Education

Our main topics today are tyranny & nonviolence. Andrew Fiala is Professor of Philosophy & also director of the Ethics Center at Cal State Fresno.

If you are feeling up,  down, or somewhere in between, by the time you finish this episode, you will feel encouraged in the great work you are doing.

Barbara Luetke recently retired after 10 years as the Outreach & Literacy Coordinator at the Northwest School for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children and decades more in the field. She's written a number of textbooks in that field.

In Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls, Monique W. Morris orchestrates a vision of ways forward for the healing of the black & brown girls in the USA. Drawing on the science & the art of human change, Monique identifies the obstructions, & spot-lights the ways over, around, & through them.

Two powerful, and badly neglected, forces in our national history around race are featured in Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up To Change a Nation by author & educator Anna Mae Duane. The 1800's debate between two students of the NY African Free School, James McCune Smith & Henry Highland Garnet, echoes to current issues.

Joe Luginbill is a prodigy and unstoppable dynamo. As Eau Claire's youngest ever elected official, he joined the school board at 20, powerfully influencing policies on transgender, homeless, sustainability issues, and much more. Strong, young, local, progressive officials are crucial in healing our nation, and Joe stands high among them.

Scott MacLeod is founder & president of World University and School (WUaS), an effort to make a high-quality, versatile, free education available to all who desire it, via the Internet. Drawing on wiki technology and with a tremendous supply creative commons-licensed open courseware from MIT & Yale, WUaS is launching its first 4-year class this fall. This project aims to make the education and learning available in a vast number of languages, eventually all languages from all countries - always free to the student.

Black Girls have double challenges in successfully navigating school, dealing with both racism & sexism. Monique W. Morris, author of Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools explores both the problems and the solutions. She is co-founder of the National Black Women's Justice Institute and author of 3 other books, including Too Beautiful for Words: A Novel.

Joel Westheimer asks the deep questions and provides the important facts in What Kind of Citizen?: Educating Our Children for the Common Good. How should education in a democracy differ from that in other systems? What are the wider effects of standardized education? What kind of citizen do we want our schools to promote?

Not All Poor People Are Black (and other things we need to think more about) is a collection of essays by Janet Cheatham Bell, treating the reader to the insights and experiences of a strong African American woman from Indiana. Janet speaks movingly, honestly, and inspirationally of racism, spirituality, politics, and much more. With astonishing candor and humble brilliance, Janet opens eyes and minds.