The Upside-Down World of Down-Under

Obama's attempts to reform the Health Industry failed. He was thwarted by a coalition of Pharmaceutical Industry and Health Insurance lobbyists, Right Wing Republicans, even more Right Wing Democrats (all of whom have their fingers in the public pie) and by his own timidity. As Michael Moore asked him, "Mr. President, what part of Landslide do you not understand?"

(For more thoughts see: Anticapitalist Models of Health.

New Zealand is a much less confrontational culture than the States. Conflict, and especially legal conflict - litigation - is something that Kiwis try to avoid. So instead of having the ability to sue through Civil Law for work-related injuries or disabilities, we have a State insurance system called the Accident Compensation Commission. The idea is that you and your employer pay a portion of your weekly wage that goes into a public fund, out of which disabilities are compensated. It's supposed to avoid all of the palavah of court costs, lawyer's bills etc. and to grant to our citizens a peace of mind that they will be taken care of should anything go wrong. It's a way of avoiding the horrendous costs and wasteages of the American system. At least in theory. The trouble is, the Commission has a huge administrative budget and not a very large income so that it is increasingly reluctant to pay out compensation when it can find any small loophole to justify itself. And as Government policy shows, it is all the time seeking to increase the costs of levies and decrease the cost of payments. This translates down into some idiotic experiences.

I have a minor hearing disability. I can hear reasonably well except when there is a degree of background noise. Then I find myself reading lips just to be sure I get the full drift of what's being said. It doesn't prevent me from functioning in my professional life, but it is a significant inconvenience and it drives my wife, Leonie mad when she has to repeat things or raise her voice. I've had the problem for almost 20 years and it has grown progressively worse with age. I had it diagnosed as soon as I was aware of it and was told that the damage to my hearing was consistent with my having used power tools without wearing ear protection. Now much of my work with power tools has been in the building of my own houses and in working in  the (very) noisy woodworking shop at the School of Architecture at the University of Auckland. While it's possible to wear hearing protection in the shop, most people only do it for the immediate task at hand rather than for the duration of their stay in the shop.  This is so that it's possible to have conversations about work. The trouble is the background noise is significant, and it is here that I believe much of the damage occurred.

Finally, after much cajoling I went to the audiologist for more tests, and the previous results were confirmed, with some slight worsening in the intervening period. The audiologist was a decent man. He assured me that the cost of the device I needed ($8,000 if you can believe it), along with future cessories, batteries etc. would probably be covered by the ACC. The injury was clearly work-related. He and I duly sent off the application forms, complete with the test results and his professional diagnosis and opinion. Two weeks went by, before the letter arrived. "Denied!"

"Oh!" they said, "Your hearing's damaged alright - nine points of damage on the scale, in fact. But then three points of that is age related (down to six points!), and because you have lived outside of New Zealand for half of your lifetime, we can only count 50% of the remainder (down to 3 points from nine - a 66% reduction!). So we're sorry! Three points doesn't count for compensation. Denied!" Now if you have read some of my stuff you will know that I don't bend to bureaucracy easily. And there is an appeal process. So! I filled out a ten page form outlining the grounds of my appeal, and sent this, complete with the results of another, additional, audiology test (which I had to pay for myself). My reasoning was simple. I pointed out that:

• For 50% of the 50% f the time they had discounted (for my not being in New Zealand) I had been a child and had had no access to power tools, motorized mowers or any such thing.
• For most of the rest opf the 50% I had been a student, far away from building sitees and mechanized tools
• I laid out the math, pointing out that my actual exposure to power tools amounted to less than 20% of my life
• And of that, probably 80% had been spent in New Zealand.

I sent off the appeal. Six weeks later, the answer came back (with a 60 page analytical tome of their reasoning. But the bottom line (and their own reasoning) remained the same. "Declined". This being a bureaucracy, there is, of course, an appeal process to the appeal. How else are we to soak up the increasing ranks of middle class unemployed if not to employ them in government bureaucracies writing 60 page justifications that justify nothing and talk in circularities!  I appealed the appeal. This meant going to a mediation conference with an ACC Area manager (earning conservatively $80,000 a year), presided over by an "independent" ACC Commissioner (another cool $100,000 a year consultancy) who probably had to drive 100 miles to be there (travel allowance!). I was requirred to take an oath to the effect that I was going to tell the truth - which was strange because they had it all in writing twice already. We sat there for an hour, me telling my ve5rsion of events and of the chronology, they sitting patiently, listening. I finished. We shook hands, I left. Three months later (I was beginning to think they had forgotten me or lost the file) came a letter, with another (100 page) analysis/justification. "Declined!"

It must have cost them much more than he $8,000 it would have cost to fund my hearing aid to do all of this for which I have already paid as a taxpayer AND an ACC -payer over my years of employment, and as well as now having to pay ANOTHER $8,000 for my own hearing-aid. That's a total cosst of $16,000, PLUS the ongoinmg costs of batteries, accessories, repairs etc. In many ways, I'd rather not hear. Silence is truly golden!

Is this the Beginning of the End of Capitalism?

In June 2009 I accepted a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I was appointed by three Departments: Architecture, Psychology and Educational Leadership. My work involved community engagement in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati, working with local residents to resist and overturn the city's program of gentrification; in the Rothenberg Academy elementary school (a very poor, 100% African American inner-city school) to improve their academic performance and to build relationships between teachers and parents; and with the Myaamia Tribe, who are trying to rebuild their spoken language from written records. A report on my work in the community there can be found at:

• Wiepking Report: (http://www.tonywardedu.com/content/view/421/49/)

• The Myaamia Report: (http://www.tonywardedu.com/content/view/421/49/)

You can also check out my website for new and freely downloadable PDFs on:

• The Transformative University: (http://www.tonywardedu.com/content/view/422/40/)

• Anticapitalist Models of Health:
  (http://www.tonywardedu.com/content/view/423/123/)

• Evaluation and Grading:  
• (http://www.tonywardedu.com/content/view/374/40/)

My family and I came back to New Zealand to some shocks. We have had eighteen months of travel. We have been to the USA (many States), Mexico, Canada, Iceland, England and New Zealand. We have returned home to discover that the prices of all commodities has increased by no less than 50% during the time of our absence. A few things to think about:

• The Commonwealth Bank of Australia lifted its interest rates more than 25 base points (by .45%) above the Reserve Bank recommended rate this month, putting further financial pressure on already stressed mortgagees, at the same time that the Bank's CEO, Sir Ralph Norris voted himself a $20.5M pay packet.

• The Big Four Australian banks, the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ and NAB have all increased their rates and all of their executives have given themselves massive pay hikes. Mike Smith (ANZ) $13.6M, Gail Kelly (Westpac) $12.1M, and Cameron Clyne (NAB) $7.1M.

• At the same time, George Frazis the Westpac New Zealand Boss, became the highest paid executive of a New Zealand company with his $5.9M pay package at a time when the Ombudsman revealed that Westpac NZ had received a record number of customer complaints about its fees and bank charges.

• We live in a country that is one of the world's most prominent exporters of dairy products. Fonterra, the primary dairy company in New Zealand boasts on its trucks that it delivers "2.5 tonnes of dairy produce to the World". Meanwhile, friends only half-jokingly tell me that they are "saving up" to buy a block of cheese (which costs an unbelievable $15 per kilo.) Then, just a few days ago, it was reported that the CEO of Fonterra, Andrew Ferrier, had just granted himself a $1.5M annual pay increase. 

• At the same time, Fonterra is one of the greatest polluters of the New Zealand environment and one of the companies putting our greatest natural resource - water - under pressure from irrigation - costing the New Zealand taxpayer millions of dollars annually. Add to this the loss to the economy through the impact on the tourism industry - our largest export earner.

You have to ask why, with all of the subsidies from the public area - water, pollution-cleanup etc., Fonterra can't have a two-tier pricing system with a domestic quota? They provide enough dairy product for the domestic market at an affordable domestic price BEFORE they sell the rest of their product on the world market.

You have to ask WHY the Australian and New Zealand Governments don't pass legislation pegging the salaries of bank executives of banks that have received public bailout funds or that are engaged in wholesale foreclosures or price-gouging on fees?

Multiply these examples a thousand times across the planet. Clearly something is out of whack! Is it the Beginning of the End of Capitalism? Will the people rise up in outrage and dismantle this corrupt economic system? Is it time we started taking to the streets? When does frustration turn to armed insurrection? How hungry or hurting do people have to be?

Also, just remember that all of these people were educated in schools. Education promotes the kind of acquisitive, competitive, hierarchical, couldn't-care-less attitudes exemplified by these examples. We need to educate differently. Let's stop playing the Capitalist game in schools.! Some suggestions? Let's teach our children by example:

• No competition
• No borrowing!
• No growth
• No consuming
• No Free Trade!
• No Global Economy
• Grow and buy local
• Don't vote
• Don't pay taxes
• Grow-you-own
• Resist

The Last Year

At the beginning of 2009 I was awarded the 2009-2010 Weipking Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. It was a campus-wide endowment offered every three years which required me to compete with other candidates for the position. The proposal was lodged by the three Departments of Architecture, Psychology and Educational Leadership, by my colleagues Tom Dutton (Architecture), Bill Stiles (Psychology) and Richard Quantz (Educational Leadership) who put in much hard work

The offer came about because I received an email from Bill in late 2008, with an attached paper that he had just been accepted for publication in the Psychotherapy Research Journal (Vol. 19 (4-5) July Sept. 2009 pp. 558-565) Written by Bill Stiles and his colleagues Hugo J. Shielke, Jonathan Fishman and Katerine Osatuke on The Ward Method it was titled: Developing Creative Consensus on Interpretations of Qualitative Data: The Ward Method.

To say that this came as a surprise would be an understatement. I had had lunch with Bill fifteen years earlier in Auckland and had described to him the pedagogical process that I had developed over the preceding years since my time in Berkeley - by trial and error and problem-solving - of having a group of novice undergraduate students design one object (house, urban scheme, Marae development etc.) using a consensus method of decision-making that seemed to be fool-proof and conflict-free while at the same time allowing them to explore fully their own individual creativity. Bill had taken it all in and returned to Ohio to test it out for the next fifteen years. The article was a recounting of the effects and practicalities of the method - backed up by in-depth research from multiple sources that seemed to reinforce and affirm my assertions as well as the theoretical base. Even better, the article that he and his colleagues had jointly authored had been written using the so-called Ward Method. I was deeply touched by the acknowledgement to my work and impressed by the research that had gone into investigating the reasons for its apparent effectiveness. Others who knew about the method had told me that I should "write it up" over the years, butI had always been too busy with the practice of it. Now here was a group of psychologists who had outlined the theoretical base upon which the method was built, in the process affirming and legitimating the rationale behind the process.

I wrote to Bill thanking him and suggesting that I would enjoy the opportunity to work together to further explicate and advance the methodology. To my surprise, he replied with a suggestion that I apply for the Weipking and come to Oxford. And so, with the offer of the position, we packed our bags, rented our New Zealand house and set off for California.

Mato Paha Revisited

Leonie, Josephine (then 6) and I arrived in California in mid-July, and, after an obligatory five days in Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm, we arrived in San Francisco in time for the wedding of my eldest daughter Cheryl and visited in the Bay Area with friends and family for three weeks before taking off across country in our newly-purchased Ford Explorer, headed for Ohio, via Yosemite, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming (Jackson Hole, Yellowstone), Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota (Mt. Rushmore, Mato Paha), Illinois, Indiana and finally Ohio. It was a brief but eventful journey. In Jackson Hole we took a trip down the Snake River, seeing moose, eagles, deer, beaver etc) and in Yellowstone we saw two grizzlies - one small and young and one (fortunately distant) looking VERY large and scary. On the way, I stopped of at Mato Paha (Bear Butte) to give thanks for the adventures and blessings that had come to me since I last visited twenty years earlier, almost to the day. This time it was very different, very sad and not a little anger-provoking. The differences are captured in my updated version of the original story now available in separate PDF download from here.

Oxford was warm and leafy when we arrived, and we were excited to be in our new home. There wasn't much time to enjoy the moment. We arrived on Saturday. Classes started on Monday! So onto work!

My Year at Miami University

Psychology

In the fall of 2009 I taught a capstone course in Psychology - Voices of Native Americans - working with the staff and students of the Myaamia Tribe who were forcibly displaced and relocated from Ohio in 1846. As a consequence they lost their oral language and culture which they are now reconstructing from written records. Our capstone project aimed to build trust with the Tribe (which we successfully did). This resulted in a tentative proposal for an ongoing working relationship with the Department. Possible collaborations included the establishment of a joint internship or residency programme between the Department of Psychology and the Tribe’s Social Service Agency in Oklahoma – similar to that which operates in the Center for Community Engagement in Over the Rhine CCEOtR). In this, as in all of my projects the aim has to build long-term relationships between the University and communities of interest - notably those that operate on the margins. (Sadly, the proposal was shelved in June 2010, along with my application to extend my stay at Miami by a further two years). The project is detailed in a report on my website with an additional brief description below:

The Tunnel of Oppression

The Tunnel of Oppression is an interactive event that highlights contemporary issues of oppression. It is designed to introduce participants to the concepts of oppression, privilege and power. Participants are guided through a series of scenes that aim to educate and challenge them to think more deeply about issues of oppression. At the end of the tour, participants are provided with an opportunity to discuss their experiences with each other. Facilitators help participants reflect on their experiences and put their new-found knowledge to use in their everyday lives. Before leaving, participants attend a fair where opportunities for involvement in addressing some of the issues presented at the Tunnel are provided

"The Tunnel of Oppression is a campus grassroots diversity programme that originated in 1993 at the Western Illinois University. Using the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles as a model, the tunnel strives to give people a way to experience oppression in a hands-on way. By engaging the emotions of the participants, it allows for the accounts expressed in the programme to be truly effective. People may have never been placed in these types of situations, and they obtain a sense of what it actually feels like to be oppressed or discriminated through the sights and sounds they experience. While the Tunnel may be disturbing, it is an effective tool used to teach people about how it really feels to be in the various situations." (Tunnel literature)

The Tunnel of Oppression has been rightly criticised for rendering a superficial experience of Oppression and promoting a "feel good" experience without real transformation. On the other hand, there is no doubt, reading some of the comments of peoples' experiences that it does have the capacity to inform and lift awareness. The Capstone students opted to design and build an installation in the Miami University Tunnel in early November, depicting the oppression of the Myaamia Tribe in their forced relocation and the abduction of their children who were then placed in white boarding schools. An account and description of the installation can be viewed here. Mindful of the need to support and protect the dignity of the Tribe, all aspects of the installation were passed by them for approval, and they were clear that they wanted the overall impression to be one of survival, success and optimism in the face of their 200 year story of dispossession and exploitation. It was very successful - not only in terms of its educational impact upon the visitors who went through the Tunnel experience, but in terms of the relationship that we were able to build with thr Tribe. At the end of the event a new spirit of cooperation came into being, and plans are afoot to extend the work of the course by establishing a Residency Program in Oklahoma where students can gain course credit by supporting and assisting the Social Services Office of the Myaamia to reach and help their tribal members who maybe in need of available Federal and State assistance. We never did get to the original research project, but I personally believe that once the Residency Program is in place, the long-term benefit to the Myaamia will be enormous. So well done to the Capstone students.

It's interesting for me to note here that during the course, it proved all but impossible to use the Ward Method of consensus building. What became clear as the semester wore on was that co-operative work and building consensus requires a timeframe that is not supported by the University's fragmented class scheduling system. Students enrolled in other classes found it impossible to meet together at any other time than the scheduled two seventy-five minute class meetings per week. The result was a continuing struggle to communicate (the University's Blackboard virtual classroom was useless!) and to make decisions. It is clear that for creative work to happen, particularly in a cross-disciplinary context - the present schedule is a disaster. It directly fosters individualism, competition and social dysfunction. Plans by the University to promote and extend its much-vaunted "Engaged University" image are doomed to failure unless it drastically reshapes its schedule.

Architecture
In the Fall semester I also taught in the already well-established Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine residency program in a support capacity with my colleague Prof. Tom Dutton. Over-the-Rhine is an inner city ghetto adjacent to Cincinnati Downtown where Tom has been working in and with the community for thirty years. The area is 90% African American, with high unemployment, violence and drug and alcohol dependency. In the project, undergraduate students were involved in developing a proposal for the area that was socially, culturally, economically and environmentally sustainable. Like most American urban post-industrial cores, OtR is on the sharp end of processes of gentrification and displacement.

The Tarbell Mural

One of our projects involved contesting a 40' high mural that stands at the gateway to Over-the-Rhine. The mural had been commissioned by the City, and Artworks, a Community Arts Group shortlisted the subject down to three prominent individuals (one of whom was the famous Cincinnati boxer Ezzard Charles. In the event (and without any dialogue with the community) the final choice was a huge depiction of prominent (white) pro-gentrification Jim Tarbell, decked out in top hat and tails, inviting people into Over-the-Rhine.


The almost entirely black community was outraged. So we undertook to do a neat kind of survey. Reproducing the image in a poster, we included an empty speech bubble and asked the good citizens of OtR to fill them in with appropriate comments. The results were very informative. More than two hundred were received - the best published in the Cincinnati Beacon.. Two choice examples are shown below:

These and the other 200 responses were displayed and presented at the Ink Tank - an adult literacy venue in the OtR neighbourhood and were accompanied by poetry and autobiographical sketches from members of the Drop Inn Center's recovery programme. Then, in late May, they were also included in an exhibition of urban art at the Cincinnati Art Institute in Over-the-Rhine, and caused critical discussion around issues of art and politics.

Pissing on Poles

The Cincinnati Beacon Pissing on poles and criminalizing the poor
Friday, December 11, 2009

Posted by Justin Jeffre

Recently I went to Fountain Square with a group of students that wanted to raise awareness about the City of Cincinnati’s criminalization of homelessness. While I was there I had a funny encounter with a streetcar snob that got me thinking.

I was with a large group of Miami students that are living and studying in OTR. They were troubled that the City of Cincinnati is criminalizing the homeless and locking them up for petty “crimes”. They decided to try to raise awareness that homeless people can be locked up for “crimes” (minor misdemeanors) like sitting on the side walk, spitting in public, dumpster diving, littering, loitering, solicitation, trespassing or sharing food etc. They were passing out flyers and wearing t-shirts that said homelessness is not a crime.

I was observing them interacting with the public and talking to a Professor that was visiting from New Zealand when a guy I recognized was walking towards us. (We recognized each other from the streetcar debate. He said he would ride a streetcar but not a bus.) The Professor turned and handed him a flyer and said we’re raising awareness about the criminalization of homelessness.

The streetcar snob was walking his dog and asked the Professor if they were with the group from OTR. The Professor said, “Yes we are with the Miami program on Vine St.”

The man with the dog said, “Yeah I know about the problems with the homeless-I live downtown-but my door step isn’t a toilet.” I nodded as he walked away and about ten feet away from us he stopped as his dog pissed on the sidewalk next to a pole.

The professor said, “It’s OK with him if his dog pisses on the sidewalk but if a homeless person did that they’d be going to jail.” He added, “Of course the real solution to the problem he referred to is to have public facilities for people to use.”

It seems to me that the Professor was correct. There’s a lack of public facilities. 3CDC took over our public square and now the public toilets are only open from 11AM-2PM and when 3CDC has money making events. They don’t even have the decency to provide maps showing people where they can go.

3CDC is violating the law by closing these facilities since Fountain Square is a public place, but nobody is willing to enforce the law. The City is willing to look the other way when some people break laws.

I can certainly understand why anyone wouldn’t want homeless people-or anyone for that matter-urinating near their door step. But instead of demonizing the poor as some do, we should look for solutions that help everyone.

The City of Cincinnati should stop wasting money cycling homeless people through the criminal justice system and instead fund a public toilet like international cities do. They should treat people with respect and provide basic services to meet people’s most basic needs.

A simple solution like adding public toilets would benefit us all and make our city more welcoming to all. Our city should spend less time pushing novelty items like streetcars and spend more time providing basic services."

Wonder who the mysterious professor was????

The Cynical Duplicity of 3CDC
The mural and other such acts of corporate deception and propaganda are symptomatic of the complete duplicity of the non-profit Development Agency, 3CDC which operates at the heart of all policy making and which advises the Council on all matters pertaining to planning and development. (Although 3CDC is itself a non-profit organisation, it is made up and supported financially by all major development players (banks, developers etc) who stand to profit from its policies and actions). In addition to the issue of the mural, other examples abound:

• The purchase of the residential Metropole Hotel and the eviction of 200 low-income tenants
• Proposals for the redevelopment of Washington Park - a local gathering place for homeless and rehab. residents
• The removal of the Washington park basketball courts (and this in the heart of a black community) and the turning of the Park into a white cultural enclave
• The closing of public restrooms in the vicinity of Washington Park and the increasing criminalization of the homeless
• The proposed removal of the 30 year old Drop Inn Center - a refuge for rehab patients and homeless citizens

And this is a very brief list. For a more complete list of the perfidy of 3CDC, see Tom Dutton's penetrating analysis of this corporate duplicity in his District 9, Over-the-Rhine. Go Tom! The struggle continues, and the folks of Over-the-Rhine need all of the help and support they can muster. Take a few moments, perhaps, to circulate Tom's piece to friends and colleagues and to broaden the network of support. The piece has just appeared in the Cincinnati Beacon. Check it out and add your voice to the outrage about what is happening in Cincinnati.

Design Studio

In the Spring (2010) semester, I was again co-teaching an Architecture Design Studio in Over the Rhine with Tom Dutton. Our aim was to find solutions to the problem of housing diverse cultural and economic groups in an environment that is conducive to harmonious social and environmental relationships into the 21^st Century. The project involved design at both the urban scale as well as the design of individually sustainable building complexes including proposals for urban farming, sustainable housing, local and neighbourhood commercial facilities and community facilities. Final presentation to the Cincinnati community included representatives from urban development and policy stakeholders as well as design professionals. The intention was to influence future development policies and strategies.

Over the Rhine is emblematic (albeit writ large) of innumerable urban cores across America. Our hope and intention in the long term is to be able to provide development policy guidelines that will have an influence beyond the borders of Cincinnati and indeed, Ohio.

Educational Leadership

In addition to this Studio project, I simultaneously co-taught a PhD seminar course in Educational Leadership with Prof. Tammy Schwartz. Together we built an exciting and very diverse multidisciplinary team. The team included graduate students in:

• Educational Leadership
• Family Studies
• Architecture, Library Studies and
• Community Psychology
• Community Literacy graduate students fron Northern Kentucky University
• Library Studies (support from Miami Library staff)
  

Collectively, we were engaged in work at the Rothenberg Preparatory Academy in Over the Rhine within the Cincinnati School District. Rothenberg is the only remaining elementary school (K-8) in Over the Rhine. It is a beleaguered institution in a very beleaguered part of the city. There are very high levels of poverty and homelessness among its families and the school itself is located in a dilapidated building with significant functional problems. It is seriously under-resourced and lacking in many of the facilities that are taken for granted elsewhere. For the last eight years Rothenberg has failed to meet its mandated benchmarks in any of the areas of study.

Our team was engaged in the long-term goal of community-building. We were working with teachers, parents, children and community stakeholders to develop strong mutually supportive bonds of collaboration. Our work included:

• An ongoing assessment of the short and long term needs of the school
• the development of a system for (parent) GED tutoring for parents
• a system of professional study/development for teachers,
• an autobiographical (story-telling) system of literacy for the children
• the production of a Zine to make the childrens; stories public
• dialogue with teachers to elicit their exprience of teaching at Rothenberg
• dialogue with parents to elicit their own stories of education
• the creation, organisation and cataloguing of the school librar
• a paging system for staff to eliminate the disruptive tannoy system.
• forging stronger links between the school and community support groups
• the development of a proposal for a school/community garden and a corresponding change in the curriculum. Together, these will provide a laboratory and teaching/learning opportunity for Rothenberg across a range of subjects.
• the completion of Community Psychology surveys of:

§ Teachers

§ Parents

§ Chidren

to determine the practical resource needs of the school as a basis for funding and resource applications.

Our aim was to build a solid base of parent and community involvement through story-telling and relationship-building, and to facilitate the emergence of a strong and skilled learning community. All of the research shows that when parents become involved in the education of their children, these children start to succeed. So far we are being successful. It is fully anticipated that this year Rothenberg will meet all of its study area benchmarks.

The Incipient Racism of the Cincinnati School System

To put all of this in context and to convey one of my most significant learnings in the Rothenberg project is it necessary to detail exactly why there is such a wide disparity between the poor urban (black) schools and the white suburban affluent schools in Cincinnati. It doesn't happen by accident, but by intent. In Cincinnati school resources and budgets are funded out of property taxes. Rich parents who live in rich, leafy suburbs insist that all property taxes are pegged to the neighbourhood schools in which they live rather than being spread throughout the system (and therefore equalising the disparities between schools). In the inner city ghettos like OtR, property taxes are very low. Most people rent and often landlords have abandoned their empty buildings So there is a much (MUCH) smaller economic resource base to draw from for schools like Rothenberg. Hence the gap in the opportunities between rich and poor continues to widen - an inevitable trend towards increasing social conflict. The courts have found this system to be unconstitutional for the last12 years, but Cincinnati citizens continue to resist change. Apparently these same good (white) citizens of Ohio would rather spend their tax dollars on increased surveillance and law and order systems and upon more and larger (and more crowded) prisons in which to house the discontented members of the black community. Go figure!

Engaged University

In March I worked with a Fine Arts Faculty team to put together the second symposium on Engaged Learning – part of MiamiU’s mission to brand itself as an “Engaged University”. In this respect I helped to lead the discussion on different forms of pedagogy and evaluation, and on the problems of developing and practicing theories of engagement in a culturally diverse setting. This led to ongoing meetings with many colleagues in the University community who have a stake in Engaged Learning, Service Learning, Community Engagement, Social Entrepreneurship, and Community Partnership. These discussions ranged across several Departments - Architecture, Psychology, Education, Business, the Western Campus Inquiry Center and sparked a much broader dialogue about the meaning of the term "Engagement" - bringing into sharp focus the need for academics to move beyond an engagement with the subject and to extend their engagement into and with the community. My hope had been to stay at Miami longer than the one-year Wiepking contract so that I might have a truly more effective role and impact on the University and its pedagogical practices.

Public Lectures

In addition to my Departmental work, I was also able to offer six public lectures to the University community.

1. Custodial Schools: The Hidden Curriculum and the Ethic of Social Control
   
2. Colonialism and the Architecture Project (Architecture)
3. Education as an Instrument of Social Pacification (Liberal Studies)
   
4. Critical Indigeneity in the Academy (Psychology)
   
5. Colonial Legacies: Indigeneity in a Multicultural World (Black Studies)
6. Engagement and a New Professionalism (Western program)

I enjoyed all of these immensely and was able to develop much new material for my website.

End of Year Blues

The work that I have done at Miami is not complete. The Myaamia project, the Over the Rhine Development project and the Rothenberg Academy project are ongoing. Although much has been accomplished, much still needs to be done to build on the foundations that have been laid this year. It had been my hope to be able to extend my time at Miami to “bed in” and advance the gains that have been made. In the area of Engaged learning I had hoped to contribute much more to the University’s thinking and practice. Sadly, in the present economic climate, this was not to be. Perhaps when the economy improves there may be an opportunity to return to complete the work that I have started.

The Coming Year

So! We are off on another adventure. Five days ago, Leonie, Josephine and I left our temporary home in Ohio and traveled to Toronto to stay with friends for a few days. Tomorrow we set out for the UK - via Iceland - a return to my roots after a 30 year absence. The intention is to meet up with long-lost friends and relatives and to introduce Josephine to her cultural heritage. We will visit the South-West and the North, and will take a one-week trip down the Leeds-Liverpool Canal in a longboat, as well as a climb up Ingleborough and (later) Helvellyn via Striding Edge - something I last did fifty years ago almost to the day.

In August I have a workshop and keynote presentation to the European Architectural Students Assembly (EASA) in Manchester. The information I received noted that:

"The lectures are taking place in an old mill building on the bank of the River Irwell. ... the building itself will add to the atmosphere of an architecture assembly in Post-Industrial Manchester."

Talk about coming full circle! Bacup, my home town, is the first town on the Irwell, and my father worked for five years at the Irwell Springs Printing Works at the river's source high up on the Pennine moorland. I used to go night-fishing in the mill lodge (pond).

It is unclear where our journey will subsequently take us. Much depends on finding work that will allow the adventure to continue before we must return to New Zealand. Today we fly to Iceland on our way to my roots.

Critical Theorising from an Organic Intellectual

I get really tired of reading so-called critical theories from academics whose jargon-filled blogs and writings seem to be aimed at not so much "changing the world" as gaining promotion. It's refreshing, then, to come across this piece by the New Zealand Maori Party Member of Parliament Hone Harawira. It cuts right through the double speak of both politicians and academics, strips the logic of the normative discourse down to its essentials and reveals the contradictions and hypocracies of the New Zealand "democracy" for all to see and hear. Hone asks the fundamental Critical Theory question "Who has the power to name, to establish the boundary of the discourse and to establish and maintain meaning in a colonial society?" The answer, of course, is the colonial (racist) dominant culture. Here's Hone Harawira's speech to Parliament about a proposed piece of legislation put forward by a member of the New Zealand Party. The Bill is aimed at preventing Maori Judges who have long experience of Maori Land Court hearings, from participating in the Waitangi Tribunal (a non-binding Tribunal that makes judgments on redress of indigenous land-related grievances).

Hone is not an academic. He's not considered to be an "intellectual" byt thye hoi poloi of NZ society. Yet here is the sword of truth cutting through the lies and deceptions that go to make up the hegemony of New Zealand political life.

Treaty of Waitangi (Removal of Conflict of Interest) Amendment Bill

Wed 18 June 2008

Hone Harawira, MP for Te Tai Tokerau

Mr Speaker, this New Zealand First bill, promoted by Pita Paraone, and denounced as being anti-Maori by Maori from throughout the country, plans to end the careers of some of our best Maori judges of the Maori Land Court, the High Court, and the Waitangi Tribunal, and to stop them from serving their own people.

This bill Mr Speaker, is exactly the same as that other anti-Maori bill, put forward by New Zealand First, represented at Select Committee by Pita Paraone, voted for by all of Labour’s Maori MPs, including Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora and Shane Jones, and denounced as being anti-Maori, by Maori from throughout the country.

That bill was called the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill, and proposed taking the Treaty of Waitangi out of all New Zealand legislation.


Thankfully, the rest of the House voted with the Maori Party at second reading and threw it out, but not before Mr Speaker, not before all of Labour’s Maori MPs actually voted to delete the Treaty of Waitangi from all New Zealand legislation.

And vote for it they did Mr Speaker, and not just a couple of them either, but the whole lot of them - Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora, and Shane Jones !!!!

In fact, so horrified was Angeline Greensill, Maori Party Member of the House of Hauraki-Waikato, that she actually rang me to say,

“Hone, are you sure? Are you telling me that every one of Labour’s Maori MPs, including Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora, and Shane Jones, actually did something as dumb as to vote to delete the Treaty of Waitangi from all New Zealand legislation?

And being a fully paid up member of the Maori Party Mr Speaker, I had no option but to tell her the truth, that in fact, yes they had – all of Labour’s Maori MPs voted- to delete the Treaty of Waitangi from all legislation.


Mr Speaker, this bill, this Treaty of Waitangi (Removal of Conflict of Interest) Amendment Bill, is the same in many ways.

This bill has also been put forward by New Zealand First,

This bill was also represented at Select Committee by Pita Paraone,

This bill was also supported by all of Labour’s Maori MPs, including Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora and Shane Jones, and

This bill has also been denounced as anti-Maori, by Maori from throughout the country.
and I am happy to say that for all of those reasons and more, the Maori Party will not be supporting this bill.


Mr Speaker, the Maori Party will not be supporting this anti-Maori bill put forward by New Zealand First, represented at Select Committee by Pita Paraone, supported by all of Labour’s Maori MPs, including Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora and Shane Jones, and denounced as being anti-Maori by Maori from throughout the country …

because we know, as does the Select Committee, that sitting on both the Maori Land Court and the Waitangi Tribunal, requires people to have an understanding of tribal structures, Maori land history, custom and tradition –

and given that 80% of those people are likely to be Maori, we know that:

this bill … will effectively dump all of those Maori who had dedicated their lives to law school, court work, and tribunal work before taking up an appointment to either the Maori Land Court or the Waitangi Tribunal, and dismiss 95% of the greatest legal minds within Maoridom,

and Mr Speaker, how dumb is that …, how mind-numbingly, nonsensically, foolishly, downright dumb is that?


Mr Speaker, another reason the Maori Party will not be supporting this anti-Maori bill put forward by New Zealand First, represented at Select Committee by Pita Paraone, supported by all of Labour’s Maori MPs, including Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora and Shane Jones, and denounced as being anti-Maori by Maori from throughout the country …

is because it continues the assault against some of our top jurists like Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias, Maori Land Court Judge Caren Wickliffe, and Chief Maori Land Court Judge Joe Williams,

who have all been dragged into the political spotlight and attacked, by over-zealous and intellectually-challenged Ministers of the Crown, wanting to impose their prejudices on the judiciary.

Mr Speaker, there is probably no other party that wants to change the appointment process for judges in Aotearoa as much as the Maori Party, but even we recognise the importance of keeping the judiciary separate from politicians who come and go at the whim of the electorate.


Mr Speaker, another reason the Maori Party will not be supporting this anti-Maori bill put forward by New Zealand First, represented at Select Committee by Pita Paraone, supported by all of Labour’s Maori MPs, including Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora and Shane Jones, and denounced as being anti-Maori, by Maori from throughout the country …

is because it plans to muzzle the voices of judges who demonstrate every day, high levels of judicial competence and knowledge of Maori land matters, and replace them with retired judges who have already got heaps on their plate.


Mr Speaker, I was happy to be the Maori Party representative on the Select Committee which considered this anti-Maori bill put forward by New Zealand First, represented at Select Committee by Pita Paraone, supported by all of Labour’s Maori MPs, including Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora and Shane Jones, and denounced as being anti-Maori by Maori from throughout the country …

and I was equally as happy to hear their recommendation, that there was no inherent conflict of interest, and that therefore this bill could be thrown out, on the same scrapheap as the last one.


And finally Mr Speaker, let me ask this most obvious of questions, the question on the lips of Maori people all round the country –

if it’s conflict of interest that Pita Paraone, Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora and Shane Jones, are really concerned with,

then what about the conflict of interest that arises from the thieving buggers who actually stole our land, being the same bloody critters, who then set up the tribunal to decide the courtcase, pick who the judges will be, decide what can be returned and what won’t be returned, pick who can speak for the poor bloody victims, and then say how much the victims will have to pay to get their own land back.

Conflict of Interest, Mr Paraone? You want to talk about conflict of interest? Well that’s what you call Conflict of Interest Mr Paraone, that’s the real deal that no-one wants to talk about.

Mr Horomia – how come the thieves who stole your tupuna’s land, also get to pick the judges for the courtase? How’s that for conflict of interest?

Ms Mahuta - how come the thieves who stole your tupuna’s land, also get to say what lands you can have back? How’s that for conflict of interest?

Mr Okeroa - how come the thieves who stole your tupuna’s land, get to say who your negotiators can be? How’s that for conflict of interest?

And for all the rest of you Maori MPs in Labour - how dare you support legislation that would delete the Treaty, and deny Maori the right to sit on their own Land Courts.

Mr Speaker, this bill …

this bill supported by Pita Paraone, Parekura Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Mita Ririnui, Dover Samuels, Dave Hereora and Shane Jones, in spite of overwhelming opposition from Maori right around the country …

this bill … to strip the Waitangi Tribunal and the Maori Land Court of some of the best legal minds in Maoridom …

this bill Mr Speaker, is nothing but a pathetic attempt to deny Maori equal access to all levels of the judiciary,

Mr Speaker, the Maori Party stands proudly alongside the rest of Maoridom in denouncing this anti-Maori bill …

And we call on this House to consign it to the same trash-bin, as the last piece of legislative prejudice, put forward by New Zealand First.

The Existentialist Cowboy: Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks

The Existentialist Cowboy: Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks

H809 Research Blog: Notes on Oliver et al (2007)

H809 Research Blog: Notes on Oliver et al (2007)

High School Confidential

HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL

Ruatoki, New Zealand, 2007.

Introduction

In late October 2007, the small peaceful and largely Māori village of Ruatoki in New Zealand's Bay of Plenty was invaded in the early hours of the morning by heavily armed police anti-terrorism squads, in full military gear and brandishing sub-machine guns. They arrested a number of residents and boarded and searched the bus carrying Kohanga Reo children to their kindergarten. To many New Zealanders, this over-the-top repressive act was an indication of increasing State Terrorism and evidence of an encroaching police state in a country that has traditionally prided itself on its ability to dialogue and negotiate issues of difference. However, public reaction to the raids was even more daunting. More than 80% of the population supported the Police. This alone is cause for serious concern and seems to me to support the idea of an increasing racial tension. This was precipitated by Don Brash's Orewa Speech in 2004 and exacerbated by Helen Clark's pre-emptive legislation on the Foreshore and Seabed. The gulf between Maori and non-Maori seems to be widening as calls for tino rangatiratanga (Maori self-determination) become more strident and as anti-Maori sentiments become more vocal.

What does all of this have to do with High School education? Quite a bit as it turns out!

In an apparently unrelated event, I was recently having dinner with a family of non-Māori friends. They are a caring, hard-working and intelligent family. They are concerned about sustainability, global warming, house prices, drug problems, crime etc. They go hiking and camping, take their children to sports and are generally model parents. They are generous and kind – just the sort of friends that we would like to nurture and share more with. They have two children, their daughter (4) and a son (8).

The father is a local high school teacher and has been in that position for five years. He is dedicated to teaching/learning and concerned for the wellbeing and advancement of his students. He teaches in a high school (letʻs call it “Pounamu High”) that has a mixed ethnic makeup, with a large proportion of Māori students (about 45%). In the geographical area concerned, Māori children between the ages of 10-19 make up approximately 52% of all children in this age group. This is more than twice the national average of Māori as a proportion of the whole population of this age group. In 2006 there were more than 900 students on the school roll, more than 400 of them Māori. Many of these "more difficult" children come from the Ruatoki community.

My friend does not think of himself as a racist. On the contrary, if he were to be called such he would be deeply hurt. He is dedicated to making life better for all of his students, and the suggestion that he might discriminate against those students who are Māori would be abhorrent to him. But he is deeply troubled and not a little frustrated and exasperated by them. He sees them – particularly the boys - as wilfully disobedient, insolent and themselves driven by racist impulses towards himself that he neither accepts not understands. In our conversation he shared some of his experiences with me.

“They steal all of the time, and they conspire together to succeed and to hide their thefts. Last week a young Pakeha (non-Māori) girl put her cell-phone down on her desk. When she looked up, it was gone. When she complained to me, I asked who took it and all I got was a sea of blank, smug faces. So I asked her what her number was and promptly called it from my own cell phone. Of course, when it rang (down the blouse of a young Māori girl sitting some way away) I was able to retrieve it, but even the girl in possession of it continued to deny her involvement. Last week, the new Deputy Principal had her own cell phone stolen off her desk after only two weeks in the job.

I tell all new teachers to forget about their idealism, or about any notion of teaching. We are involved in custodial duties, trying to keep the lid on insolence, disobedience, blatant disrespect, crime, truancy and drugs. If we challenge students about their behaviour or seek explanations for their actions, they simply turn their backs and walk away. They appear to have no respect for authority. I hate my job!”

He told me that his experiences were not uncommon, but were, in fact the norm among non-Māori teachers. He also complained that the students’ behaviour appeared to be condoned by the Māori members of staff, who themselves “keep their distance”, “never say Hello!” and seem generally unhelpful and sullen.

My friend was very saddened by all of this, and felt hopeless to change it. He was resigned to a continuing life of conflict, non-communication and academic failure.

Māori Student Background

And fail these Māori boys do. In the School District, the average Pakeha pass rate in all subjects is 56%, for Māori it is 34%. At Pounamu High in specific subjects, Māori student pass rates were extremely low: English (29%), Languages (other than te Reo) (21%), Science (26%), Maths (30%), etc. Only in te reo Māori (Māori language) did they excel (96%).

Pounamu High School is not exceptional. Nationally, 53% of Māori boys leave school with no qualifications compared to 20% of Pakeha boys. Similarly, truancy rates for Māori are significantly higher than for non-Māori. The national truancy rate for Māori boys is 6.6% compared to 2.8% for Pakeha boys, while for Māori girls it is even worse with 7.1% compared to 2.9% for Pakeha girls. In the Region, the overall Māori truancy rate is the highest in the Nation, at 8.2%. Clearly something is not working at the High School for the Māori students, or for the teachers who are charged with their education. I felt a deep sense of empathy for my friend, and struggled to understand how it could be that such a caring person could not “get through” to his students. He concluded his description of life in the school with the rhetorical question, “Why are they all so angry?”

Which made me reflect for a moment on why this might be.

“Well.” I said, “If, as a people, you had every square inch of your land stolen by the Government on a trumped up murder charge designed specifically to dispossess you; if your leaders had been imprisoned and executed for this same murder, and then been completely exonerated and posthumously pardoned; if your land had not subsequently been returned and for 150 years you had watched Pakeha farmers get rich on its use; during which time you had lost all of your own productive capacity, and been left unable to house, clothe or feed your children; if, as a direct consequence of these deprivations, you had been disproportionately arrested and imprisoned, suffered significantly higher incidences of suicide, alcoholism, disease, poverty and child abuse and mortality as well as a lower life expectancy, then I think you might be angry. That’s what happened to Ngati “Moana””

“Ngati “Moana”? he asked, ingenuously, “Is that the local tribe?”

I was stunned and completely at a loss to know how to respond. If, after five years of teaching at a local High School with a majority of Māori students he still did not know the names of their Tribes, their status, genealogy and history – that is, their identity - then what hope was there! Too embarrassed to bring these discrepancies to his attention, I just suggested that I believed the school needed to stop everything, to face the issue of miscommunication squarely, and to resolve it communally before any further teaching was attempted. I then moved on to other matters in an act of cowardly resignation. Depressed, I went home to reflect on our conversation.

Unresolved Issues.

Several questions demanded answers.

• How could he be so unaware of the cultural identity of the majority of students in the school?
• Why did he not see that his inability or unwillingness to try to understand who his students were might be directly related to their “insolence”.
• Could he not see that from their point of view he did not respect them and yet he expected them to respect him?
• Could he not see that even the slightest sincere inclination on his part to enter into their world was likely to see an immediate softening of their attitudes to him.
• Why did he not ask them or the Māori teachers what they thought the problems at the school were about?
• Was his an isolated experience, or was it shared by other Pakeha teachers in the school?
• Was it, in fact, a widespread issue throughout the high-schools in Aotearoa-New Zealand?
• Did attitudes towards the students such as my friend’s play any part in the “failure” of the students themselves?

And perhaps most importantly,

• What does all of this have to do with police anti-terrorism raids?
  

I determined to set about finding answers to these questions. To read about what I discovered, download the full article from my website. www.TonyWardEdu.com. The URL for the article is:

http://www.tonywardedu.com/content/view/278/40/

Let me know what you think.