Suchergebnisse

This week we're looking at the dynamics of collective action. We ask: What shapes protest against inadequate housing in South Africa? And what lessons can we learn?

In the latest Guest Author post, Hyunjin Seo, Oscar Stauffer Professor of
Journalism at the University of Kansas, writes about her new book
Networked Collective Actions: The Making of an Impeachment, out now in the
Oxford Studies in Digital Politics series.

Fast die Hälfte der Lehramtsstudenten geht in der Ausbildung an den Universitäten verloren, zeigt eine Analyse. Woraus folgt: Es braucht nicht nur mehr, es braucht vor allem bessere Studienplätze für Lehrer.






Foto: Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0.






DIE AHNUNGSLOSIGKEIT  vieler Universitäten ist atemberaubend. Inmitten des größten Lehrermangels seit Jahrzehnten können sie oft nicht sagen, wie viele ihrer Lehramt-Studienanfänger bis
zum Abschluss kommen – geschweige denn, warum sie zu welchem Zeitpunkt entscheiden, doch nicht Lehrer zu werden. 



 



Der Stifterverband spricht von einer "großen Forschungs- und Datenlücke", die es zu füllen gelte, "denn nur auf Basis belastbarer Befunde können bildungspolitische Maßnahmen ergriffen werden, die
letztendlich einen Bildungsnotstand verhindern."



 



Vielleicht wollen viele Verantwortliche in Hochschulen und Politik es auch gar nicht so genau wissen, denn die wenigen bekannten Zahlen sind atemberaubend. In so seltener wie beispielhafter
Transparenz haben Bildungsforscher der Universität Rostock im Auftrag der Landesregierung ermittelt, dass je nach Schulform, Schulfach und Uni zwischen 20 und 83 Prozent der
Lehramtsstudierenden in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern zwischendrin verloren gingen – besonders groß sei die Schwundquote ausgerechnet in den MINT-Fächern. 



 



Der Stifterverband zeigt nun mit seinem erstmals recherchierten "Lehrkräftetrichter", dass die Rostocker Zahlen im Trend liegen dürften. Von jährlich 52.500 Studienanfängern bundesweit erreichten 29.400
das Referendariat – das dann immerhin die meisten durchhielten. Am Ende des Trichters kommen maximal 28.300 fertige Lehrer raus – der Rest, rund 46 Prozent, geht andere Wege.



 



Einen ähnlichen Schwund gebe es auch in den Fachwissenschaften, betont der Stifterverband, doch hätten die zur Kompensation einen Zustrom von Wechslern aus anderen Fächern. Aus einem
Nicht-Lehramtsfach in ein höheres Lehramts Fachsemester hineinzuwechseln, sei dagegen schwierig. 



 



Gelänge es, den Schwund zu halbieren,
wäre der Lehrermangel rechnerisch erledigt



 



Natürlich liefert der "Lehrkräftetrichter" nur ungefähre, ja behelfsmäßige Berechnungen, aber sie zeigen: Wer das Problem Lehrermangel lösen will, muss vor allem das Problem Lehramtsstudium
lösen. Durch eine bessere Betreuung der Studierenden, eine andere Studienorganisation und womöglich – was angesichts der Personalnot erstmal absurd klingen mag – durch passende
Eignungsfeststellungsverfahren. Man stelle sich vor, mit solchen Mitteln ließe sich die Schwundquote halbieren. 12.000 zusätzliche Lehrer pro Jahr wären die Folge. Und der Lehrermangel –
rechnerisch –erledigt. 



 



Was praktisch natürlich nicht so ist, denn der Mangel ist ja jetzt da – und die Schulen müssen jetzt umgehen mit dem, was sich in der Lehrerbildung über Jahrzehnte an Versäumnissen aufgebaut hat
– kombiniert mit der ebenso lange verfehlten Bedarfsplanung vieler Kultusminister. Also: Ja, es braucht mehr Studienplätze für Lehrer. Vor allem aber braucht es bessere Studienplätze für
Lehrer.



 



Auch die Kultusminister wissen das. Es ist ihnen oft genug gesagt worden, etwa von ihrer Ständigen Wissenschaftlichen Kommission (SWK). Und ebenso, dass zu der
anderen Studienorganisation neue Zugänge erst im Master, Ein-Fach-Lehramtsabschlüsse und eine andere Verschränkung von Theorie und Schulpraxis gehören sollten. Was nebenbei dazu führen würde,
dass die Ausbildung von Quereinsteigern regulärer – und von der Qualität her gedachter – Teil der Lehrerbildung würde.



 



Tatsächlich beschwören die Minister nach Jahren des Zögerns inzwischen ihre Reformbereitschaft – spätestens nach dem umfangreichen Gutachten, das die SWK Ende des Jahres vorlegen will. Doch der
Lehrkräftetrichter des Stifterverbandes macht deutlich wie nie: Die wichtigste Reform wären verlässliche und transparente Daten. In allen Bundesländern. 



 



Dieser Kommentar erschien zuerst in leicht gekürzter Fassung in meiner Kolumne "Wiarda will's wissen" im Tagesspiegel.




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Hello listeners! This is a rebroadcast of Episode 3 of Transmissions, a new podcast I've been involved with lately. Transmissions is the official podcast of the Class Unity Caucus of the DSA, and I want to thank them for their permission to use this episode.
On May Day, Steph K and I had the great pleasure of interviewing Alex Shah, Co-Founder and Staff Writer with the Toronto-based Class Collective magazine. Class Collective describes itself as "an annual literary magazine that illuminates the class struggle(s) hidden in the shadows of our culture."


We start the conversation by inviting Shah to reflect on Class Collective's own recent interview with Class Unity, called "On the Left's Middle Class Problem." What exactly is the left's middle class problem and why is it such an important topic? Focusing specifically on the sometimes thorny question of class politics versus "identity" politics, we were curious to hear what theoretical waypoints Shah might be able to offer to help us orient our own approach.

Staying with the middle class problem, we ask whether the Canadian experience can offer any unique lessons for those interested in workplace organizing, here in the US. What kind of reactions does Shah encounter when he talks to fellow leftists in Canada about Class Collective's perspective on identity politics? Whereas Class Unity members often discuss the "iron triangle" thesis (namely, the role of middle class institutions such as academia, the media, and NGOs) as a way of addressing the power and function of the urban, college-educated middle class in the US, to what extent is this framework applicable in Canada? And if it is, to what extent does the Canadian left recognize it as a problem?

Changing register, we then discuss Class Collective's literary sensitivity. With the amount of poetry and prose on offer throughout its pages, the Editors clearly hold literature in high regard. For some, this disposition might suggest too much of an affinity for a kind of kind of middle-class or bourgeois-decadent perspective. Yet, while such scorn is regretfully common on the left, it is often too hasty as, from Dickens to Wilde to Brecht, the left has always had its own literature. We ask Shah for his views about left poetry, working-class poetry, and whether or how he sees any necessary linkages between the two – and whether he has any favorite leftist poets that he would recommend.

Moving to the end of the interview, we discuss Class Collective's recent engagement with Midwestern Marx, on Building a Socialist America. One of the interesting tensions explored in this intervention is the tension on the left between, on the one hand, a kind of pro-State Department reflex on the part of many leftists, who refuse to critique "the US imperialist cold war against China and Russia" and, on the other, a kind of radical "death to America 'ultra'" position which reduces America to white settler colonialism and adventurism, and all of contemporary geopolitics to a struggle against US imperialism. As a way out of this impasse, Midwestern Marx argues for a renewed attention to dialectics. We ask Alex to discuss this further, and its applicability today, especially in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Finally, we address Shah's own essay in Class Collective's January edition, called "Why Death Anxiety is on the Rise." In this piece, Shah discusses "Liberalism's fetishization of the present" as a fundamental aspect of globalization's "brutal flattening and homogenization of the world." Shah cites Mark Fisher, who argued that political order erodes our past and future, obliging us to dwell in an eternal present, and condemning the working class to what he termed "hedonic depression." What, for Shah, might we be looking out for, if we want to observe some of the symptoms of this anxiety in ourselves? And what, if anything, can ordinary members of the working class do to attend to this anxiety in themselves?

Water hyacinth, an invasive Amazonian species, clogs Nepal's waterways, suffocating native flora and blocking essential nutrients for aquatic life. A Nepali handicraft collective creatively repurposes its fibre for household items.

In a recent public announcement of little surprise, except perhaps to the Iran-obsessed punditry and political classes in Washington and Tel Aviv, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iran does not have total control over the proxy groups it supports and finances. It's a wonder what took so long. Proxy relationships are notoriously complex, fickle, and unpredictable; more often than not, they disappoint the sponsor, leave the latter's strategic aims unfulfilled, or at the very worst, come back to haunt with a vengeance. Recent U.S. history has ample lessons of the pitfalls of proxy relationships, from the South Vietnamese Army to the Mujahideen. Contemporary times are no better. The proxy relationship between the United States and the Syrian Democratic Forces, while successful in some regards, ultimately failed, according to one report from New America, because it couldn't manage the unavoidable downside risk "that an intricate strategy of engaging proxies to fight in foreign wars can be so quickly undone."Proxies may seem like an easy fix and politically palatable to domestic audiences more accepting of passing off the dying to someone far away rather than their own brethren, but the drawbacks can also be immense. Proxies can be both brutal and incompetent, as one expert has observed, "often go[ing] their own way, pursuing their own interests while pocketing the money and other support they receive." Their sponsors can be implicated in any potential human rights abuses or war crimes. In other words, what they give is not always in line with what they get and what they're tasked to do is not always what they do in reality. Add to this the fact that both proxy and sponsor are often at the whim of shifting political winds, matters can go sideways quite quickly and grow increasingly complex. So why is Iran's relationship with its many regional proxies considered exceptional to all this?Some of the reason is good old-fashioned Orientalism, a propensity to see the behavior of Middle Easterners as somehow different from the rest. In this case, groups like Hezbollah, the Houthis, or the sub-groups of Iraq's PMF, are seen as acting as if beholden at all costs to the aims of a wily and omnipresent puppet master in Tehran because of arms transfers, financial support, or the sharing of a supposed airtight alignment and commitment to religion or ideology, making them no more than servile little hatchlings birthed into this world by their parasitoid wasp overlord, as Thomas Friedman would have it. Such ingrained thinking denudes proxies, as local actors in their own right, of agency. Few point out, for example, that Houthi attacks in the Red Sea should actually be taken seriously as a reaction to the specific actions undertaken by Israel in Gaza, rather than at the direction or discretion of Iran, and fewer still analyze their actions in the long history of solidarity between Yemenis and Palestinians dating back to the days of partition. Only recently, during a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, with the realization that strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen have not deterred their disruptive activities in the Red Sea, was it considered that maybe their actions are actually relatable to the war in Gaza. The Houthis, like many local actors across the Middle East, have the agency and the desire to forge their own destiny, both in their home country and across the region. Whether their strategic aims align with Iran or not, and under what circumstances, as is the case with the U.S. and its own proxies, is a matter of consideration. But reducing Houthi actions primarily to their relationship with Iran essentially casts aside the way they see and operate in the world, as if they move about as pre-programmed robots, and not as a group that might have their own ax to grind with an American-enforced regional security architecture, not only impacting the situation in Yemen and their own pursuit of power there but elsewhere. Besides, seeing Houthi behavior as mainly the handiwork of Iran exudes an intellectual laziness that not only foregoes the assessment of complex local and regional dynamics, but also holds deep implications in terms of policy solutions. If Iran is the only problem, then cutting "off the head of the snake" or "Bomb, Bomb, Iran," long advocated to varying degrees by multiple Arab governments, Israel, and many in the halls of Washington, is the solution, setting the potential stage for even more Western military intervention or escalating regional conflict. It's well documented how that turns out. On the other hand, to assess the Houthis as a group with an agency and history of their own requires the search for more complex and contextual solutions, which may not be entirely solvable through military force, but might include negotiation and accommodation, and in the very least the recognition that military actions undertaken by the U.S. and its allies elicit reactions from local actors on their own terms.

Weidetiere und Wölfe gehören zu unserer Landschaft Jeder Wolf, der in Deutschland in eine Fotofalle tappt, eignet sich inzwischen zum medialen Ereignis, und sollte er noch ein Schaf oder Reh reißen, wird er kurzerhand als 'Problemwolf' diffamiert. Taucht ein Wolf auf, dann wird schnell das Ende der Weidewirtschaft plakativ an die Wand gemalt, als würden …
"Problemwölfe! Wer ist hier das Problem?" weiterlesen
Der Beitrag Problemwölfe! Wer ist hier das Problem? erschien zuerst auf Deutschland-geliebte-Bananenrepublik.de.

Despite the appearance of rigor and formal metrics, a very disturbing phenomenon has emerged in elite schools: the awarding of tenure in social science departments is commonly subjective and easily manipulated. This is likely what happened in Claudine Gay's case.
The post The Tenure Problem appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

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Hasan Minhaj's stand-up tests the boundaries of fact and fiction.

July 9, 2019. The 2019 legislative session got off to a very slow start. Few bills moved before the May 9 deadline for substantive bills to pass one chamber of the legislature to stay alive. The pace picked up in the last month as both the House and Senate passed versions of a budget bill […]

Jonathan Marsh, an officer with London's Metropolitan Police, has been found guilty of assault for punching shopkeeper Rasike Attanayake. Attanayake had called emergency dispatch to report a man damaging his shop and threatening to kill people. Upon arriving, Marsh knocked Attanayake to the ground, punched him in the back of the head, handcuffed him, and…

The first and so far only international football match between France and Algeria took place twenty years ago, on 6 October 2001. The starting point had been the sustained euphoria around the multiethnic character of Les Bleus, the French national team, winners of the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship, and their emblematic leader […]
The post France 2022: Stumbling blocks in collective memory appeared first on European Notepad.