education

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Whale Walk

Center for Coastal Studies

The first North Atlantic right whale mother and calf pair has arrived in Cape Cod Bay. The Right Whale Ecology Program team from the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) sighted the pair on March 18––Porcia, a 21-year-old right whale, and her newborn calf. They were first seen in late December off the coast of Georgia.

Yesterday, Susan and I were fortunate go on a Whale Walk sponsored by the Center. It turned out to not much of a walk because whales came close to shore next to the pavilion where we were supposed to start. They were relatively easy to see as they fed at the surface, so we had a sort of stationary walk.

We learned a useful tip from Jesse Mechling who led the group: If you see a large black rock moving across the water, it’s probably a right whale. There’s no evidence for black rocks off Cape Cod moving in that way.

Jesse showing baleen that right whales use to capture their principal food source, copepods

The North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered. There are fewer than 340 individuals left and only 80 breeding females. The principal factors in their decline are shipping and entanglement from fishing gear. They’re called “urban whales” because they’re trying to survive off the shore of dense human populations with some of the most active shipping and fishing in the world.

They’re also affected by global warming, which results in warming of the oceans, shifts in the populations of copepods, alterations of the feeding patterns of the whales, coming into the way of new harms, etc. These issues are discussed at our annual Wellfleet harbor conference.

Cape Cod Bay from the Herring Cove pavilion in Provincetown

I have very mixed feelings right now. On the one hand I feel incredibly fortunate to benefit from organizations such as the CCS and their public engagement programs. I love being able to go a short distance to see relatively unpolluted beaches and magnificent creatures such as the right whales, directly from shore.

But on the other hand, I feel shame knowing that my generation is responsible for the destruction of these whales and other wildlife, and the habitats that they need to survive.

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My musical gifts: Opportunity, teachers, and incompetence

To say that someone has a musical gift, or is gifted, usually means that they have unusual talent or can perform beautifully for others. I mean something quite different here.

When I say “musical gift” in this and the next two posts, I mean a gift to me, one that enhances my enjoyment of music. I was granted these through no effort on my own––no long, arduous hours of practice.

Opportunities to learn

My dad at his piano store c. 1954

The first of the three gifts is opportunity. It came in multiple ways.

My father sold pianos through his store. We always had a piano in the house; it was part of the store’s inventory. If anyone wanted that model he could sell it as a lightly used piano. That meant that we might discover that our much loved mahogany spinet might be suddenly hauled away and replaced by a large black upright, or in later years by an electronic keyboard.

Continue reading →
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Rosenwald schools and libraries

Electric, interurban streetcar, running from Fort Worth to Dallas; Dunbar HS was near the sixth stop.

I grew up in Fort Worth during the time of legalized racial segregation. There were no African Americans in my school. If not for summer and part-time jobs, I would have had little interaction across the racial divide.

This meant that I knew little about the schools for African Americans in Fort Worth. There were even segregated sports leagues. I think I went to just one Black football game and that was because I became friends with a Black fellow orderly when I worked in the local hospital.

Joe was a halfback on the Dunbar High School football team in the Stop Six neighborhood. I believe that the school is still largely segregated, a consequence not of the law anymore, but of residential segregation.

Rosenwald schools

One major gap in my knowledge pertained to the Rosenwald schools. Thanks to Julius Rosenwald, who provided funds for 1/3 of the cost of school buildings, Anna Jeanes, who funded teacher preparation, Booker T. Washington, and others, thousands of schools were born. As important as that external support was, it’s important to note that local Black citizens from a poor, working class, donated cash, labor, and land to make the schools possible.

Fisk University, John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library Special Collection, Julius Rosenwald Fund Archives

These programs provided education for generations of African American students, teachers, and scholars. Maya Angelou and John Lewis were grads from Rosenwald schools. Mamie and Kenneth Clark did their research on Rosenwald fellowships as did Pauli Murphy. Their work was crucial for the decision in Brown v, Board of Education.

The project began in 1915, when Sears and Roebuck President, Julius Rosenwald, established a matching grant fund to construct better quality black schools throughout the South. Between 1917 and 1932, the Fund assisted in the construction of thousands of school buildings This was during a time when public support for educating African American children was shamefully inadequate. Over one-third of black children in the South in the first half of the twentieth century passed through the doors of a Rosenwald school, 

Rosenwald School (Public Domain image from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History

There’s an excellent photography/text book: A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America by photographer and author Andrew Feiler. There are many fascinating photos. Feiler says 4,978 schools, but counting teacher homes and shops there was a total of 5,357 buildings constructed.

Rosenwald libraries

Just this past year I’ve learned about Rosenwald’s program to fund more than 10,000 school, college, and public libraries, and library science programs. The libraries not only provided resources for individuals; they enabled accreditation for programs for African Americans, which would otherwise not be possible. Aisha Johnson has a wonderful new book on these libraries, The African American Struggle for Library Equality.

Why didn’t I know?

I probably heard about Rosenwald schools and libraries, or the Jeanes teachers, during my career, but most of that passed right through my head.

With all the current talk about DEI and social justice, isn’t it a collective failure that the fact of those programs—the very need for them at all, their struggles, and their impact on individuals and society—were so little known by so many of us?

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Democratic Education in the 21st Century: Symposium Update

Guest Editor: Chip Bruce

Schools editor: Andy Kaplan

This symposium shares ways to think about democratic education in today’s world, and how we should plan for the future. How should issues such as indigenous people’s rights, racism, women’s rights, authoritarian governments, the concentration of wealth, the climate crisis, pandemics, and more make us analyze, discuss, and work to create democratic education?

We highly encourage submissions from classroom educators at all levels, from educators outside the United States, and from educators associated with alternative schools or informal learning.

Our initial call for papers in February 2022 led to proposals by almost 40 educators from all over the world. We held two zoom workshops for contributors over the past summer, which led to exciting manuscript submissions. The submissions include articles about teacher education for democracy, a ninth grade program devoted to the dreams and hopes of its students, and a social justice program for pregnant and parenting teenagers. These three articles will appear in the Spring 2023 issue of Schools, marking the first of what promises to be a robust and ongoing symposium.

Manuscript preparation

Interested authors should submit a one-page prospectus describing what their project entails. This is to determine appropriateness and balance for the special issue. We anticipate a mix of empirical and theoretical contributions. Completed manuscripts will undergo the usual Schools: Studies in Education review process before final acceptance.

Articles should be a maximum of 8000 words (25 double-spaced pages). Please follow the Schools style guide.

There is a possibility of a follow-on book publication based on revised versions of the articles, after publication in Schools.

Deadlines

For consideration in the Fall 2023 publication:

  • April 15, 2023: final manuscript deadline
  • May 1, 2023: editors’ review of the manuscript sent to author
  • June 1, 2023: outside review of the manuscript
  • July 1, 2023: final revised copy

For consideration in the Spring 2024 publication:

  • February 15, 2023: one-page prospectus for your proposed article
  • March 15, 2023: response to the prospectus
  • October 15, 2023: final manuscript to be considered for the Spring 2024 issue
  • October 31, 2023: editors’ review of the ms.
  • November 30, 2023: outside review of the ms.
  • December 31, 2023: final, revised copy
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Democratic Education in the 21st Century (An updated call for papers)

Guest Editor: Bertram (Chip) Bruce

Editor of Schools: Studies in Education: Andy Kaplan

In an age of climate disasters, extreme income inequality, conspiracy theories, anti-democratic movements, segregated schooling, pandemic, and more, the need for democratic education has never been greater, but it may also seem less viable than ever. Classics such as John Dewey’s Democracy and Education are still relevant, but invite us to re-invent education for today.

The symposium

Schools: Studies in Education, published by the University of Chicago Press, is hosting a symposium on this topic to celebrate the journal’s twentieth anniversary. The mission of Schools is to present inquiry into the subjective experience of school life. Unique among academic journals of education, Schools features articles by and about the daily life of classrooms, descriptions and reflections on the meaning of what happens when learning actually occurs. 

To celebrate our twentieth year of publication, this symposium shares ways to think about democratic education in today’s world, and how we should plan for the future. How should issues such as indigenous people’s rights, racism, women’s rights, authoritarian governments, the concentration of wealth, the climate crisis, pandemics, and more make us analyze, discuss, and work to create democratic education?

We highly encourage submissions from classroom educators at all levels, from educators outside the United States, and from educators associated with alternative schools or informal learning.

Our initial call for papers in February 2022 led to proposals by almost 40 educators from all over the world. We held two zoom workshops for contributors over the past summer, which led to exciting manuscript submissions. The submissions include articles about teacher education, a ninth grade program devoted to the dreams and hopes of its students, an after school leadership program for Black teenagers, and a social justice program for pregnant and parenting teenagers. Some or all of these articles will likely appear in the first of what promises to be a robust series of an ongoing symposium.

Manuscript preparation

Interested authors should submit a one-page prospectus describing what their project entails. This is to determine appropriateness and balance for the special issue. We anticipate a mix of empirical and theoretical contributions. Completed manuscripts will undergo the usual Schools: Studies in Education review process before final acceptance.

Articles should be a maximum of 8000 words (25 double-spaced pages). Please follow the Schools style guide.

There is a possibility of a follow-on book publication based on revised versions of the articles, after publication in Schools.

Deadlines

For consideration in the Fall 2023 publication:

  • December 15, 2022: one-page prospectus for your proposed article
  • January 15, 2023: response to the prospectus
  • April 15, 2023: final manuscript deadline
  • May 1, 2023: editors’ review of the manuscript sent to author
  • June 1, 2023: outside review of the manuscript
  • July 1, 2023: final revised copy

For consideration in the Spring 2024 publication:

  • February 15, 2023: one-page prospectus for your proposed article
  • March 15, 2023: response to the prospectus
  • October 15, 2023: final manuscript to be considered for the Spring 2024 issue
  • October 31, 2023: editors’ review of the ms.
  • November 30, 2023: outside review of the ms.
  • December 31, 2023: final, revised copy
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Beyond the classroom walls: Imagining the future of education, from community schools to communiversities

The book asks readers to adopt a critical and comprehensive view of education (pre-K to lifelong learning) as existing both within classroom walls, and in the surrounding world, including communities and workplaces. It presents an integrated view of online learning, community schools, communiversities, and learning through work.

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Realities of community-based learning during lockdown

It was great to see the published paper copy of our article: “Realities of Implementing Community-Based Learning during Lockdown: Lessons from a Troubled Journey.” You can see photos of the authors below.

Saraswoti School, Shikharpa, Nepal

In the Editor’s Introduction to the Schools Studies in Education issue, Andy Kaplan writes,

In “Realities of Implementing Community-Based Learning during Lockdown: Lessons from a Troubled Year,” Raunak Chaudhari, Smriti Karanjit Manandhar, and Bertram C. Bruce examine the fortunes and misfortunes they encountered implementing a program at King’s College in Kathmandu, Nepal. They had conceived the program as a meaningful experiment in education reform, an effort to connect classroom learning to the needs and desires of the world outside the university. Although the onset of the pandemic seriously altered the original design of the course, the course provided many valuable experiences as well as an important example of how the ambitions of integrated learning create conditions of adaptability that are well suited to emergent and emergency circumstances.

Smriti Manandhar
Raunak Chaudhari
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Video: Fulbright Specialist in Nepal, 2019

The Frames film program has produced a short video of my work in Nepal, focusing on the Fulbright Specialist trip in 2019. I hope you enjoy it.

The Frames Film Program provides opportunities for multi-barriered youth (ages 16 to 30) to learn the basics of filmmaking — at no cost.​ It is an off-site program of Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House. As a Vancouver-based film production and life skills program, it provides opportunities for youth to learn the basics of filmmaking in a supportive, safe and fun environment.

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Democratic Education in the 21st Century

A Call for Papers

Guest Editor: Bertram (Chip) Bruce

Editor of Schools: Studies in Education: Andy Kaplan

In an age of climate disasters, extreme income inequality, conspiracy theories, anti-democratic movements, segregated schooling, pandemic, and more, the need for democratic education has never been greater, but it may also seem less viable than ever. Classics such as John Dewey’s Democracy and Education are still relevant but invite us to re-invent education for today.

The symposium

Schools: Studies in Education, published by the University of Chicago Press, plans to host a symposium on this topic to celebrate Schools’ twentieth anniversary of publication. The mission of Schools is to present inquiry into the subjective experience of school life. Unique among academic journals of education, Schools features articles by and about the daily life of classrooms, descriptions and reflections on the meaning of what happens when learning actually occurs. 

To celebrate our twentieth year of publication, we propose a symposium on how to think about democratic education in today’s world, and how we should plan for the future. How should issues such as indigenous people’s rights, racism, women’s rights, authoritarian governments, the concentration of wealth, and more make us analyze, discuss, and work to create democratic education?

We highly encourage submissions from classroom educators at all levels, from educators outside the United States, and from educators associated with alternative schools or informal learning.

Deadlines

  • November 15, 2021: One-page prospectus for your proposed article
  • July 25, 2022: in preparation for the workshop, send first draft, outline, or notes to Andy Kaplan; the folder containing these drafts will be accessible to contributors by August 1 
  • August 15: online workshop
  • October 15: final ms. to be considered for the Spring 2023 issue
  • October 31: editors’ review of the ms.
  • November 30: outside review of the ms.
  • December 31: final, revised copy
  • Spring 2023: publication of the first set of articles
  • Similar deadlines will apply for the Fall 2023, or beyond, issues

Manuscript preparation

Interested authors should submit a one-page prospectus describing what their project entails. This is to determine appropriateness and balance for the special issue. We anticipate a mix of empirical and theoretical contributions. Completed manuscripts will undergo the usual Schools: Studies in Education review process before final acceptance.

Articles should be a maximum of 8000 words (25 double-spaced pages). Please follow the Schools style guide.

Articles will appear in the Spring and Fall 2023 issues. There is a possibility of a follow-on book publication based on revised versions of the articles, once the symposium has been published in Schools.