanitize bathroom sinks and toilets, sweep sidewalks, shovel snow, bag and dispose of trash and garbage, clear clogged pipes, etc. etc. This, mind you, while putting aside their real job of learning every day.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / Dec. 5, 2011

We are so frequently exposed to violence in the United States, most of us probably figure that, like pornography, we know violence when we see it. Enemies go to war, and we watch the carnage live on TV’s 24-hour news cycle. People physically harm each other on our streets and in our homes, and we tally their numbers with the rest of the tidy crime statistics. We replicate violent imagery in film and television, in music and video games, and eagerly consume it as entertainment. Yes, violence is pervasive, and most of us probably figure we have it pegged. But we’d be wrong.

By Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / December 5, 2011

With the state budget poised to dramatically under-deliver and trigger large budget cuts for schools across the state, local media has spent a couple months wading into the looming financial crisis at San Diego Unified for a while now. And while the immediacy of the local challenges makes it crucial to cover well, it isn’t like this is a crisis in a vacuum.

Any discussion of the budgetary straitjacket in Sacramento that’s made this budget crisis inevitable has been strikingly absent, aside from the perfunctory ‘state’s broken’ before getting into mitigating the effects.

Earlier Monday, December 5th, UCSD students had forced open the doors of one of the shuttered libraries on campus and many of them pushed inside to claim the space in order to study for final exams. The library had been closed earlier by administrators during the summer, one of three the university closed in response to drastic cuts in funding from the state. Usually, it been left open 24/7 during finals week.

And the students had given the administration until 11 a.m. this morning to respond to their demand that the library be opened for studying during finals week. When there was no word from the Administration, one group of students came from inside and opened the doors for those outside.

by Jim Miller and Jonathan McLeod / Special to the OB Rag

Last week the California Community College Board of Governors met here in San Diego to address the results of their task force on “student success.” While much ink has been spilled detailing the ongoing efforts to impose corporate style “reforms” on education at the K-12 level (see Diane Ravitch’s fine work , little attention has been paid to the reform efforts in higher education.

There is a kind of creeping academic Taylorism that comes with the movement toward “student learning outcomes” in higher education that can only be understood if one recognizes the long history of American corporate interests seeking to discipline and, in turn, profit from institutions of higher learning, whether it be plutocrats railing against “dangerous” ideas in the academy or business leaders seeking to transform American colleges into narrow job training factories that provide them with skilled workers without the accompanying bother of having to foot the bill for this service in the form of paying their fair share of taxes.

We are weeks into the Occupation of America and, despite struggles with police in numerous cities the public discussion of economic injustice and inequality persists. At the nation’s paper of record, The New York Times, the debate continues with David Brooks furiously trying to belittle and dismiss the message of Occupy Wall Street. In his latest column he bemoans that we are focused on “the wrong inequality” and tells us:

That’s because the protesters and media people who cover them tend to live in or near the big cities, where the top 1 percent is so evident. That’s because the liberal arts majors like to express their disdain for the shallow business and finance majors who make all the money. That’s because it is easier to talk about the inequality of stock options than it is to talk about inequalities of family structure, child rearing patterns and educational attainment. That’s because many people are wedded to the notion that our problems are caused by an oppressive privileged class that perpetually keeps its boot stomped on the neck of the common man.

As we watch the Occupations from New York to San Diego fight for the right to exercise free speech and occupy public space, it is worth noting that we have been here before. Recently, it was my pleasure to do a small teach-in at Occupy San Diego with the OB Rag’s own Frank Gormlie on the history of civil disobedience in San Diego. For my part, I outlined the story of the San Diego Free Speech Fight in 1912 when the Industrial Workers of the World and other local labor and community activists struggled against the San Diego’s elite for the right to speak on a soapbox at the corner of 5^th and E downtown. As the homepage of the San Diego Free Speech Fight 100 Year Anniversary website notes:

2012 is the 100-year anniversary of the San Diego Free Speech Fight, one of the most important moments in the history of the city of San Diego. During the winter and spring of 1912, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and their allies in labor and the community engaged in a pitched battle against a city ordinance that banned public speaking in the area around 5th and E Streets in downtown San Diego.

By Maureen Magee / SignOnSanDiego / October 26, 2011

Facing an angry crowd of parents, students and teachers, the San Diego school board talked doom and gloom Tuesday night, taking on dire issues that have stirred unrest for weeks — fiscal insolvency, campus closures and selling off district property among them.

Town Hall Meeting on School Closures / Realignments at 7pm at Dana’s Jackson Hall

By Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation

The Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation (PLCS) is hosting a Public Town Hall Meeting Monday, October 24th at 7pm.

(Please note: The location of this meeting has been changed from Point Loma High to Dana Middle School’s Jackson Theater.)

The Town Hall Meeting is an opportunity for stakeholders to learn more about the District fiscal crisis, our cluster schools, demographics and the District’s proposed realignment / school closure recommendations. Time will be allocated for public discussion and input. San Diego Unified staff and School Board Member Scott Barnett will be present.