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This is the third and final installment of Dan Archer and Adam Bessie’s “The Disaster Capitalism Curriculum.”
In our first two episodes of “The Disaster Capitalism Curriculum,” we took readers to Washington, DC, and post-Katrina New Orleans, tracking how the spread of GERM – the Global Education Reform Movement – is transforming public education into private enterprise. Once born of neoconservative economic philosophy, GERM is now fully bipartisan, and, thus, because there is so little public debate between Democrats and Republicans, the corporate media portrays competition, testing and school choice as our only choice for school improvement.
But there is another way.
In our concluding episode, we take readers to Finland, in an extensive original interview with world-renowned education expert Pasi Sahlberg, director general of Centre of International Mobility and Cooperation in Helsinki. The following report is based on an extensive original interview with Dr. Sahlberg, his book “Finnish Lessons” and a small selection of his many published essays (see a selection of his works below). Here, he provides an alternative vision for empowering public education, a way to improve schools that few Americans have been exposed … though one which isn’t so foreign as it first seems.
Run your cursor over the comic to bring up black circles, which tell you that there is interactive content underneath. Simply click on them to be taken to relevant source materials.
You can pre-order the complete print copy of “The Disaster Capitalism Curriculum: The High Price of Education Reform” – including all three episodes in full-color – here, through Chip-In.
Related Content:
Ana Partanen, “What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success,” The Atlantic. December 29, 2011.
Pasi Sahlberg, “How GERM is infecting schools around the world?” Pasi Sahlberg Blog. June 30, 2012.
Pasi Sahlberg, “Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?” (New York: Teacher’s College Press, 2011).
Pasi Sahlberg, “What the US can’t learn from Finland about ed reform.” The Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet. April 17, 2012.
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As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
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