PES UPDATE FEBRUARY 2003

UPDATE OVERVIEW

This mailing contains information on the 2003 PES Annual Conference, a copy of the preliminary conference program accompanied by an Advance Registration Form, a ballot for open positions on the Executive Board and COPA, and a dues notice (for those who have not yet paid their 02-03 dues only).

INVITATION FROM THE PRESIDENT – Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon

Greetings on a cold, dreary day in late January, where at least in Chicago, the wind chill has the temperature well below zero!  Time to think warm weather and SUNNY MIAMI!  Yes, there is another way to live!

I very much hope that you will plan to attend the Philosophy of Education Society 59th Annual Meeting, 2003, which will be held at the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort, Miami, Florida. The dates are March 28-31, 2003.  The sunshine, together with stimulation of all sorts, awaits you in Miami on these days.  Do join us!

Kal Alston and the Program Committee have done a magnificent job of assembling, from among the 100 submissions, a program that explores a great variety of issues.  From the line of speakers and their institutional affiliations to the wide range of topics and philosophical perspectives, the program bespeaks our growing concern with and attraction to diverse populations, interests, and philosophical approaches.  Old themes—e.g., rationality, democracy and education, responsibility, curriculum, morality, technology, educational foundations, gender issues, science, epistemology, critical thinking, educational standards, religion, patriotism—will romp in new guises, and we will revisit them from perspectives novel and challenging.   Furthermore, the Program Committee is giving us the chance to explore, from a variety of angles, philosophical problems related to multiculturalism and diversity.  It is an extraordinary opportunity not to be missed.

In my last “Update” message, I mentioned that Richard A. Shweder will be delivering the Kneller Lecture.  His talk, entitled “The Idea of Moral Progress.  Bush v. Posner v. Berlin,” will be followed by responses from Kal Alston and Harvey Siegel.  The issues will be further explored by a panel of PES notables on the following day, and Shweder will have a chance to respond.  As if things were not lively enough, this year’s meeting will see the first ever “Past Presidents Panel,” in which past presidents Clive Beck, Denis Phillips, Emily Robertson, Jonas Soltis, and Nick Burbules, worry the question of why old stars (in our field) grow dim and fade from the collective memory.  A related topic was explored by several PES members responding to Rene Arcilla in a recent issue of Educational Theory (Spring, 2002, Volume 52, No.2).  That dialogue, too, will continue in Miami with Arcilla on hand to rejoin his interlocutors. 

I have been stressing the philosophical draws to Miami, but in between sessions, indeed, before and after the conference, there is the lure of the beach, the city, and hotel.  Our hospitality chair, Harvey Siegel, has told us that “Miami is an exciting, international city, and the conference will take place in the city’s most exciting and multicultural area:  South Beach.”  Kal and the Program Committee have kept the later evenings clear so that we may explore the night-time attractions of our environs.  And early risers can begin the day with a dip in the sea! 

So make your reservations at the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort, 1545 Collins Avenue (at Ocean Drive.) As Harvey tells us, “ The hotel’s luxurious but ‘laid back’ feel, and proximity to all that SoBe has to offer, will offer a striking contrast to previous PES meetings.  Don’t miss it.”

Room rates are $159.00 plus tax single or double, plus $10.00 resort fee that covers beach and water equipment.  For reservations, call 1-800-2CROWNE.  Make sure that you mention PES to get the conference rate.  Visit the hotel web site at:  http://www.crowneplaza.com.

Now, a report on our Legacy Fund:  Thus far, we have raised over $5,000 for the Fund.  We are grateful for every single contribution, and hope that more and more will join the ranks of the PES well-wishers and contributors.  With markets uncertain as they have been, the money sits in a money market account awaiting investment.  A discussion about how to distribute income produced by the Legacy Fund will be held in the Executive Committee, and a proposal will be developed.  The proposal will be discussed at the Business Meeting. 

Speaking of money, PLEASE PAY YOUR DUES, REGISTER FOR THE MEETING, AND WHILE YOU ARE AT IT, MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO THE LEGACY FUND.  Your gift to Legacy will enable others to join our community of philosophers of education at the Annual Meetings! (Note: you can use PayPal to pay dues online, register for the conference on line, and even give a contribution online.)

It will be a great time in Miami, thanks to Herculean efforts of Harvey Siegel, our Hospitality Chair, Kal Alston, our Program Chair, and Kathy Hytten, our Executive Secretary.  Together, they have moved us toward an extraordinary conference, and we are enormously grateful to each of them.  Of course, there were others helping, and we think particularly of the program committee.  These individuals deserve our gratitude as well. 

I look forward to seeing you in Miami! 

59th ANNUAL MEETING – March 28 – March 31, 2003

As mentioned in Sophie’s message, this year’s conference will be held in the recently opened Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort on South Beach.  This remarkable structure, featuring the completely restored/rebuilt Royal Palm and Shorecrest Hotels (which date from the 1930s) and a brand new tower facing the ocean designed to capture and complement the art deco style of the earlier hotels, is an architectural gem.  Room rates: $159 plus tax single or double, plus $10 resort fee (which covers all manner of beach and water equipment).  For reservations, call 1-800-2CROWNE.  Make sure you mention PES to get the conference rate. 

Please note, the priority reservation date to ensure the conference rate is February 27, 2003.  So please make your reservations before then.

For information on Miami and its beaches, visit http://www.miamiandbeaches.com

For information on the hotel, visit http://www.crowneplaza.com

PROGRAM COMMITTEE – Kal Alston

An excellent program awaits those who come to Miami.  A copy of the tentative program is enclosed in this mailing and is also available at on the web at www.philosophyofeducation.org.  I wish to express my enormous gratitude to the program committee for their incredible contribution and express my thanks to all the authors who submitted papers and proposals. 

MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE – Michael Katz

As has been past practice, new members will receive special treatment at the Miami conference.  Name tag stickers that identify new members will allow officers and others to extend a warm welcome.  The Kneller/New Members Reception on Friday evening will enable new members to introduce themselves to folks they haven’t met.  And the committee will be organizing “dinner expeditions” for those who seek to connect with members and other new members over a meal.   More information on the dinner expeditions will be available at registration. 

I encourage each of you to make a special effort this year to encourage prospective new members to join the organization, as the benefits far outweigh the costs, especially for graduate students and assistant professors.  The organization depends mightily on renewing its spirit and its energy through new members.  If you have any suggestions or ideas you want to share on how to increase our membership, send them to me at mskatz1@earthlink.net.  Please also send information about listservs and organizations that might be willing to post our "membership" information on their list. 

GRADUATE STUDENT ROOMS AVAILABLE

PES is continuing to offer subsidized rooms for graduate students at this year’s meeting.  There are still spaces available on a first come, first served basis.  If you are interested in subsidized accommodations (up to four per room at $20 per night), please send a note indicating your name, email address, gender, nights needed, and full payment to Kathy Hytten/PES, EAHE Department, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL  62901-4606.  We cannot hold rooms without payment at this point in time.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email Kathy at khytten@siu.edu.

THIRD CALL FOR 2002-2003 DUES

Dues status can be checked by examining your mailing label.  Next to your name is the dues year you are paid through.  If your label says “02-03" or later, you are current and will not be receiving a dues notice in this mailing.  If your label indicates “01-02" or earlier, a notice and envelope are included.  (Note that the PES fiscal and dues year runs from July 1 through June 30.)  Prompt dues payment insures continued publications and a fiscally healthy organization!  If you have any questions about the date listed, or would like a double check of your membership file, please email Kathy Hytten at khytten@siu.edu.  On a related note, if you have not also received this update via email, please contact me so I can make sure we have your correct email address in our files.

Note for International Members:  We have had difficulty in the past cashing checks from our international members.  Unless they are drawn on a US bank account, our brokerage firm can not accept them.  Writing “US funds” on an international check is not sufficient.  However, there are several other convenient options for paying membership and registration dues.  We haven’t yet had a problem with international money orders made out to US funds.  Alternatively, you can always pay by credit card via paypal or by sending me your credit card information on the membership and/or registration forms.  If you have any questions at all, please email.

BALLOT ENCLOSED

The Election Committee, chaired by Barb Stengel, has selected candidates for the Executive Board and for the Committee on Professional Affairs.  Kal Alston and Victor Worsfold are the candidates for the Board; and Ron Glass (Arizona State University West) and Cris Mayo (University of Illinois) are the candidates for COPA.  Please return the attached ballot by March 10, 2003.  A postage paid envelope is provided.  You can use envelope to send back the ballot, membership form, and/or the conference registration form.

BOOK DISPLAY AT PES IN MIAMI

As a reminder, Jeffrey Milligan, from Florida State University, is the Book Coordinator for the Miami conference.  He is still accepting suggestions for recently published work that would be nice to have on display.  Please email him (milligan@mail.coe.fsu.edu) if you have any questions or suggestions regarding the book display. 

CALLS FOR PAPERS

·       The Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society (OVPES) invites proposals for the 2003 annual meeting to be held at the Bergamo Conference Center in Dayton, Ohio, Thursday through Saturday, September 18-20.  The theme of the 2003 meeting is "Philosophizing Education When the Self is not Singular:  Education and Relation.” This year’s Phil Smith Lecture will be delivered by Professor Donna H. Kerr.  Proposals are due to Program Chair Charles Bingham (cwb@sfu.ca) by May 9, 2003.  For further information about the conference, please see the call on the OVPES website: http://ovpes.org/call_for_proposals.htm

·       The Middle Atlantic States Philosophy of Education Society (MASPES) spring meeting will take place at Teachers College, Columbia University on March 8^th, 2003 (9am – 5pm).  The program features a keynote address by Larry Blum, Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Education at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and author of I’m not a Racist, But…The Moral Quandary of Race (Cornell, 1992).  The program also features an invited paper from our immediate past president, David Blacker, entitled "The Educated Prejudices of Political Liberalism".  There will also be a business meeting, and, of course, sessions devoted to your work.  So please consider submitting something for inclusion on the program.  For more information about the program and submissions (due Feb. 14^th) please contact Ben Blair, MASPES Secretary-Treasurer, at bwb2001@columbia.edu.

·       The 32nd Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) is to be held in Auckland, New Zealand 28 - 30 November 2003 to be followed by a joint meeting of the Australian Association for Research in Education and the New Zealand Association for Research in Education (comparable to AERA).  Any PES members interested in giving a paper at PESA should email Bruce Haynes (b.haynes@cowan.edu.au), PESA Secretary/Treasurer, for more information.

ANNOUNCEMENTS OF POTENTIAL INTEREST

·       All interested persons are invited to attend the Fifth International Symposium on the Philosophy of Music Education, June 4-7, 2003 at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, IL, USA.  Participants can expect to enjoy stimulating conversation in a relaxed environment and a rich cultural milieu.  This symposium constitutes an important opportunity to rethink music and music education from an international perspective and to participate in the official formation of the International Society for Philosophy of Music Education.  Papers are currently under review and a complete program will be available in January 2003.  Watch for details including housing and registration information at the International Society for Philosophy of Music Education website at:  http://www.iub.edu/~ispme/.

·       Jon Fennell reports that longtime PES member Michael Oliker (graduate of the University of Illinois and resident of Chicago) is seriously ill and in need of the thoughts and prayers of the members of the Society.  For those who would like additional information, please contact Jon at jonmfennell@aol.com.

·       The Journal of Philosophy of Education has begun to expand its reviews section.  Rob Reich has been appointed North American Reviews Editor for the Journal, and he would welcome submissions from PES members who would be interested in submitting either a book review or writing a review essay.  If interested, please contact Rob at reich@stanford.edu.

·       Sage Publications, UK, has launched a new interdisciplinary journal, Theory and Research in Education, edited by PES Fellow, Randall Curren, and Harry Brighouse.  Beginning with its March 2003 inaugural issue, the journal will publish theoretical, normative, and empirical work contributing to the development of educational theory, policy, and practice. Details are available through the Sage Publications, UK website.

·       Greg Carroll has created a listserv for people to discuss things of interest to PES from the New England area.  The point of entry for the list is http://listserv.salemstate.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=pes-ne.  The password to join the list is PES-New England.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact Greg at gcarroll@salemstate.edu.

PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION AT AERA

As part of the response to the COPA committee’s charge to work toward broadening our philosophy of education audience, Lynda Stone has organized a symposium that will be presented at the American Educational Research Association meeting in Chicago this April entitled:  From Philosophy of Education:  Curriculum Contributions for the Profession Beyond Accountability.  The purpose of the symposium is to highlight present day philosophical ‘curricula’ for practical educational use, broadly defined.  As the session attests, philosophy of education is a multi-theoretical field today with much to offer diverse educational situations, settings, and students.  In the four papers included within this session, each presenter has responded to these organizing questions:  Of what does a philosophical curriculum in education today consist?  What is an exemplary contribution?  What conception beyond a narrow schooling accountability is offered for research, in higher education curriculum, in pedagogical practices?  Presenters include Nicholas Burbules, Michael Peters & Tina Besley, Kathy Hytten, and Eduardo Duarte.  Lynda Stone will chair the session and Fazal Rivzi will be the discussant.  Look for the session at AERA this spring.

TOWARD A NEW CRITICAL LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION – ILAN GUR-ZE’EV

Begun at the INPE Conference in Oslo in the summer, Ilan Gur-Ze’ev hopes to continue dialogue about the project of developing a new critical language in education at PES in Miami.  Please contact Ilan if you are interested, have questions, or would like to participate in ongoing discussion (ilangz@construct.haifa.ac.il). 

Ilan writes: “Critical Pedagogy in its various manifestations, the humanist-oriented versions, the postmodernist and postcolonialist versions and in other versions is currently in a crisis. Critical Pedagogy as an educational theory, as a political agenda, as a cultural struggle and as a socially-articulated hope needs to reflect on its history, its present and on the possibilities which are still open for human emancipation. Of special challenge for Critical Pedagogy are post-modern arenas. In the presence of today's coexistence and interdependence between post-modern, modern and pre-modern conditions there is an obviously urgent need for a dialogical reflection on Critical Pedagogy as the most progressive educational alternative; even if this alternative is but another version of normalizing education. We should strive to establish a reflection which will commit itself to articulate the post-modern challenges and possibilities, a reflection which will prepare us for the appearance of a new philosophical-educational language and maybe even to begin the kind of work that even if it will not actually bring the new language, should at least better prepare us to deal with and confront the current challenges in a rapidly changing reality, a preparation of which our education is so lacking. Love amid the total instrumentalization of the lifeworld; solidarity and responsibility in face of contingency; human rights in an anti-essentialist and anti-universalistic culture; those are only some of the current challenges to be considered and highlighted in perpetrating resistance to the process of being swallowed by both meaninglessness and by today's culture-industry as a grand normalizing pleasure machine. The present project attempts to critically reconstruct the history of Critical Pedagogy, its theoretical and political limits as well as its contributions, and to carry out a genuine attempt to establish an ongoing dialogue amongst the Critical Pedagogical community, a dialogue which should include the active participation by some of the central contributors to Critical Pedagogy in the last thirty years and their younger critical students.”  The project involves work on an edited book, international workshops, and on-going dialogue among the participants.  Please contact Ilan for more information and to get involved.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

·       Donald Vandenberg has just had an article, "Phenomenology and Fundamental Educational Theory," appear in the encyclopedic Phenomenology World Wide:  Foundations--Expanding dynamics--Life-engagements, A Guide for Research and Study, edited by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Lancaster, UK: Kluwer, 2003), pp. 589-601.  This is the 80th volume in the Analecta Husserliana series.  In his paper Vandenberg has separate sections on the German and Dutch origins of the phenomenology of education, followed by sections on the scene in the United States, Australia, Canada, Brazil and Chile, and Russia.  This phenomenological approach was concretely applied by Vandenberg in "The Transcendental Phases of Learning," which recently appeared in the Australian journal Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2002), pp. 321-344.

·       Michael Kazanjian announces publication of his second book, Learning Values Lifelong (Rodopi bv Publishers).  This book declares that lifelong learning teaches values and wholeness and rejects inert ideas or fragmentation. Education plays a vital role in reorganizing and revitalizing the abundant facts from the information explosion. Specialization works at cross-purposes with liberal arts education, which discloses a holistic vision of each person's being. 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY'S NOTE – Kathy Hytten

I suppose by the third newsletter this year, I have gotten a handle on all my major responsibilities as Executive Secretary.  Once again, I want to thank Barb Stengel for all her invaluable help this past academic year; we owe the society’s efficient functioning over the past several years to her unfaltering efforts.

In past February updates the executive secretary has commented on the fiscal health of PES, so I will begin by continuing that trend.  It is difficult to assess where we stand in this regard, especially during a time when our investments have increasingly lost money.  We have recently changed our brokerage service to a different Morgan Stanley Dean Witter office, and shifted some of our investments, so hopefully this will help.  Certainly the generous contributions made by PES members to the Legacy Fund have also been invaluable. 

Peripherally related to fiscal health, I have one issue that has come up over the last few months that is worthy of thinking about further.  As you may recall, we changed the dues categories and amounts last year so as to attempt to generate sufficient funds for the society, without unnecessarily burdening student or low paid members.  It remains to be seen whether that generates the additional income we need.  At the same time, I have heard several concerns from members about the changes, especially the elimination of an emeritus dues category.  This is an issue the Board will need to consider at the meeting in March.  For those of you who have weighed in on this issue already, I have saved your letters and messages and I will bring them to the Executive Board meeting at the conference.  If anyone has additional comments, questions or concerns, email them to me, and I will make sure they are taken into consideration at the meeting.

Speaking of dues, a number of you still have not paid your dues for 02-03.  Ideally, we would like to collect all dues as soon as possible into the fiscal year, which begins July 1^st.  We generally assume that you are planning on paying your dues sometime during the academic year, and do not cancel Educational Theory subscriptions until the fiscal year is over.  This means that you receive benefits in advance of having paid for them, which can pose some financial uncertainty for the society.  Short of begging, I ask you to look at your mailing label to see when your dues are paid up through.  At this point it should say at least 02-03 (thanks to those who chose to pay ahead).  If you have any questions about this, I can certainly help you.

On a somewhat somber note, there is a good chance that the faculty at Southern Illinois University will be on strike as of February 3, 2003.  If that is indeed the case, I will not be in my office until the strike is resolved (hopefully quickly).  I will check phone and email messages as best as I can, as well as bring a copy of the PES database home so I can keep things running smoothly.  There have been some administrative threats of canceling the email accounts of faculty who strike.  If that is the case, I will always be accessible by email through the PES email help site:  help@philosophyofeducation.org.  Of course, I’m hoping that a strike can be averted.

More importantly, Kal and the program committee have put together a very enticing conference in Miami.  I am looking forward to seeing you all there, and receiving your registration forms as soon as possible.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions you have about your membership or the society in general.  If I can’t answer your questions right away, I will certainly find out who can.  If you are happy with what PES has been doing, please encourage your colleagues and students to join.  So far this year, we have had 32 new members join PES, which speaks well of the organization.  Let’s work together to welcome and encourage the contributions of those new members in Miami.  See you then!