The War Report on Public Education, August 23, 2015
The War Report on Public Education with Dr James Miller
Guest, Dr. Ira Shor
Guest, Dr Ira Shor
IRA SHOR is a Professor of Rhetoric/Composition at the City University of NY’s Graduate Center (Phd Program in English) and in the Dept. of English at the College of Staten Island (CSI).
He started the new doctorate in Rhetoric/Composition at the Grad Center in 1993. There, he directs dissertations and offers seminars in literacy, writing theory, critical pedagogy, whiteness studies, the rhetorics of space and place, and working-class culture. As a member of the English faculty at CSI, Professor Shor teaches courses in writing, literature, and mass media as well as graduate classes for schoolteachers. His 9 published books include a 3-volume set in honor of the late Paulo Freire, the noted Brazilian educator who was his friend and mentor: CRITICAL LITERACY IN ACTION (college language arts) and EDUCATION IS POLITICS( Vol 1, k-12, and Vol. 2, Postsecondary Across the Curriculum). Shor’s work with Freire began in the early 1980s and lasted until Freire’s unfortunate passing in 1997. He and Freire co-authored A PEDAGOGY FOR LIBERATION, the first “talking” book Freire published with a collaborator. Shor also authored the widely used EMPOWERING EDUCATION and WHEN STUDENTS HAVE POWER, two foundational texts in critical teaching. His CRITICAL TEACHING AND EVERYDAY LIFE was the first book-length treatment of Freire-based critical methods in the North American context.
Scholarship / Publications :
3-Volume Set in honor of late Paulo Freire, coedited with Caroline Pari (2000):
--CRITICAL LITERACY IN ACTION (college language arts)
--EDUCATION IS POLITICS (Vol 1, k-12, and Vol. 2, Postsecondary Across the Curriculum).
A PEDAGOGY FOR LIBERATION (1986), coauthored with Paulo Freire.
--EMPOWERING EDUCATION: Critical Teaching for Social Change (1992)
--WHEN STUDENTS HAVE POWER: Negotiating Authority in a Critical Pedagdogy (1996)
--CRITICAL TEACHING AND EVERYDAY LIFE (1980)
--CULTURE WARS: School and Society in the Conservative Restoration, 1969-1991(1992)
--FREIRE FOR THE CLASSROOM (1987)
The War Report on Public Education
The format of THE WAR REPORT ON PUBLIC EDUCATION explores one of the most important events in our life time - the total takeover of our educational system by corporate interests. This show is about the 'corporate' war on public education and the rising public resistance movement to the war. Dr. James Avington Miller, Jr. invites guests from all over who join the rising public resistance movement against the corporate greed taking on our public school system. He is interested in growing a grass-roots movement here in the United States and in Europe against the 'corporate interests' that are limiting both teachers and students everywhere.
This October 2015 he is taking his show on the road as he embarks on a very special project. His long awaited project ‘The People’s Story' is an effort to reach out to those individuals whose voices are not being heard in educational arenas everywhere. He will be interviewing, filming and collecting stories from parents, teachers, students and community members in the rural and urban areas of the Eastern United States to include Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington D.C. Many lives are being impacted and harmed by the ongoing corporate war on public education that exists today. The consequence of the rapid privatization of our schools is inhumane and devastating to our teachers, schools and most importantly, our children.
His primary mission is to create a documentary/television series for PBS and the Arts & Entertainment Channel that will expose the human cost of man’s inhumanity to man. The objective is to document people’s stories from each state and create a one hour TV Episode for that state evolving into a 30-35 part series. Dr. Miller expects to have the first TV show ready by next summer. This will propel the ‘corporate war on public education’ front and center as a local, state and national campaign issue. Determined to awaken the world on a national level by providing a series of programs that will lead to understanding the whole picture – he hopes to demand an end to the Corporate Elite and their destruction of public education.
Dr. Miller is seeking funding for ‘The People’s Story’ project from friends, family and the public to cover the expenses that this will entail. If you care about the future of education, please support this most important project and be part of history in the making. This has been and will continue to be Dr. Miller's dream to complete and certainly his life's legacy.
