Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Nineteen: The Oaxaca, Mexico Teachers’ Strike and Subsequent Community Uprising of 2006

This is a continuation of a series of posts on summaries of articles, mainly on education. When I was a French teacher at Ashern Central School, in Ashern, Manitoba, Canada, I started to place critiques, mainly (although not entirely) of the current school system. At first, I merely printed off the articles, but then I … Continue reading Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Nineteen: The Oaxaca, Mexico Teachers’ Strike and Subsequent Community Uprising of 2006 →

School Rhetoric: Ideological Use of the Concept of Social Justice, Part One

Social justice has now become a buzzword these days. There is social justice this and social justice that, here a social justice, there a social justice, everywhere a social justice. This buzzword forms the ideology of the social-democratic left, for example, as well as the conservative right. After all, who is against social justice? The … Continue reading School Rhetoric: Ideological Use of the Concept of Social Justice, Part One →

Review of Thier’s Book “A People’s Guide to Capitalism,” Part Two

I recently participated in a group called No One Is Illegal here in Toronto. The group decided to provide a zoom reading meeting every week to discuss the book A People's Guide to Capitalism, by Hadas Thier, with many participants not belonging to the group but interested in understanding more about capitalism. We read the … Continue reading Review of Thier’s Book “A People’s Guide to Capitalism,” Part Two →

A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part Six

The following is the sixth of several posts that provide a verbatim reply (with a somewhat different order) to a "clinical evaluation" (a performance evaluation of my teaching) made by the principal of Ashern Central School (Ashern, Manitoba, Canada), Neil MacNeil, in the fall of 2011 when I was teaching grades 6, 7 and 8 … Continue reading A Principal’s Evaluation of My Teaching Basic French, or: How to Oppress a Worker Through Performance Evaluation, Part Six →

Review of Thier’s Book “A People’s Guide to Capitalism,” Part One

Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Eighteen: The Hidden Curriculum of Learning to Develop a Positive Attitude Towards Being Exploited and Oppressed

This is a continuation of a series of posts on summaries of articles, mainly on education. When I was a French teacher at Ashern Central School, in Ashern, Manitoba, Canada, I started to place critiques, mainly (although not entirely) of the current school system. At first, I merely printed off the articles, but then I … Continue reading Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Eighteen: The Hidden Curriculum of Learning to Develop a Positive Attitude Towards Being Exploited and Oppressed →

Management Rights in a Spanish Collective Agreement: An Expression of “Free Collective Bargaining” or the Dicatorship of Employers?

There are undoubtedly variations in the rights of workers from country to country, but the fundamental principle of the power of employers as a class is constant. This power is often implicit but also often is expressed more explicitly--even in collective agreements between employers and unions. For example, the following is taken from the collective … Continue reading Management Rights in a Spanish Collective Agreement: An Expression of “Free Collective Bargaining” or the Dicatorship of Employers? →

A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Twelve

This final post in this series has to do with a long psychological vocational assessment performed by Jeffrey Karp on May 30, 2014. It is 15 pages long. I choose only to select the last few pages since they illustrate the oppressive nature of such assessments. On page 13, Mr. Karp wrote the following: Mr. … Continue reading A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Twelve →

Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Seventeen: The Failure of Micro School Reformism to Address Children’s Poverty

This is a continuation of a series of posts on summaries of articles, mainly on education. When I was a French teacher at Ashern Central School, in Ashern, Manitoba, Canada, I started to place critiques, mainly (although not entirely) of the current school system. At first, I merely printed off the articles, but then I … Continue reading Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Seventeen: The Failure of Micro School Reformism to Address Children’s Poverty →

The Ontario Federation of Labour’s Workers-First Agenda: A Critique: Part Two

Introduction The first part of this series focused on a critique of the phrase "good jobs and decent work" expressed in the Ontario Federation of Labour's campaign titled "Building the Fight for a Workers-First Agenda" (https://ofl.ca/event/activist-assembly-2022/). This post will focus on a critique of the phrases "high quality affordable housing" and "health care." I draw … Continue reading The Ontario Federation of Labour’s Workers-First Agenda: A Critique: Part Two →