In the purported interests of improving public schooling for all, No Child Left Behind (Bush’s educational reform mandate), and Race to the Top (Obama’s reform mandate), public schooling is undergoing massive changes. Many of these changes will negatively affect a majority of students. How can interested communities challenge these draconian measures? Professor Roberta Ahlquist (a writer, speaker, and book editor, who teaches teachers the multicultural foundations of education in the College of Education at San Jose State University) will present.
To view the slides from the presentation click here.
Close Encounters, ‘Take II’ –The Middle East from a Post-colonial Lens
Dr. Roberta Ahlquist
September 8, 2013
Roberta Ahlquist
This presentation is a broad-brush overview of two months of travel in 2012 to Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE, visiting and speaking in schools, seeing archeological sites, talking with ordinary people on the streets, attending a three-day wedding in Pakistan, meeting Egyptians in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, and visiting Petra in Jordan, among other places.
This presentation is given through the lens of a social justice academic who teaches at San Jose State University in the College of Education. Some of her questions were: What role has ‘Empire’ played in the lives of people in these countries? What kinds of changes have occurred? What kinds of curriculum exist for k-12 students, and for university students? Is it Western or Middle Eastern; Anglocentric, Eurocentric, Egyptian, or?
Professor Ahlquist’s research includes post-colonial studies, indigenous education, and unlearning racism and other forms of bias. She teaches multicultural foundations courses to prospective high school teachers.
Program Addendum
Alistair J. Sinclair is a philosopher residing in Glasgow, Scotland. The source for this “Addendum” is his article “Henry Ford: The Visionary Humanist” published in Volume 20 (2) of “Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism”, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Humanist Association.
“It is a shock when the mind awakens to the fact that not all of humanity is human — that whole groups of people do not regard others with humane feelings.” — Henry Ford (1922)
Dr. Sinclair argues that Henry Ford was a humanist who changed the world for the better. He had a humanist vision of society in which the standard of living of everyone would gradually improve and poverty would be gradually reduced. The humane capitalism which Ford popularized led to more efficient ways of lowering costs in large scale organizations. It also insured that there was a trickle-down effect that benefitted workers and improved industrial relations.
On January 5, 1914 Ford announced that his company would almost double the wages of its car workers and introduced the eight hour day and the five day work week (Previously the norm had been a twelve hour day and a six day week), He also introduced vacations for his hourly paid workers.
Ford was adamant that work should be found for disabled people instead of excluding them from employment because they are disabled. It would be quite outside the spirit of what we are trying to do, to take on men because they were crippled, pay them a lower wage and be content with a lower output.
This “Addendum” is a half-page presentation of a 20 page philosophic article, complete with notes and references. I commend the article to your attention.
Roberta Ahlquist has been a Professor in the College of Education at San Jose State for over 35 years. She has taught a variety of courses including Multicultural Foundations of Education, Educational Sociology, Educational Psychology, History of Education, Educational Philosophy and Critical Issues in Education. She supervises prospective high school teachers. Her areas of research include critical race theory, countering hegemony and whiteness, unlearning racism, critical multicultural education, indigenous education and postcolonial studies. Her most recent publication which is available on Amazon is: Assault on Kids (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education) by Paul C. Gorski (Author), Roberta Ahlquist (Author, Editor), Theresa Montaño (Author, Editor), Paul Gorski (Editor).
In addition, Ahlquist is President of a non-profit multicultural resource center, Our Developing World, in Saratoga, California, that reaches out to teachers at all levels of schooling, to provide resources and alternatives to the dominant mainstream curriculum that most students receive in schools. She sees herself as a social justice educator and activist.
Her presentation will include a discussion of the pros and cons of charter schools and why they have become so popular.
Ahlquist grew up in Great Falls, Montana, where she became involved in research about the Blackfeet Indians in Montana. She has been a visiting professor in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, where she shared anti-oppressive curriculum for two programs, the Udgeroo Unit for Aboriginal Studies, at Queensland University of Technology, and the University of Queensland, where she gave workshops, forums and presentations on white privilege and related topics. She also did research in the outback and co-authored several articles for international publications about Australian teachers teaching in the outback.
Ahlquist was a Fulbright Scholar in 2006 to Finland where she taught a course titled “Teaching for Worlds of Difference” at the University of Turku in Turku, Finland. While is Finland she presented workshops and gave paper presentations at the University of Tampere, at Rouma, a feeder university, and Inari, Finland, in Lapland, at the Institute for Saami Studies. She recently returned from 2012 research in the Middle East, addressing questions for U.S. teachers about the extent to which neo- colonialism continues to play a role in schooling. She is a long-time union and peace activist.
Ahlquist last spoke to the Humanist Community in September 2012, and we are delighted to have her return.
Dr. Roberta Ahlquist, Professor in Multicultural Foundations of Education at San Jose State University will discuss and show pictures of the many public and private schools, colleges, and universities in the United Arab Emirates, Lehore, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Jordan, and the West Bank that she visited, looking specifically at curriculum in government (public) schools. This is a big-picture overview, going deeper on issues participants have a specific interest in with slides.
Dr. Ahlquist
Dr. Ahlquist is co-editor of the 2011 book, Assault on Kids: How Hyper-Accountability (testing), Corporation Deficit Ideologies, and Ruby Payne are Destroying Our Schools. If anyone needs to learn more about how the corporate neo-cons are taking over and privatizing public schools, this is the book to read. Copies will be available for $25.
This forum is co-sponsored by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. A repeat of this presentation will be held Tuesday evening, Oct 2, at 7:00 in the Assembly Room of the Bechtel Center on Stanford campus. It is open to anyone interested in this topic.
During her presentation Dr. Ahlquist mentioned other groups of interest. These included the group in San Mateo county working to stop additional prison construction.
Dr. Roberta Ahlquist, Professor in Multicultural Foundations of Education at San Jose State University will discuss and show pictures of the many public and private schools, colleges, and universities in the United Arab Emirates, Lehore, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Jordan, and the West Bank that she visited, looking specifically at curriculum in government (public) schools. This is a big-picture overview, going deeper on issues participants have a specific interest in with slides.