schools
News and articles about work, policy and workers' and students' struggles in education around the world.
Protests across Indian economy
More labour unrest in India as construction, education and mining workers step up fight for improved conditions.
A section of Mine-I employees of Neyveli Lignite Corporation staged a stay-in strike on Saturday demanding the continuation of pick-up service or a raise in conveyance allowance.
The NLC management suspended Arumugham, area vice-president of the Labour Progressive Front, and served a charge memo on Haridas, another functionary.
Warm autumn? Heat rises in Italian education
In response to new educational reforms from the Berlusconi government, staff and students at Italy's schools and universities have risen in revolt. What follows is an overview of what's been going on.
2.5 million people gathered last Saturday, October 25th, in Circo Massimo in Rome. The demonstration had been called by the Italian party PD (the Democratic Party, centre-left) whose leader Walter Veltroni was defeated by Berlusconi in the last election (Spring 2008).
Rebellion against Italian education reform grows
Protest against government cuts in school and university research funding has escalated with mass street demonstrations and occupations spreading across the country.
Massive protests are taking place in many Italian cities and towns against Berlusconi's government school reforms, which consist of cuts on public university and research funds, the introduction of student behavior evaluation and the separation of foreign students from the Italian ones in different classes.
UK teachers ballot for campaign of industrial action
A quarter of a million teachers in the NUT are being balloted for a campaign of discontinuous industrial action over a three-year below inflation pay offer.
The ballot, which closes on 3 November, would give the union leadership the ability to call further strikes without having to re-ballot of the membership.
It follows a well observed strike on April 24, which coincided with stoppages of civil servants, FE lecturers and Shelter charity workers.
Occupied schools in Greece face repression
As the tide of secondary and high-school squats rises again across Greece, the state responds with repression
More than 300 secondary and high schools (that is 1/6 of the national total) around Greece are currently occupied by their pupils who are demanding the reversal of several articles of the conservative educational reform that caused widespead revolt by students and university staff during the academic years of 2005-2006-2007.
Remembering the Third Wave - Leslie Weinfield
Article about the 1967 experiment in Cubberley High School, California, in which a teacher created a proto-fascist movement which got out of hand. The experience was dramatised in 2008 film The Wave.
Peninsula, September 1991
Although the specter of fascist resurgence seems largely forgotten in the euphoria of German reunification, it may not be far beneath the peaceful veneer of that nation, or any other, for that matter. Even the most ostensibly free and open societies are not immune to fascism's lure - including places like Palo Alto.
The Third Wave, 1967, an account - Ron Jones
Schoolteacher Ron Jones's personal account of his experiment which created a proto-fascist movement amongst his high school pupils in Palo Alto, California, which in 2008 was subject of the award-winning film The Wave.
THE THIRD WAVE
Ron Jones (1972)
For years I kept a strange secret. I shared this silence with two hundred students. Yesterday I ran into one of those students. For a brief moment it all rushed back.
Education - further reading guide
Libcom's guide to further reading on education.
*Jonathan Kozol:
- Savage Inequalities
- Illiterate America
- On Being A Teacher
- The Night Is Dark And I Am Far From Home
- Death At An Early Age
- Rachael and Her Children
- Free Schools
- Children of the Revolution
- Prisoners of Silence
*Michael Apple:
- Ideology and Curriculum
- Ideology and Practice in Schooling - w/Weiss
Mexico: Morelos teachers' strikers now seek "solution"
After two violent and tense months, striking teachers in the Mexican state of Morelos have started negotiations with the state over an education reform bill being forced through parliament with the support of the teachers' union head.
The last week have seen motorway blockades, occupations, national demonstrations and police violence that the people of Morelos had not seen in a long while, but now moves are being made towards a statewide deal on the Alianza por la Calidad Educativa (ACE) bill, co-written by Elba Ester Gordillo - head of the Sindicato Nacional para los Trabajadores en la Educación (SNTE), the teac
Mexico: Guerrero teachers occupy electoral institute in protest at educational reform bill
Schoolteachers and teachers in training have occupied the electoral institute's state offices in Chilpancingo, Guerrero and are threatening to destroy the ballots of today's statewide municipal elections.
Around 300 teachers started Sunday with the occupation and "liberation" of a motorway tollbooth near to Chilpancingo, giving free passage to motorists, a tactic also used in support of the 50 day long (and counting!) teachers' strike in the bordering state of Morelos, which is also in protest
