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• Organizing in tough times –Being a bike courier was the first job Mark Hayward had that he not only liked, but loved. But times are tough: if he were offered a better job tomorrow, he’d be gone. “For the first time ever, work was so slow, couriers were complaining they didn’t have enough money…
• The coming austerity –With the _Financial Times_ lamenting the “end of the era of liberalization” and the “death of global free-market capitalism” and _Newsweek_ declaring “we are all Socialists now,” one could be forgiven for believing that the worst excesses of neoliberalism have been relegated to the dustbin of history.
• November/December 2009 –The economic crisis has taken a grim toll on working people and on the labour movement. In its wake, can labour activists and environmentalists join forces to build a green economy that works for everyone? This is just one of the many questions we set out to answer in our…
• Letter from the editor –For two summers several years ago I worked as a literacy tutor for migrant workers in southern Ontario. I had read Paolo Freire’s _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_ and brought with me all kinds of ideas about popular education, but it was all just theory for me at that point. Those…
• The myth of the multicultural patchwork –Multiculturalism - the idea that the existence of multiple cultures within Canada should be accepted and encouraged - has been official state policy since 1971. Celebration of the diversity of our northern cultural kaleidoscope has become a mark of national pride. But while the myth of multiculturalism encourages us to…
• The road to Flobbertown –Remember Grade 3, when school was all about storybooks and gym class and crafts? We had to learn our multiplication tables and cursive writing, too, but these are not the memories we tend to hang on to.
• Generation debt –Education is increasingly thought to be for the good of the individual rather than for the greater good of society - a belief that has made it politically acceptable to place the bulk of education costs squarely on the shoulders of the students seeking that education.
• B.A., M.A., McJob –Imagine opening your morning paper to read the following: “The Minister of Human Resources announced today that she will be working with the provinces to lower university and college enrolments across the country. ‘We don’t think young Canadians should be wasting their time with post-secondary education,’ the Minister said. ‘It’s…
• Freedom & absurdity –The Sunday blues are back, familiar and unwelcome like symptoms of an old illness.
• Corporate crisis, community opportunity –After World War II, muckraking journalist Edward R. Murrow asked Dave Schoenbrun, a bright young interpreter at Allied Force Headquarters, what his post-war plans were. Schoenbrun expressed his desire to return to teaching high school French, to which Murrow responded: “Kid, how would you like the biggest classroom in the…
• Retooling schooling –Quest for Community, a new program of the public school system in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia’s Southern Interior, aims to sow the seeds of community in the most fertile soil there is - the minds of youth.
• Norman Bethune –Was Dr. Norman Bethune truly an extraordinary Canadian? In a new biography of the medical pioneer who died in China in 1939 while serving Mao’s forces, Adrienne Clarkson takes the view that Bethune was profoundly Canadian in his world view, and that his work indeed had an extraordinary impact on…
• Who taught you to teach, professor? –University professors are a curious bunch. Many are gifted and dedicated post-secondary teachers, working hard to educate and inspire their students, while others, despite having succeeded only at school work, exude arrogance and an exaggerated sense of themselves.
• September/October 2009 –The education system represents both our best hope of emancipatory change and the primary mechanism for replicating the status quo. In this issue, Briarpatch surveys this contested space, exploring the challenges and opportunities the current moment presents to allow us to rethink the ways we share knowledge (and consequently power)…
• Letter from the editor –This ship may not yet be going down, but it’s certainly heading straight for the rocks. How do we change course? Or failing that, where are the lifeboats that can preserve us and carry us back to shore? In less nautical terms, these are the sorts of questions with which…
• Six big ways to work for a smaller world –Thank goodness for freegans, who have excelled at showing us how much food we waste every day. Freegans do for wasted food what the 100 Mile Diet has done for eating locally grown food. People who practice freeganism are also showing us how we can pinch pennies and save money…
• Why less is more –As humanity finds itself in the throes of twin crises - the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and an ecological crisis that could threaten the very viability of our civilization - more and more people are grappling with the realization that the human project has somehow gone dreadfully…
• Old growth, new approach –In December 2007, the Council of the Haida Nation and the Government of B.C. ratified a Strategic Land Use Agreement for Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the north coast of B.C., following four years of participatory planning in island communities. The agreement is a bold…
• Salt and earth –I first visited Whole Village in April 2007; over the course of the next 18 months, I lived on the farm in installations, working the land to earn my keep while photographing the community.
• Envisioning ecological revolution –Underlying the goal of ecological revolution is the premise that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis of such enormity that the planet’s entire web of life is threatened and with it the future of civilization. This is no longer a controversial proposition.