Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Rage and Prayer in Los Angeles

Manuel Pastor, Dissent

Los Angeles is convulsing—and maybe being reborn. The immediate trigger was the unleashing of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents upon the region, a tactic adopted after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller—appropriately labeled “vile” by a journalist who was suspended for speaking truth to power—became frustrated with what he saw as the slow pace of deportations. ICE arrests are up, but not as much as the administration hoped. As it turns out, focusing on the “worst of the worst” (those with a proven criminal record), as Trump promised to do, is tough work; immigrants who have a lot to hide tend to do just that. It’s much easier to send authorities to a target-rich environment where they can easily locate and arrest day laborers, car washers, and parents dropping their kids off at school.

How Educators Can Defeat AI

Matthew Gasda, Compact

James Walsh’s viral recent New York article, “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College,” was not notable because it revealed the extent to which AI has taken over education; that much was already obvious to anyone who has been around a school or college lately. Rather, what Walsh’s reporting brought to light was the degree to which college-age students have developed an internally coherent theory of why they have the right to use AI. It isn’t just that everyone is getting AI to do their homework for them, but the blithe indifference with which everyone is cheating. Gens Z and Alpha lack the cultural immune system that provokes a resistance to AI among older cohorts. ChatGPT is finishing the job that iPhones started, raising a cohort defined not only by illiteracy but by hostility to literacy.

Anton Chekhov and the Catastrophes of Teaching

Ross Collin, Educational Theory

In this essay, Ross Collin offers ethics-focused readings of Anton Chekhov’s popular short stories “The Schoolmistress” and “The Teacher of Literature.” Chekhov shows in the two stories how teaching can inhibit teachers’ flourishing. That is to say, teaching under bad conditions can draw teachers into moral “catastrophe,” to use Cornel West’s term for an idea central to Chekhov’s work. In “The Schoolmistress” and “The Teacher of Literature,” Chekhov compares the catastrophes of teachers’ lives to the catastrophes of the lives of nonhuman animals trapped in an eternal present of toil or display. Confined in lives they do not control, the teachers in Chekhov’s two stories cannot link their pasts, presents, and futures into narratives they might live out and steer in different directions. Here, Collin shows how works of art can attend to particularities of moral experience, including teachers’ moral experience, that are difficult to recognize and address productively using general concepts in philosophy.

Language, Culture, and Power

Immigration Raids Add to Absence Crisis for Schools

Dana Goldstein and Irene Casado Sanchez, New York Times

As President Trump promised mass deportations, educators sounded alarms that the actions could scare families away from school, affecting both immigrant and nonimmigrant students. Now, new research provides evidence that immigration raids did appear to lower school attendance. A Stanford University study found that parents kept their children out of school more often after raids swept California’s Central Valley this winter. The findings suggest raids can harm student achievement and disrupt how schools function, even when they do not occur on or near school grounds. The study, by Thomas S. Dee, a professor of education at Stanford University, found that daily absences jumped 22 percent around the time raids occurred.

DACA recipients, lawmakers, advocates call for permanent protections for Dreamers

María G. Ortiz-Briones, Fresno Bee

Amid escalating immigration raids and enforcement actions across the county, lawmakers, immigration advocates and DACA recipients are urging Congress to pass permanent protections for Dreamers and immigrant families at risk of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. DACA recipients and advocates from the Home is Here campaign are bringing attention to the threats to DACA’s future and call for the passage of the Dream Act that could provide a pathway to citizenship. While June 15 marks the 13th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the program faces court challenges and attacks from anti-immigrant politicians. The program has been tied in legal battles since Trump tried to end it during his first term.

At LA graduations, some families risk ICE detention to shower students with gifts and hugs [Audio]

Julia Barajas and Mariana Dale, LAist

Since early June, Huntington Park residents have witnessed federal immigration agents chase, question and detain their neighbors at stores, churches and more. The same day this week that the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security appeared in the Southeast L.A. neighborhood to help lead those operations, about 1,200 people gathered at an auditorium a few miles away to celebrate the area’s students — the graduation of Maywood Academy High School’s 230 seniors. But because of the ongoing ICE crackdowns, for many families, attending the event was marred with anxiety.

“I was really scared for my family to come out here, ‘cause I didn’t know if they were going to get picked up by ICE,” said Lorraine Guzman, part of Maywood’s class of 2025.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

First Time in 100 Years: Young Kayakers on a Ride for the Ages

John Branch, New York Times

The remote and rugged Klamath River in Oregon and California, one of the mightiest in the American West and an ancient lifeline to Indigenous tribes, is running free again, mostly, for the first time in 100 years after the recent removal of four major dams. At the burbling aquifer near Chiloquin, Ore., that is considered the headwaters, a sacred spot for native people, a group of kayakers, mostly Indigenous youth from the river’s vast basin began to paddle on Thursday. Ages 13 to 20, they had learned to kayak for this moment. Stroke by stroke, mile by mile, day by day, they plan to reach the salty water of the rugged Northern California coast, more than 300 miles away, in mid-July.

Educational Communities That Nurture Students’ Hearts and Minds

Linda Darling-Hammond, Matt Alexander, Laura E. Hernández, American Educator

In 1949, W. E. B. Du Bois said, “Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental.” He went on to describe a vision of equitable, democratic schools focused on deeper learning for all students. Although our commitment to develop a more perfect union aspires to enact a right to learn for all children, our society has constructed a system that is still largely based on a standardized, impersonal factory model adopted a century ago. This model incorporates deeply embedded inequalities that dare many of our youth to learn. We dare them to learn in high schools where they have little opportunity to become well known by adults who can consider them as whole people or as developing intellects. We dare young people to learn when their needs for resources or personal advice require standing in line or waiting weeks to see a counselor with a caseload of 500 or more students. We dare too many of our young people to make it through huge warehouse institutions focused substantially on the control of behavior rather than the development of community.

Climate disasters can alter kids’ brains — before they’re even born

Kate Yoder, Grist

When Superstorm Sandy made a beeline for New York City in October 2012, it flooded huge swaths of downtown Manhattan, leaving 2 million people without electricity and heat and damaging tens of thousands of homes. The storm followed a sweltering summer in New York City, with a procession of heat waves nearing 100 degrees. For those who were pregnant at the time, enduring these extreme conditions wasn’t just uncomfortable — it may have left a lasting imprint on their children’s brains. That’s according to a new study published on Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One. Using MRI scans, researchers at Queens College, City University of New York, found that children whose mothers lived through Superstorm Sandy had distinct brain differences that could hinder their emotional development.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Student Debt [Audio]

Astra Taylor, Ryann Liebenthal, Chenjerai Kumanyika, and Mike Pierce

Featuring Ryann Liebenthal, Chenjerai Kumanyika, and Mike Pierce on Ryann’s book Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis. Interview by guest host Astra Taylor.

Is federal funding still a viable research assessment indicator in the age of Trump?

The HuMetricsHSS Initiative, London School of Economics Blog

Federal research funding has not only enabled but defined scientific excellence in the United States for generations. Since World War II, research universities and the government have enjoyed the mutual benefits of a symbiotic relationship in which the nation invested billions of dollars in research universities and those universities established the country as a powerhouse of innovation and discovery. Now, however, this long-standing partnership, which has had an enormous positive impact on the political and economic well-being of the United States and the world, is being systematically dismantled by the Trump administration as it seeks to bend the autonomy of higher education to its will. Even as the administration inflicts irreparable harm on the research infrastructure of our colleges and universities, its attacks also expose the fragility and facility of how we have measured research excellence to date.

Members of the Fulbright scholarship board resign, accusing Trump of meddling

Cheyanne Mumphrey, AP News

Nearly all the members of a board overseeing the prestigious Fulbright scholarships resigned Wednesday in protest of what they call the Trump administration’s meddling with the selection of award recipients for the international exchange program. A statement published online by board members said the administration usurped the board’s authority by denying awards to “a substantial number of people” who already had been chosen to study and teach in the U.S. and abroad. Another 1,200 foreign award recipients who were already approved to come to the U.S. are undergoing an unauthorized review process that could lead to their rejection, the board members said.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Educators Warn Against Child Labor Rollbacks

Brenda Alvarez, NEA Today

When students at Brunswick High School’s alternative education program begin missing class, Rie Larson knows it’s time to ask questions. “Sometimes when we start to notice a student’s drop in attendance, and we follow up with them, we find out they’ve been working a lot,” says Larson, a teacher who has spent the last three of her 14-year-career helping students balance academics and life. “They just are too tired to come to school.” Larson’s concern is part of a rising chorus of alarm from educators nationwide as state lawmakers pursue or pass legislation to roll back protections for teen workers. Proposals include longer work hours on school nights; entry into hazardous jobs, such as construction sites and poultry plans; and subminimum wages—raising serious concerns about students’ well-being and education.

Advocates Seek to Protect Children with Disabilities from Federal Cuts

María Constanza Costa, Nonprofit Quarterly

In March, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14242 seeking to eliminate the US Department of Education. That order has since been blocked by a preliminary injunction issued on May 22 by US District Judge Myong J. Joun of Boston, but advocates for students with disabilities remain concerned. Meanwhile, Trump administration’s efforts to axe the department and cut funding continue. Nationwide, an estimated 7.5 million students—15 percent of the nation’s entire enrolled public school student population—participate in programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the main federal legislative framework that covers special education and individualized education programs

People told my dad not to bother educating his 4 daughters. He didn’t listen

Esther Ndumi Ngumbi, NPR

Thank you, Dad, for standing up for your girls. In rural Kenya, where we grew up, fathers were not expected to educate their daughters. Girls were to be married off – and not pursue an education and a career. The value of a girl was measured by her dowry, not a diploma.

Jou My father, Harrison Ngumbi, was different. He and my mom had five children — one son and four daughters. As he would say to us, “I choose to educate you, my girls.” His peers would ridicule him. They’d ask why he was wasting his money on school fees for his daughters when they’ll just get married and leave.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Arkansas families suing to block Ten Commandments in public classrooms, libraries

Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY

Seven Arkansas families have filed a federal lawsuit to block a new law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms in the state, arguing that the law will infringe on their constitutional rights. In the complaint, filed June 11 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, the families challenged an upcoming state law that requires the Ten Commandments to be “prominently” displayed in every public classroom and library. The law, which takes effect in August, was signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in April.

Neoliberalism, Inequality, and Reclaiming Education for Democracy

Neil Kraus, American Educator

I have been a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls (UWRF) since 2005, and I have taught at the college level for over 25 years. About 10 years ago, I was serving on a couple of committees at UWRF charged with addressing significant budget cuts and changes in tenure imposed by Wisconsin’s governor at the time, Scott Walker, and the Republican legislature. State Republicans removed tenure for University of Wisconsin faculty members from state statute and created a new administrative policy that effectively allows administrators to terminate tenured faculty for any reason, including the elimination of programs.

As our campus committees carried out our work, the politics of education began to confuse me. Educational institutions possess something that ostensibly everyone needs—education itself. 

Laboratories of Learning: Social Movements, Education and Knowledge-Making in the Global South

Woohee Kim, Harvard Educational Review

As students organized protests and encampments in the spring of 2024, calling for universities’ boycott, divestment, and sanction of the Israeli apartheid state for its perpetuation of genocide and settler-colonial violence, the world bore witness to a transnational movement of student activists enacting grassroots education. Through teach-ins and read-ins, students learned about histories of colonization; critiqued anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic narratives; and unsettled ongoing occupation. Abu El-Haj’s (2024) question of “what if … we recognized student protesters as educators, fully engaged teachers and learners in our community?” rings particularly important as student activists face dismissal and even criminalization, tactics often used to silence and diminish the power of social movements.

Other News of Note

Norma Meras Swenson, co-founder of Our Bodies Ourselves, dies at 93

Cristela Guerra, WBUR

Norma Meras Swenson’s own pregnancy and birthing experience set her on the path to become a global advocate for women’s health, asserting that women, not doctors, were the experts on their bodies. When Swenson gave birth to her only child, Sarah, in 1958, it was rare for women to have a natural birth, let alone be fully conscious during labor. Instead, women were often put into a “twilight sleep” by a cocktail of sedatives. Swenson sought a different journey. When it was time, residents in the labor and delivery ward gathered around Swenson’s bed. Most hadn’t seen a natural birth before. “There she was turning down drugs … fully participating in her own birth experience, awake and aware,” Sarah said, whereas the other women in the ward were barely awake. “Total non-participants in arguably the most important life-changing experience a woman could have. And she said to herself, ‘Why is this?  Why are women being deprived of this life-changing experience?’ ”