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I went to a talk by renowned author and educator Riane Eisler on October 17th at Cooper Union University in Manhattan. She is a profound advocate of collaborative partnership and has clearly documented how our "dominator" society has disempowered women and minorities. As a young witness of Kristallnacht in Germany, she describes her family's narrow escape from the Nazis and how she gradually evolved into the work she continues to do today. Eisler was a keynoter at the 2011 AERO conference in Portland, OR. She has an article about this in AERO's book, Turning Points, 35 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Stories. 

 

During the question and answer period afterward I asked her how the current education system supports the continuation of the "dominator" paradigm and what we can do about it. She agreed that

95% of children in our schools are subjected to 12 years of domination by authorities as a conditioning to be part of an authoritarian society. She also felt that the best way to counteract this was for children to grow up experiencing empowerment and be able to participate the decision-making about their education and their life.

 

After that talk I gave her a signed copy of my book, School's Over.

AERO is the exclusive carrier of her book, Partnership Education in Action. 

This coming year the AERO Conference will be held in the last week of June. After looking at about 10 different potential sites, we have four possible locations for the conference and we would like you to help us choose one of them. They are in Portland, San Francisco, Boston, and New York.

 

By Nuestra Escuela Director Ana Yris Guzman Torrez.

Nuestra Escuela is an AERO Sustaining Member

Dear Friends:

Today I want to share with you a recount of the efforts our school has been implementing to contribute to the recovery of Puerto Rico following the passage of Hurricane Maria.

Status of our Staff
Immediately after the passing of Hurricane Maria, we generated an official chat so that each member of our staff could report how it was. It was a challenge due to problems with telecommunications, but in the end, we all were able to communicate our status after the hurricane. In this way, coordinators, principals, and directors of the organization were summoned to a meeting scheduled for the 26th of September in which the plan of action to be followed was presented. There we decided to go out to find the people who still did not know anything (both staff and students) to accompany us at the official meeting of the community on October 3, 2017, in the new headquarters of our school in Caguas.

The schools in Puerto Rico are facing massive challenges.

All the public schools are without electricity, and more than half don't have water. More than 100 are still functioning as shelters.

But Puerto Rico's secretary of education, Julia Keleher, tells us that the schools that are open are serving as connection points for communities. They've become a place where children and their families can eat a hot meal and get some emotional support, too.

On Wednesday, we reported on  two schools that have reopened - one public and one private.

And this week we spoke with Keleher by phone about the challenges students and educators are facing. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Join  Smith and Dunn for an engaging conversation about what can be learned about working conditions in contemporary U.S. schools from teachers' resignation letters.

In their studies of the letters,  Professor Dunn and her colleagues found that no matter what state teachers were from or how long they had been in the profession, all were experiencing the current neoliberal policy context in much the same way. "They felt like learning had been reduced to teaching to the test, learning opportunities had been curtailed, and that their own voices as teachers were being continually silenced," Dunn noted. They also experienced frustration in constantly dealing with top-down mandates and increasing bureaucracy at the same time as they saw their salaries and benefits stagnating or even decreasing. "We found that overall, the letters paint a very stark reality of teaching in public schools today."

Listen to the podcast here.

"The great state of Minnesota, home of 10,000 lakes and birthplace of the charter school movement, proudly casts its vote in favor of the resolution." 

The cheers echoed across the meeting room of the Ravel Hotel in Long Island City, New York.  It resembled a political convention with lots of sign-waving and cheering, but in fact it was a gathering of close to 300 men and women who are deeply involved in running independent charter public schools in about half of our country's 50 states.  They were participating in the  3-day gathering's final event, a town hall meeting (that I was moderating).  At that moment, they were voting on the following resolution:

The idea that machines are smarter than humans has inspired a library of science-fiction stories and movies. What often happens when intelligent machines and ordinary humans cross cognitive swords? Humans lose. We weaker and dumber creatures are no match for machines that are out-thinking us at every turn, taking away our jobs, and planning to establish a dictatorship of computers.

As much fun as these dire scenarios are to imagine, they are false. In fact, the development of advanced artificial intelligence, or superintelligence, opens up doors to discoveries never before imagined. While opinions vary about the speed with which superintelligence will develop, there is little doubt that within the next decade, the cognitive landscape will be very different than it is today.

We now have more sustaining members than we've ever had before. But we need many more to become sustainable. Current sustainers range from $5 to $25 a month. If you choose to join as a  sustaining member for any amount, we'll send you the

downloads of the entire AERO 2017 conference. Some people prefer that crucial and continuous support of AERO

Otherwise, please become a member or renew your membership   and continue to support AERO and its mission to make learner-centered education possible for everyone. 

Jerry and the AERO Team