PHILOSOPHY of EDUCATION SOCIETY
PES UPDATE JULY 2003
UPDATE OVERVIEW
The July Update brings you a Call for Dues for the just-beginning fiscal and membership year 2003-04, greetings from PES President Fran Schrag, information from 2004 Program Chair Chris Higgins and the Toronto Hospitality Committee regarding next year's conference, action summaries from the Board and Membership Meetings in Miami, and a series of announcements of potential interest to members.
Also accompanying this Update (and arriving separately if you receive your Update by email) are the Dues Form, a ballot for the Election Committee, the Call for Papers for the Toronto Conference, and the Copyright Permission Form to be submitted with papers. A business reply envelope has been provided for your convenience. You may use it for dues and/or ballot.
FIRST CALL FOR 2003-04 DUES
Included in this mailing is the dues form for the new
fiscal year, 2003-04. Please make your check or money order (in
MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT - Fran Schrag
Greetings to you all. I hate to interrupt your summer activity - be it hiking, swimming, reading philosophy of education, or (heaven forbid) grading student papers. I'm already looking forward to the 60th meeting of PES, which will take place in Toronto the last weekend of March, 2004. Tamara Pravica and Dwight Boyd (our local hosts) have found a fine and reasonably priced hotel, the Holiday Inn on King Street, in the heart of downtown Toronto. (I'll let them tell you a bit about it.) Toronto was my choice before anyone ever heard of SARS, and I trust that by next March the SARS scare in Toronto will be history.
Program Chair Chris Higgins and I have conferred already in person - at a
bistro on the corner of West 4th and West 11th Streets (you thought that
was a logically impossible location, didn't you?) in New York's Greenwich Village. Among the highlights of next year's
meeting will be the ex-Presidents Panel organized by Barbara Houston,
an alternative session on teaching philosophy of education - in which
we'll invite members to come prepared to share something they'd recommend
to colleagues, and the Kneller lecture to be delivered by John Kekes,
Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at SUNY, Albany. Professor
Kekes is the author of a half dozen books, including Facing Evil, Moral
Wisdom and Good Lives, Against Liberalism, and most recently, The
Art of Living. Professor Kekes told me that he was looking
forward to speaking to a group of philosophers of education as there
were a few things he wanted to get off his chest. I'm sure we'll
be ready for him. In order to facilitate attendance at the meeting
by persons who may find it difficult to incur the costs, we invite you
to make a contribution to our Legacy Fund, which Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon,
Michael Katz, and Nel Noddings (among others) helped launch last year. I'll
let Kathy tell you more about how you can do this. I wish you all
a restorative summer and I look forward to being in touch with you later
in the year.
FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS - Chris Higgins
I am pleased to announce the program committee for Toronto and my co-editors for the 2004 yearbook: Barbara Applebaum, David Blacker, Deanne Bodgan, Ben Endres, Mark Hicks, Deborah Kerdeman, Jon Levisohn, Luise Prior McCarty, Paul Standish, and Sharon Todd. The committee and I look forward to your submissions which we promise to read with care, evaluating each on the basis of the importance of its question, the originality of its thesis, and the strength of its argument.
Fran has already told you a bit about the program. Let me just add that we will be piloting some non-reading sessions this year. On the British model, papers for these sessions will be distributed in advance so that attendees can come prepared to discuss the paper after a brief introduction from the author. This format facilitates a richer discussion as there is more time to get into the topic in depth. If you submit a paper, you will be asked to indicate whether you would be willing to participate in one of these sessions. Other highlights include the "Research Incubator," an alternative session for those seeking help developing research projects in their early stages, and a panel on International Perspectives on Schooling.
The Call for Papers (which includes details on types of participation, dates, and contact information) and the Copyright Permission Form are included with this mailing. They are also available at the web site http://philosophyofeducation.org. You can find the Style Guidelines sheet on the web as well. The deadline for receipt of papers is November 1, 2003. E-mail inquiries can be directed to Chris at crh4@columbia.edu. I'm looking forward to seeing you in Toronto!
EARLY INFORMATION FROM THE HOSPITALITY COMMITTEE - Tamara Pravica and Dwight Boyd
The Hospitality Committee for PES 2004 would like to
invite all PES members to attend the Annual Conference in Toronto,
The conference will be held at the Holiday Inn, King Street. Situated in the hub of Toronto's vibrant downtown core, the Holiday Inn on King is
your first step to a memorable stay in
See you there!
ELECTION OF THE ELECTION COMMITTEE - Ballot included
The following 11 candidates have been nominated by President Fran Schrag to serve on the election committee:
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Dwight Boyd
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Eamonn Callan
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Randall Curren
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Jim Garrison
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Barb Houston
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Ken Howe
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Wendy Kohli
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Cris Mayo
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Walter Okshevsky
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Lynda Stone
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Audrey Thompson
A ballot is enclosed with this mailing (or will arrive separately if you receive the update via email). Please return your ballot no later than September 15, 2003 to Executive Secretary Kathy Hytten. You may use the business reply envelope enclosed for this purpose.
A PLEA FOR MEMBERS AND IDEAS FOR RECRUITING THEM - Michael S. Katz and Randall Curren
Given a drop in membership numbers over the past few years, we appeal to all PES members to do two things: 1) take it upon yourselves to recruit 1-2 new members this year by explaining to them the benefits of membership--Ed. Theory, the Yearbook, opportunities for email networking etc.; 2) consider vehicles, websites, other organizations where we can post an ad for free. Remind potential members that PES welcomes people genuinely interested in Philosophy of Education and not merely those who have been formally trained in this discipline. Please share membership recruitment and retention ideas with Michael Katz, membership chair (mskatz1@earthlink.net) or co-chair, Randy Curren (RRCURREN@its.rochester.edu). We are embarking on outreach through our relationships with other organizations, but each one of you counts significantly in this effort.
ELECTION RESULTS
As those attending the Miami Conference know, Bob Floden has been named President Elect. Kal Alston was elected to the Executive Board and Cris Mayo was elected to COPA. Congratulations to all who were elected and thanks to them for their willingness to serve! Thanks also to those who are rotating out of these responsibilities: Past Past-President Barb Houston, retiring Board member Suzanne Rice, and COPA representative Hilary Davis. Recognition is due to Barb Stengel (Chair) and the Election Committee (Wally Feinberg, Michael Katz, Deborah Kerdeman, Susan Laird, Kathryn Morgan, and Harvey Siegel) for a job well done.
MEETING MINUTES - ACTION SUMMARY
Minutes for Executive Board and Business meetings conducted at the annual Conference can be viewed on the Society's web site (http://philosophyofeducation.org). Corrections and comments may be forwarded to Kathy Hytten (khytten@siu.edu). In brief, the following are some of the central issues we discussed:
· Change In Dues Structure Notice: Some emeritus faculty have been concerned about the high dues costs. Letters from these members were shared with the Executive Committee. We have been telling these members to pay at the rate that they feel comfortable, with $30 being the lowest dues category. We will institute this as a policy next year and put a note of the change on the dues letter. We will also continue to have a place on the dues letter for Legacy Fund contributions.
· Investment Committee: We have shifted our investments based on the advice of the investments committee and they have begun to show some gains, particularly the Kneller Lecture Fund and the Legacy Fund.
· Legacy Fund: Now that we have established the Legacy Fund, the Executive Committee discussed how we should use the funds. We agreed to waive registration fees for students who give a paper during a concurrent or general session during the 2004 meeting, on first come first served basis, up to $500. Our goal is to eventually commit at least $1000/year. We are working on establishing an official protocol for how to expend the money, considering such possibilities as free rooms, lunch waivers, and registration fee waivers, etc. We will also consider allotting some funds for other members in need who are not students.
· Fellow Status: The status of "fellow" was discussed again briefly, as it has been at the last several meetings. We decided to leave fellow status as it is until someone lays out a reason to change it and then we will deal with a change to the constitution. Three candidates were approved for fellow this year: Ron Glass, Kathy Hytten, and Kal Alston.
· Iraq War Resolution: Several members suggested at the Business Meeting that the Philosophy of Education Society should take an official stand on the war against Iraq, in particular, condemning it as unjust. There were long discussions about this issue at both the Executive Board and Business Meetings. We decided at the Executive Board Meeting on Monday morning to create a mechanism on the website to discuss this issue further and then to call a vote on a resolution after a set period of time. You can find extensive details of the discussions at both meetings in the meeting minutes on the web. Given the low volume of interest in the web discussions of this issue, and the fact that the war was officially declared over just before we were to take a vote, we decided against calling for an official vote. However, the Executive Committee will be working on coming up with a better process with which to discuss timely social and political issues as a society.
BLACKWELL TO PUBLISH EDUCATIONAL THEORY - Nick Burbules
After more than two years of discussion and negotiation Educational Theory, which is sponsored by the Philosophy of Education Society, the John Dewey Society, and the University of Illinois, has signed a contract with Blackwell to publish the journal in both print and online versions, and to provide more active marketing and distribution of the journal, particularly for an expanded international audience.
Ownership and editorial control over the journal will remain unchanged, and this agreement has been developed in such a way that will allow Educational Theory to withdraw from the agreement at any time with minimal disruption if we believe that the journal's interests are not being served by the arrangement. Blackwell is not buying the journal or taking it over.
We have not entered into this agreement lightly, because the journal is as healthy financially and in terms of content as it has ever been - but eventually we need to be more accessible to subscribers who want both print and online formats, or who prefer online subscriptions only, and we have no provisions for doing that. Moreover, international distribution is going to become increasingly important for the vitality of the journal. We believe it will greatly benefit our authors, our sponsoring organizations, and the fields we represent if we are able to reach a wider audience.
Blackwell will give us a high quality online identity and greatly expanded international distribution, neither of which we could do for ourselves. Educational Theory could continue quite well without these, for a while, but I am convinced (and the governing Editorial Board agreed unanimously) that we need to plan now for a publishing future that will become increasingly global and technologically based. Over time we would lose subscribers, without a doubt, if we did nothing. With this arrangement, we will stand to gain new subscribers; and we will certainly gain tens of thousands of new readers through consortium licenses and similar arrangements.
For our subscribers, we believe that online access to articles, and the searching and indexing features this will make possible, can be a boon for scholarship. We are negotiating with JSTOR to convert back issues into a searchable electronic archive as well. And one of the advantages of working with Blackwell specifically are the areas of collaboration that will be possible with the Journal of Philosophy of Education (from PES Great Britain) and Educational Philosophy and Theory (from PES Australasia), as well as other Blackwell journals in allied fields. One area we will actively pursue will be reciprocal subscriptions among some of these journals, so that a print subscriber to one would automatically get online access to several. An integrated search engine across all these journals could also be an invaluable research tool.
Naturally, added services mean added costs. Educational Theory is a nonprofit endeavor and we are doing everything we can to keep our operating expenses at a very low level. But this new arrangement with Blackwell will require a subscription increase for association members from the current $12 to $20. If you look around, $20 is still a great bargain compared to other comparable publications; and subscribers will be receiving substantially more value as part of their subscriptions - especially if the reciprocal subscription agreements go through, as I expect they will.
Changes bring risks as well as opportunities, and as the Blackwell representatives can tell you, I have been extremely cautious throughout these negotiations. On the plus side, the attractiveness of Educational Theory as a longstanding publication with a great international reputation has put us in a strong position from which to deal. On the other side, the fact that we don't need this agreement in order to survive (at least in the short run) has been an advantage, since I always felt we could walk away from any agreement that wasn't compelling for us, our authors, and our readers. But frankly Blackwell was accommodating on every issue I raised, or our staff raised, or the Editorial Board raised; and in all of our dealings they have been honest and - I believe - sincerely committed to helping the journal grow and reach new audiences. Their reasons for this are primarily commercial, of course, and ours are not; but in this instance I think these interests can serve each other, not conflict.
Blackwell is a first-rate publishing house with a long history of involvement with Philosophy, and I think they are truly excited by what the synergy of bringing several related journals together will allow us to do (stay tuned for more on this).
MEMBER SERVICES
You may stay in touch with PES electronically by emailing khytten@siu.edu. If your email address has changed, please let us know. You can also find all the information (including membership forms, Call for Papers, etc.) you need at our web site, reachable at http://philosophyofeducation.org. If you check in now, you can view the following links:
· A new online database of Foundations of Education syllabi, developed by Lucille Eckrich of Illinois State.
· The text to Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon's presidential address from the 2003 meeting.
· Minutes for the 2003 meeting.
· Discussion
of the Proposed PES Resolution on the War with
· Photos from the Miami conference.
All of these are courtesy of our web builder Craig Cunningham. Craig has done a great job with this site, and he is always willing to add information that is of interest to our members, such as postings for conferences and jobs. You can reach him at cac@cuip.net if you have questions, concerns or additions.
KEEPING TRACK OF EACH OTHER
A number of veteran PES members have changed positions/locations in the past year and graduate student members were successful in claiming academic positions for the first time. While it is impossible for us to reprint all the comings and goings with contact information in this space, we would like to assist members in keeping track of each other. If you are changing positions and would like to notify colleague friends of this fact, send an e-mail with new affiliation to khytten@siu.edu. (Don't forget to include full contact info so we can make the change in PES files). We will list changes received and direct members to the website for contact information.
Here are three moves that have come to our attention:
· Collette Gosselin - from Wagner College to the College of New Jersey
· Kazuyo Nakamura - from University of Illinois to Hiroshima University
· John E. Carter - from Indiana State to East Carolina University
In addition, PES member Randall Curren has been promoted to the rank of Professor and appointed Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rochester, both effective July 1, 2003.
I am sure others of you have moved and/or are taking new positions. Best wishes to all of you.
CALLS AND CONFERENCES OF POTENTIAL INTEREST
· History of Intellectual Culture is a peer-reviewed electronic journal that publishes research papers, forum pieces, and book and essay reviews on the socio-historical contexts of ideas and ideologies and their relationships to community and state formation, physical environments, human and institutional agency, and personal and collective identity and lived experience. The journal highlights the viability and vibrancy of intellectual history as a scholarly field, presents new perspectives for research and analysis, and stimulates critical discussion among scholars and students across disciplines. The editors invite submissions of historical and interdisciplinary papers based on original research in the following broad areas:
1. The contextual development of social, philosophical, scientific, political, and economic ideas, ideologies, and discourses;
2. Histories of cultures, communities, and social movements based on shared ideas;
3. Histories of higher education including analyses of teaching, research, professorial and administrative activity, resource allocation, political and intellectual milieus, and department and discipline construction;
4. Issues in the history of state and community formation;
5. Ideas and discourses in the historical construction of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationalism, and multiculturalism;
6. Histories of women and intellectual culture;
7. Historical contexts of ideologies in science and technology, and media and communication;
8. Biographies and studies of agency and historical development; and
9. New methodologies, approaches, and historiographies in the history of thought, state, culture, institutions, education, and community.
History of Intellectual Culture is published by the University of Calgary Press. For further information including the guidelines for submissions, please visit the journal website at http://www.ucalgary.ca/hic/. The editors can be contacted at: Paul Stortz pjstortz@ucalgary.ca and E. Lisa Panayotidis elpanayo@ucalgary.ca
· The Philosophy
of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) is pleased
to make a Call for Papers for its 32nd annual conference (to dovetail
with the NZARE/AARE joint conference) at Old Government House, University
of Auckland,
A grant of $AUS400 is available for 'graduate student' presenters who have an abstract accepted and a paper approved for presentation (for first time PESA presenters only). Successful recipients will be notified before the conference.
Abstracts of 150-200 words are required by 1 August 2003. Papers for publication in conference proceedings are required by 1 November 2003. (Presentation time 45 minutes including discussion.) Send papers and abstracts in Microsoft Word for Windows (A4 paper size). Communication and/or submission of abstracts and papers to:
Susanne Brighouse (Secretary)
2003 PESA Conference Organising Committee
Email: pesa03@attglobal.net
Telephone (+64) 21 251 3580
· The Association
for Moral Education is holding its 29th Annual Conference in Krakow,
· Family as an Educative Ambit, University of Navarra, Pamplona,
The incidence of the Interdisciplinary Meeting we are
organizing at the Department of Education, University of Navarra,
The prevalence of scholar education was denounced several years ago, especially from the Anglo-Saxon research. A first step was the International Conference on World Crisis in Education, held in Williamsburg (Virginia) in 1967. A distinction was made among formal education, non-formal education and informal education. The latter is described as an uninterrupted process along the life, by which one collects experiences, attitudes and criteria in the daily life, due to diverse social influences, among which the family is included. The parents' educative action cannot be organized, systemized and directed like the academic education.
New signs of change seem to appear in this subject. A good expression if found in the UN's declaration of the International Year of the Family. The work proposal (UN, document A/57/139) talks about family crisis and exposes the "need to increase cooperation between numerous institutions of higher learning in respect of family policy development, streamlining and delineating main substantive themes" (p. 5). It even enumerates some topics like: "approaches to family policy development; technology and its impact on the family; statistics and indicators for family well-being; HIV/AIDS and its impact on families; retirement and its implications for families; family businesses and their importance for economic development; and social functions of families in the areas of socialization and care-giving" (p. 13, note 1).
MEMORIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
Michael Oliker, long of Chicago, and a member of PES for more than 30 years, died on May 29th, 2003. Mike was a graduate of the University of Illinois. During his heyday, Mike served as the institutional memory for the field and, as many members will recall, he was acquainted with just about everyone having anything to do with philosophy of education. For much of the 1990s, Mike was Executive Director of the Midwest Philosophy of Education Society. There are plans afoot to have a memorial session for Mike at MPES this fall. Members who would like additional information are invited to contact Jon Fennell at jonmfennell@aol.com.
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
· The AERA SIG: Philosophical Studies in Education needs you! Please support the growth and influence of philosophy of education within AERA. Join the SIG so that we can have more sessions on the AERA program. There were several wonderful panels and paper discussions in Chicago this year. We want twice as many in San Diego. It's a bargain. Two years for $10 or one year for $5. Please contact Barbara Thayer-Bacon at Bthayer@utk.edu to join.
· An electronic clearinghouse of syllabi for foundations of education courses taught by PES members is now accessible at the following address: http://coe.ilstu.edu/lteckri/phyedsyll/ Visit the site to peruse these teacher education syllabi and to add your new or revised syllabi to it. Links to this new site can also now be found on the PES Home Page.
· Who says philosophers don't get involved with practice? Dilafruz Williams, Professor at Portland State University, has been elected to the Portland Public School Board. She starts her four-year term July 1 and will serve the District which has 53,000 students.
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY'S NOTES - Kathy Hytten
For those of you who were unable to attend, you missed out on a well run and philosophically stimulating conference in Miami back in March. In addition, the beachfront hotel in the heart of South Beach made for an ideal location. Thanks go to Sophie and Harvey for arranging such an enticing setting. Program Committee Chair Kal Alston also deserves a lot of credit for putting together such a rich and diverse program. As usual, Diane Beckett and her volunteers handled the details of money and registration smoothly and easily.
Unfortunately, however, the conference was not as well attended as it has been in the past, with only 133 paid attendees. A few more of you actually attended the conference, yet several of you have not yet paid the registration fees - I am hoping that some of you will still do so. This is down from 155 paid attendees in Vancouver (although 170 of you registered and/or were on the program). Our membership numbers are also down some, from 481 in 00-01, to 455 in 01-02, to 427 so far for 02-03. We send out the mailings to everyone who is paid up until at least the two years prior to the new membership year (01-02); our mailing list currently includes over 550 members (in addition, we send the PES update via email to anyone who has ever been a member of PES, unless they have requested to be removed from the email list or the email address we have on file for them no longer works). There are some of you who have not paid dues in several years who we would like to bring back into the PES fold as the health of our organization depends on the strength of its membership. I encourage those of you who haven't paid back dues to please submit them with your upcoming dues payment. Your last date of paid dues is listed on your mailing label. As a reminder, our membership year always begins on July 1st. If you think there is an error with the date listed on your envelope, please don't hesitate to contact me and I will double check it. In fact, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns, or simply if you would like to check the status of your membership.
You will notice from Nick's message that the subscription rate for Educational Theory will be going up next year. Currently I send $12 of your membership dues to the journal - this will be increasing to $20. A significant portion of your dues also goes toward the publication of our proceedings, Philosophy of Education (each edition sells for $35). Please bear this in mind when you are selecting your dues category. We have decided not to raise dues for this year, but we will need to re-evaluate this at the end of the fiscal year to ensure that we can cover the additional costs. At the same time, I encourage those of you who are able to contribute to the PES Legacy Fund to do so. Due to the generosity of your fellow members, we have already collected over $5000 for this fund - we are hoping to match that again this year.
A few of you emailed with questions and suggestions about the Iraq War resolution discussion that occurred after our meeting. As you have read already, the Executive Committee decided not to call for a vote on this issue, though we had intended to initially. There were numerous reasons for this, including lack of interest among the overall membership (though clearly some of you were very passionate about this issue), lack of a good procedural means for getting agreement and calling a vote, as well as lack of a clear direction on what to do with the results of a vote once we called it (knowing only a small group of you would have voted, and the that war had been "officially" declared over, though that now seems somewhat specious). However, we are very interested in creating a better mechanism for dealing with timely social and political issues in the future. If any of you have ideas about this, or would like to get involved, please email me or Fran (fkschrag@facstaff.wisc.edu), as we will be discussing this further in Toronto.
Finally, I encourage you all to begin crafting submissions for the Toronto conference. As you can see from the call for papers, Chris has some exciting new ideas for the program, including several focused alternative activities and a pilot of non-reading sessions. Hopefully these alternative sessions will help to encourage greater attendance in Toronto. I'm also happy to note that the World Health Organization took Toronto off its list of SARS-affected areas at the beginning of this month. I know some of you had been concerned about that. I hope that you are all enjoying what remains of the summer break. Remember to feel free to contact me if you have any questions, ideas or suggestions.
CONTACT: PES Executive Director Jeff Milligan
850-644-8171; milligan@coe.fsu.edu