scholarly journals After the Virus: Disaster Capitalism, Digital Inequity, and Transformative Education for the Future of Schooling

2021 ◽  
pp. 001312452110654
Author(s):  
Richard Miller ◽  
Katrina Liu

The 2020 COVID-19 disaster triggered an educational crisis in the United States, deeply exacerbating the inequities present in education as schools went online. This primary impact may not be the only one, however: literature describes a secondary impact of such disasters through “disaster capitalism,” in which the private sector captures the public resources of disaster-struck communities for profit. In response to these warnings, we ask how schools, families, and communities can counteract disaster capitalism for educational equity. To address this question, we first synthesize a critical framework for analyzing digital inequity in education. We then dissect the strategies disaster capitalism uses to attack the school-family-community relationship and exacerbate digital inequity in “normal” times as well as during crises. Employing the notion of community funds of knowledge, we next examine the resources schools, families, and communities can mobilize against disaster capitalism and digital inequity. Finally, guided by the concepts of generative change and transformative learning, we consider actionable practices of countering disaster capitalism for a transformative education.

2021 ◽  
pp. 237337992098726
Author(s):  
Siobhan Hickling ◽  
Alexandra Bhatti ◽  
Gina Arena ◽  
James Kite ◽  
Justin Denny ◽  
...  

COVID-19 has altered public health higher education and its impact on pedagogy will be felt long into the future. In response to social distancing measures, teaching academics implemented a number of changes to curricula. It is important to better understand and begin to evaluate these changes, as well as set a course for future changes to public health curricula both during and after the pandemic to best enable transformative learning. Teaching academics have an understanding of academic hierarchies and student perceptions and are well placed to provide insights into current and future changes to pedagogy in response to the pandemic. A survey was developed to examine changes that academics had made to their teaching in response to COVID-19. Responses were received from 63 public health teaching academics from five universities in Australia, the United States, and Canada. Public health teaching academics rapidly implemented a number of changes to their teaching, including alterations that enabled online teaching. The great majority of changes to teaching were related to tools or techniques, such as synchronous tutorials delivered in a video meeting room. There remains further work for the public health pedagogy community in reevaluating teaching aims and teaching philosophies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This could include examination of the weighting of different topics, including communicable diseases, in curricula. A series of questions to assist academics reformulating their curricula is provided. Public health teaching evolved rapidly to meet the challenges of COVID-19; however, ongoing adaptation is necessary to further enhance pedagogy.


2019 ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
Dov Fox

No governmental agency or authority seriously polices reproductive negligence. The best practices set forth by industry organizations are completely voluntary and routinely ignored, and there isn’t even any reliable or comprehensive system to track the wrongful thwarting of family planning. The breakneck pace of reproductive advances isn’t the only reason that test tubes and tube ties have eluded meaningful oversight: Four factors explain this regulatory vacuum. First, many are wary of ceding the state control on any matter involving procreation—red tape would raise prices on valuable services, making it harder for poor people to pay for them. Second is the political economy of reproductive technology in the United States: The free-market origins of infertility treatment let it develop unimpeded by government oversight, in the private sphere of for-profit clinics that function less as medical practices than trade businesses. A third factor that cuts against regulation is its murky electoral implications, even in reliably red or blue districts—fear of fracturing their political bases leads prudent officials to avoid wading into the morass. Fourth and finally is the limited public outcry to address reproductive negligence. Besides, steep costs and selective treatment coverage leaves many patients unable even to fund a legal challenge if things go wrong. State legislatures place damage caps and other barriers in the way of bringing suit. And trials can be a spectacle for plaintiffs wary of exposing personal matters to the public glare of open court.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Gary J Burkholder ◽  
Jim Lenio ◽  
Nicole Holland ◽  
Rebecca Jobe ◽  
Alan Seidman ◽  
...  

<p>There continues to be increasing focus on college student retention and persistence. This focus is coming from the United States federal government, accrediting organizations, and from students, parents and the public. Given the spiraling costs of education and the fact that retention rates have not improved over time, various stakeholders are concerned about the value of a higher education credential. The purpose of this manuscript is to describe the efforts of a for-profit, distance education institution to focus its resources, in an evidence-based manner, on retention and to develop a culture of retention and persistence throughout the institution. The literature review and analysis of internal initiatives demonstrates that (a) institutions must make a commitment to retention, include retention efforts as part of its strategic plan, and provide resources to support retention efforts; (b) mastery of knowledge of the research on retention and persistence is critical for designing evidence-based interventions; and (c) institutions should identify, develop, and implement pilot projects aimed at improving student progress and share results to help stimulate development of best practices throughout higher education.</p>


Names ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Michael D. Sublett

Enterprises, be they for-profit businesses or not-for-profit organizations, require names to differentiate themselves from other entities. Over a span of more than a hundred years entrepreneurs, corporate boards, and organizational founders have chosen to use Corn Belt or some spelling variant to identify their enterprises, perhaps believing that naming after this admired agricultural region will bless their enterprise with its longevity, productivity, and favorable image. This essay looks at the beginnings of Corn Belt as a vernacular term for an agricultural region, picks up the earliest uses of Corn Belt as an inspiration for enterprise names, tracks Corn Belt enterprises through time at one of the core locations of the naming practice, and presents the enterprises that in 2020 greeted the public with Corn Belt in their names.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
David U. Himmelstein ◽  
Steffie Woolhandler ◽  
Clare Fauke

We present a summary of recent studies and data regarding the state of health and health care in the United States. Health care remains unaffordable to many Americans, including many with insurance. Health outcomes are stagnating or deteriorating. Police killings disproportionately target minority men. The search for profits from prescription drug companies, medical device firms, and for-profit medical providers places patients at risk. The public Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs, which increasingly subcontract with private managed care insurers, now account for the majority of private insurers’ total business. Insurance firms continue to avoid unprofitable enrollees and impose a mounting bureaucratic burden on medical providers. Meanwhile, recent polls show mounting public support for single-payer national health insurance.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Grimes

The Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance launched an experiment in 2011 called the Community Voices initiative. Community Voices was a student-led group devoted to bringing graduate students and faculty from diverse backgrounds into thoughtful dialogue with leaders who have devoted their professional lives to spurring or assisting with community change. This book is the product of those conversations. Conversations in Community Change features 12 interviews conducted by members of Community Voices, since renamed the Community Change Collaborative (CCC). The interviewees are leaders who have worked in many different contexts across the public, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors to instigate meaningful change (democratic social, political and economic) in their communities. The animating idea behind these interviews is that those in search of peaceful democratic social change, especially amidst ongoing economic and social dislocation, have much to learn from one another within the United States and internationally, and at all levels of governance. Among the topics and initiatives discussed in the book: - Efforts to secure civil and human rights for groups that have historically experienced discrimination, - How food system pioneers are seeking to make alternatives to the present corporate-dominated food production framework real for growers and consumers alike, - How the arts can open up new public and private spaces to permit reconsideration of otherwise dominant assumptions and thinking, - The social exigencies created by capitalism’s constant economic dislocation and roiling, Ultimately, readers will come away from the book with a fuller appreciation for the complexities of democratic change—and the need for modesty, patience, and perseverance among those who would seek to lead or encourage such efforts.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-203
Author(s):  
Robert Chatham

The Court of Appeals of New York held, in Council of the City of New York u. Giuliani, slip op. 02634, 1999 WL 179257 (N.Y. Mar. 30, 1999), that New York City may not privatize a public city hospital without state statutory authorization. The court found invalid a sublease of a municipal hospital operated by a public benefit corporation to a private, for-profit entity. The court reasoned that the controlling statute prescribed the operation of a municipal hospital as a government function that must be fulfilled by the public benefit corporation as long as it exists, and nothing short of legislative action could put an end to the corporation's existence.In 1969, the New York State legislature enacted the Health and Hospitals Corporation Act (HHCA), establishing the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) as an attempt to improve the New York City public health system. Thirty years later, on a renewed perception that the public health system was once again lacking, the city administration approved a sublease of Coney Island Hospital from HHC to PHS New York, Inc. (PHS), a private, for-profit entity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.


2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
L. Lee

Dr. C.K. Clarke (1857-1924) was one of Canada’s most prominent psychiatrists. He sought to improve the conditions of asylums, helped to legitimize psychiatry and established formal training for nurses. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Canada experienced a surge of immigration. Yet – as many historians have shown – a widespread anti-foreigner sentiment within the public remained. Along with many other members of the fledgling eugenics movement, Clarke believed that the proportion of “mental defectives” was higher in the immigrant population than in the Canadian population and campaigned to restrict immigration. He appealed to the government to track immigrants and deport them once they showed signs of mental illness. Clarke’s efforts lead to amendments to the Immigration Act in 1919, which authorized deportation of people who were not Canadian-born, regardless of how many years that had been in Canada. This change applied not only to the mentally ill but also to those who could no longer work due to injury and to those who did not follow social norms. Clarke is a fascinating example of how we judge historical figures. He lived in a time where what we now think of as xenophobia was a socially acceptable, even worthy attitude. As a leader in eugenics, therefore, he was a progressive. Other biographers have recognized Clarke’s racist opinions, some of whom justify them as keeping with the social values of his era. In further exploring Clarke’s interest in these issues, this paper relies on his personal scrapbooks held in the CAMH archives. These documents contain personal papers, poems and stories that proclaim his anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner views. Whether we allow his involvement in the eugenics movement to overshadow his accomplishments or ignore his racist leanings to celebrate his memory is the subject of ongoing debate. Dowbiggin IR. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada 1880-1940. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. McLaren A. Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada 1885-1945. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990. Roberts B. Whence They Came: Deportation from Canada 1900-1935. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document