Call for submissions

Education for a change: The education system and the work of building a better world

Who could bear to hold privilege that meant the suffering and death of others if they had not been trained from early childhood to see these others as not real? Who would tolerate, for even an hour, the inhuman conditions imposed by the privileged, if they had not been trained from early childhood to feel themselves not fully entitled to life?
-Aurora Levins Morales, Medicine Stories

If you plan for a year, plant rice.
If you plan for ten years, plant trees.
If you plan for 100 years, educate your children.
-Chinese proverb

The education system, broadly conceived, represents both our best hope of emancipatory change and the primary mechanism for replicating the status quo. In this time of economic upheaval, the dual potential of the education system - to either prolong injustice or empower groups of people to confront it - becomes increasingly apparent and more hotly contested. In our September/October issue, “Education for a Change,” Briarpatch will surveying this contested space, exploring the challenges as well as the opportunities the current moment presents to allow us to rethink the ways we share knowledge (and consequently power) with one another, with our children, and with the children of others.

If you’ve got something to contribute to this discussion, then we want to hear from you. We are looking for articles, essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, project profiles, interviews with luminary thinkers, reviews, poetry, humour, artwork & photography that fits broadly under the umbrella of “education.” We seek to cast a critical eye on the state of education today (including everything from early-childhood intervention programs to trade schools to the ivory tower), but we also want to celebrate the grassroots initiatives that demonstrate education’s revolutionary potential.

Possible topics could include (but are no means limited to):

• the state and future of Canada’s institutions of higher learning;
• emerging trends in home schooling and unschooling;
• the commercialization of the classroom;
• retraining for a green economy;
• literacy and political engagement;
• greening/browning the curriculum: environmental/cross-cultural education;
• student debt: the next bubble to burst?;
• the state of student activism in Canada (or elsewhere);
• advances in popular education and radical pedagogy;
• education and literacy in the global south.

We also welcome pitches for short profiles (300-800 words) of programs, activities and initiatives that demonstrate the emancipatory potential of education. (Please note that we do not accept profiles of organizations written by staff of those organizations. Such organizations are welcome - indeed, encouraged - to take out an ad in this issue.)

Queries are due by May 20. If your query is accepted; first drafts are due by June 15. Your query should outline what ground your contribution will cover, give an estimated word count, and indicate your relevant experience or background in writing about the issue. If you haven’t written for Briarpatch before, please provide a brief writing sample.

Please review our submission guidelines before submitting. Send your queries/submissions to editor AT briarpatchmagazine D0T com.

We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active involvement), and cannot guarantee publication.

Other upcoming Briarpatch themes:

November/December 2009: Work, the labour movement & the global economic crisis
Query deadline: June 26, 2009

January/February 2010: Resistance 2010: The politics of protest in Canada
Query deadline: Approx. September 1, 2009 (TBA)

March/April 2010: Gender & sexuality
Query deadline: Approx November 1, 2009 (TBA)