Water fountains are becoming an endangered species on university campuses across Canada. That’s one of the findings of a national on-line survey, Corporate Initiatives on Campus: A 2008 Snapshot, designed to document the commercial and corporate presence on Canadian campuses.
Education
While educators look for ways to incorporate a powerful learning medium into their practice, millions of youth are growing up in an online frontier where the social and legal rules haven't been written yet. At the same time, we are seeing a trend in the increasing use of surveillance technologies—whether it be cameras, fingerprints, or DNA databases—both at home and at school.
Economics is too important to be left to the economists. Economics for Everyone is a brilliantly concise and readable book that provides non-specialist readers with all the information they need to understand how capitalism works (and how it doesn't).
Jim Stanford's book is an antidote to the abstract and ideological way that economics is normally taught and reported. Key concepts such as finance, competition and wage labour are explored, and their importance to everyday life is revealed.
This issue of Our Schools/Our Selves examines some of the ways in which various crises in education (whether legitimate or manufactured) are taken advantage of—for financial, political or ideological gain. This provides an opportunity to explore versions of “disaster capitalism” from the perspective of education and educational institutions. How has the neo-liberal agenda played out in the education systems in Canada and the U.S.? How is it reshaping universities and academia?
If we want democracy, we must educate for democracy — and we must ensure that educational institutions and educators are in a position to encourage and facilitate this objective.
During the B.C. teachers’ strike a few years ago—a strike over violations of their bargaining rights that later produced a Supreme Court ruling in their favour—the province’s media predictably denounced the teachers and flagrantly distorted their actions and motives.
When a large group of students and parents mounted a show of support for the teachers, it got a 15-second clip on BCTV. But when a few students decided to cross the picket lines, their on-air interview lasted more than three times as long.
Since 1994-95, the impacts of soaring tuition fees on students who attend—or can’t afford to attend—universities and colleges in Canada have been well-publicized. So have the wide-ranging spinoff benefits to countries that provide more generous financial support to their institutions of higher learning—benefits acclaimed by organizations on the right as well as the left of the political spectrum. The World Economic Forum, for example, has cited adequate investment in higher education as a driving factor in the productivity of the Scandinavian countries.
The discussions involving Canada, the United States and Mexico through the proposed Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) are alarming because, if acted upon, they will threaten Canada’s sovereignty and way of life far more than the FTA and NAFTA have done. Those international agreements have been responsible for the massive restructuring of the Canadian economy and huge job losses. In addition, we now have as Prime Minister a cheerleader for the U.S. government’s policies and priorities.