The Imperative of Political Education in a Miseducated Society

Introduction Education is under attack. Book bans and ahistorical curriculum adjustments have been sweeping the nation yet again, ranging from demonizing queer folks and literature to parroting watered-down (at best) recollections of chattel slavery and other historical travesties. The upheaval over “critical race theory” being supposedly taught in K-12 schools has been the trojan horse overshadowing the erosion of the few inclusive, diverse, and critical perspectives in public education curriculum. Experienced teachers are being pushed out of the profession by unlivable wages and unrealistic expectations of how to support students’ learning, lending towards the admitted right-wing goal of defunding and . . .

Apartheid and Patriarchy

The following text was reprinted from “Ideas and Action” Bulletin 126, published in 1978 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It is a very colorful look into a little slice of life under apartheid, touching lightly on how those material conditions interact with patriarchy. Migrant workers are employed in jobs which pay low wages – in public works, railways, mining, refuse collecting, brick yards, docks, steelworks and even grave digging. In 1974, of the men I knew, those who were employed by some city council as cleaners or park hands earned between 30 and 35 rand . . .