Paulo Freire Centennial / YEAR OF EDUCATION – AN ONLINE SYMPOSIA
SUMMARY OF PROJECT
“It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation” Paulo Freire
We have witnessed a great reckoning in this country, where the divide between the joyful who dance, make music, find occupation in creative pursuits and those who turn first and longest to violence and a lack of imaginative avenues to resolve heartbreak and disenfranchisement become ever more visible.
We are sure that the underfunding of public education and the accompanying disinvestment into local cultural expression, where the void has been taken up with a national network of commercially instigated propaganda and fear-mongering is a major factor in this deep divide.
We also believe that Paulo Freire’s elemental precepts of how to build a pedagogy for the oppressed is one key tool that needs to be celebrated and re-created in this moment. We also look at systemic practices of “alphabetization”, for instance in Cuba, where the revolutionary strategists placed enfranchised literacy as one of the most immediate goals of the transforming nation.
The YEAR OF EDUCATION / PAULO FREIRE CENTENARY
The multidisciplinary Series of documentary and feature films, music, symposia and other public programming celebrates the legacy of the philosopher and teacher Paulo Freie and the Year of Education and promotes popular education
PROGRAM
conscientizacao – the awakening of critical consciousness
Through the critical understanding and interpretation of the world, conscientizacao is achieved by an individual.
- Series of films with accompanying speakers – September 17, 2021 through March 18, 2022
- THEMES : Guaranteeing justice to all students, privatization of schools/charter schools, long struggle to guarantee quality education to all people all ages, high stakes testing, educational aparthied , education in the prison system, school to prison pipeline, Black Panther Platform #5, Cuba and International Literacy campaigns
- Online and social media content – links to additional films and resources
- Links to “get involved”, for more information and advocacy prompts
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 6
PROLOGUE
P.F. D.I.Y. – OUR CURATED PLAYLIST TO GO DEEP
The “PAULO FRIERE DO- IT- YOURSELF PLAYLIST” is intended to be a provocation to look at the times and social conditions active in Brazil during the time Paulo Friere was developing his theses.
We hope you will be inspired to watch and listen to some of the selections here intended to help frame the overall series we are presenting.
Our re-reading of events as we were preparing our series prompted us to restore the memory of a chapter of history when the left was brutally eliminated throughout the “Southern Cone” of Latin America. The US complicity in designing centers of torture and assisting in the collusion to disappear dissent, suggests we have an obligation to not only “not forget” the thousands who were targets of this coordinated political movement, but to reflect upon how active these same forces are today.
We witness calls to “end critical race theory” and shape public education with a lean to the right. The parallels so well framed in “Edge of Democracy”, three years before the election of Trump, suggest the playbook of the anti-democratic forces is alive and well.
Some of the questions we wished to pose through this interrogation are
- What was the political context of Paulo Friere in his years before writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed ?
- What were the social and economic conditions in Brazil in early 1960’s?
- How did artists and cultural workers respond to state repression?
- What was Operation Condor ?
- What was the US role in the dictatorships in Latin America ?
- How do the fascist movements from the 1960’s echo in today’s political climate ?
FILM
LIGAS CAMPONESAS 5 minutes and 34 seconds TV Odia
Peasant leagues (ligas camponesas) were social organizations composed of sharecroppers, subsistence farmers and other small agriculturalists. The Peasant Leagues were associations of rural workers initially created in the state of Pernambuco, later in Paraíba, in the state of Rio.de Janeiro, Goiás and in other regions of Brazil, which exercised intense activity in the period that lasted from 1955 until the fall of João Goulart in 1964. They were organized by the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), and were later Francisco Julião, a member of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT) and other socialists. Founded to improve the standard of living for rural workers, their later objective became to oppose the power of latifundia in the region.
“The contributions of Freire are based on a literacy method which promotes a critical-political comprehension of education, destined to young and adult illiterate. Its objective was to make the ‘oppressed’ subject free from the subjection to the ‘oppressor’, by means of a process of education which stimulated a critical vision and understanding of the world. The Peasants’ Leagues were one of the largest movements that Brazil has experienced made up of peasants whose goal was to fight for basic citizen rights, in addition to an agrarian reform based on the right to land. Many of the peasants were illiterate, the ‘forgotten’ of society, who discovered in the Leagues the place of struggle and freedom of speech.The link between the Paulo Freire literacy method and the Peasants’ Leagues was provided by CEPLAR – Campaign of Popular Education – which was a small but expressive movement of popular education present in the state of Paraiba, in the period between 1960 and 1964. With the Civil-Military Coup of 31st March 1964, CEPLAR and the Peasants Leagues came to an end, and Paulo Freire was exiled.” Contributions of Paulo Freire’s Thought In Educational Practices In The Context Of Peasant Leagues In Sapé. Abstract of Paper by Mesquita, Amanda Amável Silva de
EDGE OF DEMOCRACY 2 hours and 1 minute on Netflix directed by Petra Costas
Filmmaker Spike Lee praised Edge of Democracy and said that it “gives us another look at fascism, which is not only here, but is global”. Edge of Democracy is a 2019 Brazilian documentary directed by Oscar-nominee Petra Costa. The film follows the political past of the filmmaker in a personal way, in context with the first term of President Lula and the events leading to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, analyzing the rise and fall of both presidents as well as the 2014 socio-political crisis that swept Brazil. The arrest of Lula paved the way for Jair Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign and presidency. EOD had its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was released by Netflix in 2019.It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards and won a Platino e Peabody Awards in 2020.
TROPICALIA 1 hour 27 min. Directed by Marcelo Machado via You Tube
Set against the turbulent atmosphere of the 1960s, Tropicália is a feature length documentary exploring the Brazilian artistic movement known as tropicália, and the struggle its artists endured to protect their right to freely express revolutionary thought against the traditional Brazilian music of that time.
1968 Directed by Glauber Rocha
Short Documentary of “The March of the One Hundred Thousand “ a manifestation of popular protest against the Military dictatorship in Brazil, which occurred on June 26, 1968 in Rio de Janeiro, organized by the student movement and with the participation of artists, intellectuals and other sectors of Brazilian society.
ÊSSE MUNDO É MEU 1 hour 19 minutes Directed by Sérgio Ricardo Via You Tube
The film
follows two men living in a Rio de Janeiro slum: a black shoe-shiner and a white mill worker.
MUSIC
Here we suggest a sample of music – a samba performed at Carnivale, two of the top protest songs of all time and our own commissioned theme song performed by Chicago’s own Samba School.
PRA NÃO DIZER QUE NÃO FALEI DAS FLORES (Portuguese for “Not to say that I haven’t spoken about the flowers”), also known as “Caminhando” (Portuguese for “Walking” or “Going forward”), is a song composed by Geraldo Vandré that placed second in the Festival Internacional da Canção in 1968. Although it was the most applauded song of the night and very well received by the public, the music did not award the prize to Vandré thanks to orders given the station Rede Globo ( Army command) who condemned the composition because they considered it extremely critical of the government. The first place prize went to the song “Sabiá“ (Portuguese for “Thrush”) of Tom Jobim and Chico Buarque; who ended up being booed for about 23 minutes while the people continued to sing Vandré’s song. Considered a violation of the sovereignty of the country and a mockery of the armed forces, public playing of the song was forbidden by the Brazilian military dictatorship the following day, and the composer became one of the most hunted persons in the country. The Security Secretary Luís de Oliveira França, warned that the music would serve as a slogan for the movement and all record of Vandré’s presentation at the festival were deleted.
Chico César is a composer/interpreter revealed in 1995. His compositions are a mix of social criticism and humor, with strong musical influences of the folklore of the northeast. César has recorded four CDs so far and has been touring internationally since 1995. His song Béradêro is featured in our prologue series and is from his first recording.
Samba is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities since the Portuguese started to bring them forcefully to work in the sugar cane plantations. Here we present ‘sambas for Paulo Freire”
Samba-Enredo 1999 – Educação, um Salto Para a Liberdade Por Paulo Freire
This is a Carnaval song for a parade and the Samba School is paying a tribute to Paulo Freire’s legacy in education and the way he propelled revolutionary learning in Brazil and throughout the world.
COMMISSION- An original theme song for our series performed by Moacyr Marchini
HotHouse commissioned an original song to be the theme song for this series. Thank you Moacyr!
Musician, composer, educator, chef and promoter.
Moacyr Marchini, a native of Brazil, learned traditional samba music when he was growing up in Sao Paulo. Batucadas (percussion ensembles) and pagodes (a style of vocal music with a samba rhythm) could be heard on the street corners, in open bars, on the beaches, in parks, and on soccer fields throughout the year. By the age of 10 he performed his first recital. During his teenage years, he played in a Samba School (neighborhood association).
After moving to the United States in l985, Mr. Marchini continued to be very involved with Samba music, founding the Chicago Samba in Chicago-IL and Brasil Fest Chicago; in St. Louis-Mo, started the Brazilian music group Samba Bom and Choro Guys. He also teaches and performs the Sounds of Brazil program at schools for a not-for-profit organization. Works a DJ under the name Mo Samba.
Moacyr leads percussion workshops & residencies in the Midwest-USA, Europe and Brazil. He returns often to his country, where he studies with Samba masters, visit music circles. He also collects Brazilian music recordings and instruments.
Construção by Chico Buarque via You Tube
The song was made during one of the harshest times of the military dictatorship in Brazil, amid censorship and political persecution, soon after Buarque returned from Italy where he had previously moved to due to the threat of political persecution. In 2009, “Construção” was selected by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest Brazilian song of all time.
Construção” narrates the events of the last day of a construction worker killed in the course of his daily activities. The song tells the story from the beginning of his day until his death. Over three stanzas, the narrator observes, organizes and communicates the daily activities that took place in a circular narration, sung in reiterative melody, modifying the viewing angle in each stanza. All three stanzas conclude in the worker’s death.
The lyrics are seen as a strong critique of the alienation of the worker in a modern, urban capitalist society, reduced to a mechanical condition, especially intensified in the third stanza of the song. When the worker eventually falls to his death, the lyrics reveal that he only hinders “the traffic,” “the crowd,” and “the Saturday” (of the public), respectively.
READ
We round out our DIY PF with short readings related to our playlist
About Construção: The Top Brazilian Song of All Time
An overview of the ’71 classic and its political statement, which is as much alive today as it was back in the seventies
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Article on Friere and criminalization of his ideas
https://www.brasilwire.com/paulo-freire-and-the-war-on-brasils-public-education
Nacla – 50 years after the Brazilian coup
https://nacla.org/news/2014/4/1/remembering-brazils-military-coup-50-years-later
Overview of Military dictatorship in Brazil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_in_Brazil
OPERATION CONDOR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
BENEFIT SCREENING SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 18
TICKETS REQUIRED / WATCH LINK WILL BE SENT DAY OF TO TICKET HOLDERS
MARIGHELLA 2 hours 39 min. Directed by Wagner Moura
HotHouse is screening this debut feature film – still banned in Brazil – about poet and Communist. Carlos Marighella. Seu Jorge in the starring role is a HotHouse favorite, performing as a musician in the 2000’s in our club on Balbo.
Beginning with a breathless, Robin Hood-style train robbery and ending with a highly provocative—and not for the faint of heart—final sequence, the directing debut from journalist, musician, and actor Wagner Moura (Elite Squad; Pablo Escobar in Narcos) is a searing and energized portrait of one of Brazil’s most divisive historical figures, Afro-Brazilian poet and politician Carlos Marighella (actor/singer Seu Jorge, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou).
Driven to fight against the erosion of civil and human rights following the CIA-backed military coup of 1964 and the brutal right-wing dictatorship that followed, the revolutionary leaves behind his wife, Clara (Adriana Esteves), and son, Carlinhos, to take to the streets, authoring the highly influential Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla,becoming a notorious enemy to the power structure, and being doggedly pursued by sadistic chief inspector Lucio (Bruno Gagliasso) before an untimely death in a dramatic police ambush in 1969.
Co-written with Felipe Braga and produced by City of God director Fernando Meirelles, Marighella has already become a lightning rod in its native Brazil at a time when the country is returning to the far-right authoritarianism Marighella himself fought against. An urgent call to action in an unsteady time, Marighella is not to be missed.
— Hebe Tabachnik, Seattle International Film Festival
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 19
A CELEBRATION OF PAULO FRIERE AT 100
A IS FOR ANGICOS
THE WORLD IS NOT, IT IS BEING
Liberatory thinker, radical educator, emancipatory philosopher and pedagogist, we open our series with a reflection in three parts of the life and legacy of Brazilian Paulo Friere and his mark on the world.
A is for Angicos 26 minutes. directed by Catherine Murphy
Explores the early on-the-ground work of Paulo Freire in Northeastern Brazil, which helped launch his lifelong path of writing about and working in liberatory pedagogy. Produced by The Literacy Project in collaboration with the Paulo Freire Institute. Edited by Iris de Oliveira. Produced by Micaela Ovelar.
THE WORLD IS NOT, IT IS BEING 18 min excerpted from 52min Directed by Cristiano Burlan
Episode 5 of a Five Part Series
The program explores formative ideas in Paulo Freire’s philosopy and his perceptions about how people interact with one another. In this episode the focus is on the theater and culture and its influence on the creation of Cia do Brick, which expresses its primordial concepts through playwrights. The singer and composer Chico César focuses on the teachings of the pedagogue since he was a boy, even made music for him.
INTERLOCUTORS
Rita Sacay, Mirtes Zwierzynski, Iris de Olivera, and Catherine Murphy
CATHERINE MURPHY is a DC-based filmmaker who has spent much of her life living & working in Latin America. She is founder & director of The Literacy Project, a multi-media documentary project on literacy in the Americas. As an independent producer, Murphy’s work has largely focused on social documentaries. After a decade of producing films for other documentary makers, she finished her debut film MAESTRA in 2012, which has enjoyed robust distribution since it first launched, and has been translated into several languages
MIRTES ZWIERZYNSKI
Brazilian visual artist , muralist Mirtes Zwierzynski had immigrated to the USA , Chicago in 1980. Since then she has been involved in Public Art , numerous mural projects with Chicago Public Art Group and others Arts Organization.Those murals ,painting and mosaic , were done always in collaboration with the community. Besides that, she continues to develop her art work studio, most recently participating in The Community Window Project, Chicago public Art Group.
Iris de Olivera
IRIS DE OLIVERA
Brazilian filmmaker (from Salvador-Bahia), living in New Orleans since March 2020. Developing research in the fields of photography, documentary, experimental cinema, contemporary art, media-activism, politics, and black cinema. She seeks, with her photographs, to connect with the essence of the places she traverses. Passionate about Carnival and conversing with the elderly. Directed “Black Archive – The Rising of Memory”, about the work of photographer Lázaro Roberto, one of the pioneers of documentary photography in Bahia.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 17
FOCUS ON LATINX AND HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH
PRECIOUS KNOWLEDGE 1 hour 9 min. directed by Ari Luis Palos and Eren Isabel McGinnis
PRECIOUS KNOWLEDGE illustrates what motivates Tucson High School students and teachers to form the front line of an epic civil rights battle. While 48 percent of Mexican American students currently drop out of high school, Tucson High’s Mexican American Studies Program has become a national model of educational success, with 93 percent of enrolled students graduating from high school and 85 percent going on to attend college. However, Arizona lawmakers are shutting the program down because they believe the students are being indoctrinated with dangerous ideology and embracing destructive ethnic chauvinism.
PRECIOUS KNOWLEDGE is a co-production of Dos Vatos Productions and the Independent Television Service (ITVS), produced in association with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) and Arizona Public Media, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
¡LUCHA SÍ! FIGHT FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION IN PUERTO RICO 27 minutes. Directed by Jinnette Morales Diaz, Jennifer Wager, and Poonam Srivastava
In the wake of Hurricanes Maria & Irma, teachers, students & parents in Puerto Rico unite to fight to keep their schools open in the face of disaster capitalism
INTERLOCUTORS
Jose Lopez, Kamil Marí Gerónimo-López
JOSÉ E. LÓPEZ was born in 1949 in San Sebastián, Puerto Rico. In 1959, his family moved to Chicago as part of the massive Puerto Rican migration to the United States. … For over 40 years, he has been a leading member of the Puerto Rican independence movement and is also the editor of “Puerto Rican Nationalism: A Reader”.
KAMIL GERÓNIMO is a doctoral student of Lifelong Learning and Adult Education at Penn State University. She has an interdisciplinary academic background that includes a Bachelor’s degree in Cooperatives and Geography at the University of Puerto Rico and a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the Graduate School of Social Work Beatriz Lassalle in the University of Puerto Rico. The right to housing, community organizing, and social movements has piqued her intellectual curiosity and guided her research agenda in different countries. Kamil has contributed to social justice movements as a popular educator, accompanying organizing processes of communities, cooperatives, social and political organizations. She has been a member of the Popular Education Council of Latin America and the Caribbean since 2008. In 2017, she founded Pueblo Crítico, a non-profit led by social workers focused on the design of popular education experiences, methodologies, boardgames and planning tools. Kamil is passionate about her country, critical thinking, embodied learning and finding a way to innovate through activism.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 21
FOCUS ON INDIGENOUS VOICES
SALMONISTA SAMPLER
OUR VOICES, OUR STORIES
SALMONISTA SAMPLER
OUR VOICES, OUR STORIES 39 minutes directed by Barb Cranmer
In this film, the “Namais First Nations people share, in their own voices, their stories of personal trauma and the first hand accounts of the Indian Residential School in Alert Bay, BC. At the school, students were prohibited from speaking their language, were kept away from their families for years, and underwent physical and sexual abuse.
In February 2015, church leaders, First Nations, politicians and former students attended a healing/cleansing ceremony hosted by the ‘Namgis First Nation to mark the demolition of the closed school’s building.
INTERLOCUTORS
Judy Hoffman, Dr. Dorene Weise and SANDY GRANDE
JUDY HOFFMAN has worked in film and video for over 35 years. She was active in the Alternative Television Movement of the early 1970’s, experimenting in the use of small format video equipment. Hoffman played a major role in the formation of Kartemquin Films, working on many of their film productions and was the Associate Producer on Golub, which debuted at the New York Film Festival. She is still an active member of Kartemquin.
A major focus of her work has been with the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation of British Columbia, producing films and videotapes about the reclaiming of Native culture. She was the Associate Producer on the award-winning Box of Treasures, a film tracing their efforts to repatriate cultural artifacts. For over ten years Hoffman directed a video training program on the N’amgis Reserve so that the Kwakwaka’wakw could make their own tapes, and she continues to work with them on their projects.
DORENE WIESE is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. She is the founding President of the American Indian Association of Illinois and the current President of Native American Educational Service, Inc. In 1972, Wiese founded the first American Indian Adult Learning Center in Chicago to teach American Indian people, literacy, the GED, American Indian issues, and Native life skills. Her University of Chicago, MA thesis describes this program development and her NIU dissertation research focused on American Indian traditional ways of teaching and learning through elders.
SANDY GRANDE is a Professor of Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Connecticut with affiliations in American Studies, Philosophy, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Across her work, she aims to produce more nuanced analyses of the colonial present. She was recently awarded the Ford Foundation, Senior Fellowship (2019-2020) for a project on Indigenous Elders and aging. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought was published in a 10th anniversary edition and a Portuguese translation is anticipated to be published in Brazil in 2021. In addition to publishing numerous articles and book chapters, she is a founding member of New York Stands for Standing Rock. As one of their projects, they published the Standing Rock Syllabus. In addition to her academic and organizing work, she has provided eldercare for her parents for over ten years and remains the primary caregiver for her 93-yr. old father.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 28
MI PRIMERA TEREA
The unknown story of trovador Silvio Rodriguez, speaking in first person about the life-defining experience he had at 14-years-old when he signed up to join the youth brigades of the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign and taught a rural campesino family how to read and write.
The collection of notable artists who have contributed original tributes to the event are: Duo Made Y Feña, Roly Berrio, Quetzal, Francisco Herrera, Katia and Nina Cardinal, Kelvis Ochoa, Susana Baca, Rochy Ameneiro, Rodstarz De Rebel Diaz And Franco Valdes, and Lila Downs
With a new introduction by Catherine Murphy
SUNDAY DECEMBER 19
FOCUS ON HUMAN RIGHTS MONTH + 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF CUBAN LITERACY CAMPAIGN
MAESTRA
IN MY OWN WORDS
MAESTRA 33 minutes Directed by Catherine Murphy
In 1961, over 250,000 Cubans joined their country’s National Literacy Campaign and taught more than 707,000 other Cubans to read and write. Almost half of these volunteer teachers were under 18. More than half were women. MAESTRA (Spanish for teacher) explores the experiences of nine of the women who, as young girls, helped eradicate Cuban illiteracy within one year and highlights the pivotal role of women’s and youth empowerment in building a new society.
IN MY OWN WORDS 63 minutes directed by Erica Glynn
Raw, heartfelt, sometimes painstaking but often funny, In My Own Words follows the journey of adult Aboriginal students and their teachers as they discover the transformative power of reading and writing for the first time in their lives.
WITH A STROKE OF THE CHAVETA 28 minutes directed by Pam Sporn
With a Stroke of the Chaveta takes viewers into the legendary cigar factories of Cuba to witness the survival of the collective reading of literature while tabaqueros roll cigars. We learn how through la lectura de tabaquería cigar workers have been entertained, educated, and maintained a sense of class solidarity.
INTERLOCUTORS
Kimberly Walker, Rita Sacay and Bob Boughton
RITA SACAY
Rita Sacay joined the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) 2013 to attend graduate school at the College of Education in Curriculum Studies. She coordinated the Writing Partners Program (WPP) at the UIC Writing Center, a first-year peer tutor-writer partnership program and tutored bilingual and monolingual GED students in the UIC Center for Literacy. Rita became an ACE Peer Success Coach in 2018 upon initiation of the program. In August 2020, Rita was recruited to join the UIC Academic Center for Excellence as the Coordinator for the Peer Success Coach Program.
Prior to her experience at UIC, Rita was a public school teacher for 13 years in Highland Park, a North Shore Chicago suburban school district, working as a dual language teacher (Spanish and English) and an ESL resource teacher. Rita has always been a strong advocate for equitable education for underrepresented students with a wide range of ability. Being raised bilingually in a Japanese and Portuguese speaking household and attending English language classes after school has influenced her decision to become a bilingual teacher. Her community-orientated personality has inspired her since she was a teenager in Sāo Paulo, Brazil, when she volunteered as a youth leader. Looking to the future, Rita will continue her community involvement aligned with both students and teachers.
BOB BOUGHTON is an adjunct professor of adult education at the University of New England, a small regional university in New South Wales, Australia. In 2005, Bob began working with a Cuban adult literacy mission using the Cuban model known internationally as Yo, Si Puedo. The program has since expanded, reaching Austrailian first nation communities and effecting over 200,000 people. The campaign in one of these communities, Brewarrina, is the subject of the film, In My Own Words. In addition to papers on the Cuban campaigns in Timor-Leste and Australia, Bob also writes about the relationship between the Cuban international literacy missions and the Freirian tradition of popular education.
KIMBERLY WALLER
Kimberly Waller is an educator focused on collecting, preserving, and sharing stories that uplift and empower people across borders. Her work also looks at what the educational community in the U.S. can learn from Cuba’s literacy initiatives.
SUNDAY JANUARY 23
FOCUS ON VOTING RIGHTS AND EDUCATION IN THE RURAL SOUTH
SNCC AND CORE FREEDOM SCHOOLS
THEY SAY I AM YOUR TEACHER
CALCULATING CHANGE
SNCC and CORE Freedom Schools
An exploration of the SNCC and CORE movement schools that were part of the Freedom Movement of the 1960s in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.
THEY SAY I’M YOUR TEACHER 9 minutes Directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Catherine Murphy.
They Say I’m Your Teacher is a documentary short about the Citizen Education Schools, created from the 16mm archives of the groundbreaking 1985 film, You Got to Move
CALCULATING CHANGE 52 minutes directed by Joel Sucher
PBS special on the efforts to overhaul math and science education in the US Hosted by Al Roker. Produced for the Urban League and Thirteen/WNET.
INTERLOCUTORS
Fannie Rushing, Highlander Center, Bill Ayers
FANNIE THERESA RUSHING is currently a professor of history and global studies at Benedictine University in Lisle Illinois. She publishes articles, organized symposia, and lectures on the African Diaspora in Latin America and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. In addition, for the last ten years, Rushing has been the co-chair of the Chicago Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) History Project. She has spent her life investing in and uplifting Brown and Black Communities.
BILL AYERS
William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, taught courses in interpretive and qualitative research, oral history, creative non-fiction, urban school change, and teaching and the modern predicament. Ayers has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise.
Ayers’ articles have appeared in many journals including the Harvard Educational Review, the Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Rethinking Schools, The Nation, Educational Leadership, the New York Times and the Cambridge Journal of Education.
His books include with Crystal Laura and Rick Ayers “You Can’t Fire the Bad Ones!” And 18 Other Myths About Teachers, Teachers’ Unions, and Public Education (Beacon Press, 2018), Demand the Impossible! A Radical Manifesto (Haymarket Books, 2016), Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World: An Invitation (Teachers College Press, 2016), Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident (Beacon Press, 2013), with Ryan Alexander-Tanner To Teach: The Journey in Comics (Teachers College Press, 2010), with Bernardine Dohrn Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press 2008), with Rick Ayers