Garner Review VOLUME 1, NO. 1. SUMMER 2015
WWW.GARNPRESS.COM
Summer 2015 We Have It In Our Power to Change Society by the Ways in which We Use Words and Act Kindly Upon Them.
Photo: John Deng
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Welcome to Garn Press
Great Thinkers
Writers of Conscience
Power to Change
Put your trust in the people -- Garn’s great-
The Quest is to Seek Out the Great Thinkers
The Mission is to Search for the Original
We Have It In Our Power to Change Society
est assets are the people who participate
of the 20th Century whose Research is
Thinkers and Writers of Conscience of the
by the Ways in which We Use Words and Act
and support the Press
Discredited, Discounted, or Outright Banned
21st Century
Kindly Upon Them
by the 21st Century Powers that Be
Summer 2015 We Have It In Our Power to Change Society by the Ways in which We Use Words and Act Kindly Upon Them. The Garner Review Volume 1, No. 1. Summer 2015 The Mission at Garn Press is the quest for knowledge that can be acted upon. Quixotically, we are taking on the grand challenges confronting people and the planet and encouraging people to join us. The task is to imagine the future so we can re-imagine the present. Denny Taylor, Co Founder, CEO & Executive Editor David Taylor, Co-founder, Editor Ben Taylor, Co-founder, Program Manager & Producer Cover Photo: John Deng | www.johndengfinearts.com GARNPRESS.COM FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
The Garner Review Volume 1, No. 1. Summer
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Contents. 12 Great Thinkers The Quest is to Seek Out the Great Thinkers of the 20th Century whose Research is Discredited, Discounted, or Outright Banned by the 21st Century Powers that Be
Special Feature // Great Thinkers
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Welcome to Garn Press
Quest for Knowledge
Nineteen Clues
The Educator
Put your trust in the people -- Garn’s great-
Taking on the grand challenges confronting
Great Transformations Can Be Achieved
Corporations and Governments are Using
est assets are the people who participate
people and the planet and encouraging
Through Collective Action
Schools to Perpetuate the Social and Eco-
and support the Press
people to join us. The task is to imagine the
nomic Conditions that Teachers and Parents
future so we can re-imagine the present.
Most Fear
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Great Thinkers
Save Our Children
Writers of Conscience
World
The Quest is to Seek Out the Great Thinkers
The education of the world’s children cannot
The Mission is to Search for the Original
Responding to a World that for Many Chil-
of the 20th Century whose Research is
be controlled by nine very misguided men
Thinkers and Writers of Conscience of the
dren and Young Adults is Unequal, Violent,
21st Century
and Hard
Discredited, Discounted, or Outright Banned by the 21st Century Powers that Be
20 Power to Change We Have It In Our Power to Change Society by the Ways in which We Use Words and Act Kindly Upon Them
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“Put your trust in the people -- this independent book publishing company was started on a wing and prayer, as the saying goes, with Garn’s greatest asset the people who participated and supported the Press.” DENNY TAYLOR - FOUNDER, GARN PRESS
Welcome to the Garner Review. IMPRINT / IMAGINATION AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT BLOWING OUT THE CANDLES: A POETRY TRILOGY GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
Put your trust in the people -- that is the genius of Garn. This independent book publishing company was started on a wing and prayer, as the saying goes, with Garn’s greatest asset the people who participated and supported the Press. Garn became a start-up press with a telephone call to James Paul Gee to ask him if we could publish his poetry. Without hesitation Gee agreed, and with a handwritten note in lieu of a contract Garn became a startup press. We are infinitely grateful to Jim for his trust. Garn’s first publication was the eBook Trilogy Blowing
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Out the Candles by James Paul Gee. Jim’s poetry has now been combined into a paperback book. Gee is described by Allan Collins as “one of the great thinkers of our time.” In his poetry Jim examines the makings of his soul: The soul, unlike the body, can suffer mortal damage and live to die again. Jim lives and dies in his poems, over and over again, sharing with us his early life in a monastery: We slept on straw. We ate bad food. We ate in silence listening to one of our kind read PAGE 4
“Jim turns us inside out and makes us think about our passivity in dealing with the government and bureaucracies. At Garn his poems have marked us indelibly.” GARN PRESS, 2015
BLOWING OUT THE CANDLES: A POETRY TRILOGY Garn’s first publication was the eBook Trilogy Blowing Out the Candles by James Paul Gee. Jim’s poetry has now been combined into a paperback book.
bloody stories about torture. I took my turn to read. Sometimes we secretly waited for the delivery man and begged for bread. His poems are filled with pathos, humor, and irony: I was never a leader. A coward, I always sought to flee. Retreats were never merely tactical for me. But alas I have a terrible sense of direction. He holds the academy accountable:
cies. At Garn his poems have marked us indelibly, they are like tattoos -- complicated life patterns -- that morph, taking on new shapes and forms, reminding us that we are struggling for what is honorable, decent, and true. “You should be so proud,” Jim wrote in an email in July 2014. “This is truly good and wonderful. Few people do things competently, let alone morally. They care too much about status. You have something that goes beyond success and failure. Something genuinely good and moral. Not my poems by any means. Rather your courage, passion, and efforts. I hope this succeeds. But it does not matter. You have won already.”
We all, scientists or not, published not to perish, Good work was lost in a sea of trash The vast majority of it never cited. We were all too busy going to conferences And writing things no one read To remove the trash or teach the acolytes. The tower became a business We sold what we had claimed was beyond price … Now we have paid the final price. We are hirelings at a faux wood desk, Writing bad checks on a drawn account, With a quota to make. Jim turns us inside out and makes us think about our passivity in dealing with the government and bureaucra-
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The Quest for Knowledge that can be Acted Upon. GARN PRESS MISSION WILL HUMAN SOCIETIES BE TRANSFORMED? WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN? GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
The Mission at Garn Press is the quest for knowledge that can be acted upon. Quixotically, we are taking on the grand challenges confronting people and the planet and encouraging people to join us. The task is to imagine the future so we can re-imagine the present.
“The issue of inequality in the U.S. and the world is related and important too,” he wrote in the same email. “Inequality lowers economic growth and increases the cost of health care. it also lowers people’s participation in society and the will to stand up to corporate interests.”
scientists and teachers to create new forms of worldliness that values imagination, creativity, originality and innovation, and which is sensitive to the limited time that humans have to find new ways to sustain human life on the planet and to live closely with Earth.
At Garn an urgent question that is constantly asked is: “What will life on Earth be like in 50 years time?” This question is followed by: “What actionable knowledge do we need to change the future now?”
“The U.S. cannot face the future, given climate change and environmental degradation, without a changed social structure,” Jim wrote, “one that stresses greater equality, more participation, collective intelligence, and indexes of the quality of life beyond economic growth.”
Garners are asking the big questions: Will we adapt? Will human societies be transformed? What can we do to make this happen?
“Climate change is now at a dire point and we have not yet begun to see the worst of it,” Jim Gee wrote, joining in the conversation in another email in 2014. “It will progressively be a major topic of national discussion at the very least in terms of big storms and the cost of them.”
“Right now many people will not listen, but that will change,” Jim ended. “The issue is on the cusp and we need to keep pressing it.”
One way is to spread the net to ensure as many people as possible can address the questions that are most critical. Another way is to inspire people to act -- which is a great segue into the second book that Garn Press published.
Thus Garn is determined to actin-the-gap between the public and
“The U.S. cannot face the future, given climate change and environmental degradation, without a changed social structure.” JAMES PAUL GEE
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PHOTO: At Garn we are interested in the moral imagination and utopian thinking in art and poetry
PHOTO: In a democracy we are here to support rebellious voices
PHOTO: At Garn we are writing to change the economic equation
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IMPRINT - PEOPLE AND SOCIETY; PEOPLE AND THE PLANET BOOK: NINETEEN CLUES: GREAT TRANSFORMATIONS CAN BE ACHIEVED THROUGH COLLECTIVE ACTION GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
Nineteen Clues: Great Transformations Can Be Achieved Through Collective Action.
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ineteen Clues is based on 15 years of research that was peer reviewed and presented at the 2012 Planet Under Pressure Conference in London as a precursor to Rio + 20. The book was written in the belief that this is a moment in history when we must unite in the struggle to make Earth a child safe zone, knowing that people can succeed when governments fail. Nineteen Clues uses primary research from the physical and social sciences to suggest actions that can be taken to change the future now.
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“It is of critical importance that we remember that Earth Justice and Social Justice are inseparable, and that inequality is unacceptable.� GARN PRESS, 2015
Nineteen Clues: Great Transformations Can Be Achieved Through Collective Action In the coming months Garn Press will feature the nineteen clues on the new Garn website to bring attention to the ways in which people can act
What happens next is up to us, whether we opt for fatalism or activism, whether we focus on eradicating poverty, taking back our schools, or working in one of the many other areas that are of grave concern, we have to act. If we do the US will no longer be viewed as an impediment to global action, but will take its place alongside other countries, large and small, rich and poor, working for equality, not as a utopian dream, but as the best hope we have to stop the temperature rising and to sustain the wellbeing of human life on the planet. And yes, the people of the US can become part of the global community that takes seriously the idea that if people work together we can save the world. (p. 65) There are signs of hope within US society. We are expelling the gas of the mainstream propaganda before our minds go dead. There are many groups working together and acting as our guides in re-Earthing. One site of resistance is K-12 public schools. Even though the pressures are great, teachers, principals and parents are organizing, establishing websites, arranging meetings, holding rallies, signing petitions, opting out of testing, and sending unopened boxes of tests back to Pearson.
parents, and members of the public who are very seriously concerned about what is happening to the planet and to their children and grandchildren in public schools. In the coming months Garn Press will feature the nineteen clues on the new Garn website to bring attention to the ways in which people can act to make the planet a child safe zone. There is no doubt we are witnessing our own demise. Great scholars are telling us this -- most recently Stephen Hawking. If we do not unite and act the lives of our children and their children are in jeopardy. We cannot stand by and let this happen. It is of critical importance that we remember that Earth Justice and Social Justice are inseparable, and that inequality is unacceptable -- the vast social, economic, and political fissures that are occurring are perturbing the planet. It is time for humanity to grow up.
What we know it that the brute power of ideology and great wealth, which is used to distort and discredit both scientists and teachers, is no match for the courage and endurance of these great scholars and public intellectuals who are standing their ground, or for the parents, grand-
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Corporations and Governments are Using Schools to Perpetuate the Social and Economic Conditions that Teachers and Parents Most Fear. IMPRINT - PEOPLE AND SOCIETY BOOK: THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH: A TEACHER CHALLENGES THE GATES FOUNDATION GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
Garn Press is determined to participate in the peaceful struggle against inequality, the avarice and greed of large global corporations, the misuse of power by Federal and State governments in the US, and the re-establishment of feudalism in the UK. What concerns us most at Garn is the ways in which corporations and governments are using schools to perpetuate the social and economic conditions that teachers and parents most fear. Quite literally, through the imposition of unacceptable Federal and State Mandates, the Common Core, and high stakes tests, children are being taught to work for the corporations that are using up Earth’s resources, contaminating the planet, and causing the climate system to adversely change, making Earth an unsafe place for our kids to be. Children are being taught to maintain the status quo for the powerful, the privileged, and the obscenely wealthy. They are being educated to perpetuate the very activities in human societies that are perturbing the planet. Children are being schooled to sustain the military – the 2012 Rice-Klein report makes that clear – their lives expendable. And, they are being schooled to sustain the financial industry by taking on huge loans from banks – indentured for life. Which brings us to the third book that Garn Press published -- The Educator and the Oligarch by Anthony Cody. Garn is proud to announce that Anthony has just won the prestigious eLit Award Silver Medal in the Education Category for The Educator and the Oligarch. Jonathan Kozol writes, The Educator and the Oligarch is “A powerful and important book by one of the most courageous advocates for sanity and simple justice in our public schools.” And Diane Ravitch agrees and states, “This book is a record of Anthony Cody’s valiant struggle to force the nation’s most powerful foundation and richest person to listen to the voice of an experienced teacher.” VISIT GARNPRESS.COM
PHOTO: “We need to put the public back into public education, and for once, provide adequate resources to our schools, especially those with the neediest students.” - Anthony Cody
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THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH Quite literally, what Anthony Cody has done is change the relationship between teachers and Bill Gates and his formidable foundation.
“A powerful and important book by one of the most courageous advocates for sanity and simple justice in our public schools.” Jonathan Kozol
Quite literally, what Anthony Cody has done is change the relationship between teachers and Bill Gates and his formidable foundation. In the first section of The Educator and the Oligarch Anthony describes “the assault on public education” waged by Gates and his foundation. He repositions Gates and raises disturbing questions about the growing role corporate philanthropists are playing in public policy, and the dangers we face when market forces are made central to the US and UK public education systems. Diane Ravitch writes that Anthony draws not only on his own experience as a classroom teacher, but also on “external and unimpeachable data” to make the point that “poverty is the greatest handicap to the academic performance of students today, not ‘bad teachers’.” In this way, Anthony Cody has not only repositioned Bill Gates, he has repositioned teachers. And in this endeavor he has been so successful that at the Network for Public Education conference in Chicago (April 25th - 26th, 2015), Lily Eskelsen García, the President of the National Education Association, and Randi Weingarten, President of the National Federation of Teachers, both vowed that the Unions they represent would not take any more of Gates money. But it is a cautionary tale. For García would renege on her pledge within two weeks of the conference caving-in to pressure and losing credibility.
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The Quest is to Seek Out the Great Thinkers of the 20th Century whose Research is Discredited, Discounted, or Outright Banned by the 21st Century Powers that Be. IMPRINT - PEOPLE AND SOCIETY BOOK: WHAT’S WHOLE IN WHOLE LANGUAGE IN THE 21ST CENTURY GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
On April 26th, at the Network for Public Education conference in Chicago Lily Eskelsen García, the NEA President, stated to a packed audience of educators and parents, “We are standing between a profiteer and his profits and that is a dangerous place to be” -- a prophetic statement if ever there was one. Ken Goodman knows the pressures. He is almost ninety years old and he has been standing between profiteers and their profits for most of his adult life. In 1986 Ken Goodman published an 80 page book and Garn has worked with him to expand it to 240 pages with never-before published interviews that were conducted in 1992/3 of world renowned reading scholars whose views on Goodman’s reading research adds new perspectives to profiteers’ take-over of US public schools. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in PR and mainstream media efforts to discredit Ken Goodman and to undermine the research of genius on which the book
was based. It was a well-coordinated campaign. On the morning of 9-11, 2001, President Bush was in an elementary school classroom to promote NCLB. Similarly, the Director of NICHD, Reid Lyon, was on C-Span talking about NCLB, and in the White House, according to one account, the conversation was about Ken Goodman and his research on how young children learn to read. Over a quarter million copies of What’s Whole in Whole Language? were sold to teachers who embraced the democratic ideal of Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Teach, and Social Justice for All. Imagine the impact on the governing elites and the corporate profiteers of 250,000 teachers establishing a research-based reading curriculum in their schools that would change the equation between rich and poor, and that would embrace racial and gender equality. These are very frightening ideas for the billion dollar
KEN GOODMAN: What’s Whole In Whole Language in the 21st Century?
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textbook publishers and their political counterparts in the elite ruling classes. It was not lost on them that if the 250,000 teachers were allowed to introduce the egalitarian research based pedagogy into their classrooms, they would have the capacity to tip the balance of power. Verification of the research presented in the original book is now widely accepted by researchers and teachers alike, and Ken Goodman is regarded by many researchers in the field of literacy to be the pre-eminent reading scholar of the 20th Century. He is the recipient of many prestigious awards including: William S Gray Award, Citation of Merit LRA (nee IRA) The David H Russell Award for Outstanding Research in English NCTE The Oscar Causey Award for Distinguished Research, LRC Distinguished Researcher Award, NCRLL The J ames Squire Award for Outstanding Contributions to Field English NCTE More than 1,000 miscue research studies have been conducted in multiple languages and in multiple sign-systems that support the findings of Ken Goodman’s research on the reading process and how young children learn to read (and write). His research, which focuses on the social nature of learning as well as the reading process, is also supported by the research of child psychiatrists and psychologists and child development researchers who have raised concerns about the education reforms which are widely regarded as developmentally inappropriate and harmful to children. But whole language remains so politically stigmatized most teachers and parents do not realize that the research on teaching and learning presented in this banned book provides an antidote to the Common Core, high-stakes testing, and the corporatization of US public education.
went viral after Valerie Strauss published it on her Washington Post Blog. Teachers of conscience are rejecting the sweat shop high stakes test teaching mandates of the Common Core, and they are struggling to sustain learning environments that engage children in learning activities that are intellectually challenging and socially situated. Michael Rosen, the eminent British scholar and social activist, states in the introduction to the new edition of What’s Whole, “We need to be well-informed” about the corporatization of public education. Rosen writes, “In the American phrase that I’ve learned to love, “we need to wise up”. He states, “What’s Whole in Whole Language in the 21st Century? helps us do just that.” If we “wise-up”, as Michael Rosen encourages us to do, will we recognize that we have been duped? Will we rise-up and confront the corporate profiteers and their counterparts among the political elites who conducted a PR campaign to demonize Ken Goodman and vilify What’s Whole to stop teachers from having the freedom to teach and students the freedom to learn? Will we finally appreciate that the 250,000 teachers whose classrooms were filled with children immersed in literature projects, math activities, and science experiments were participating in the moral and ethical struggle for freedom and justice for all? Will it occur to us that this approach to teaching and learning is not only good for kids and society but also for the planet? It is not such a huge leap. What is good for kids is good for the planet -- changing the way we educate our children has the potential to slow the rapid acceleration of anthropogenic changes that are threatening human existence. Resisting the state-corporate dismantling of the US public schools just might save our kids.
When Ken Goodman was asked why publish another edition of his controversial book he said, “This new edition of What’s Whole in Whole Language in the 21st Century? responds to the renewed interest by teachers in a holistic view of reading development based on new evidence that reading is easy to learn when it is functional and useful to the learners. “A generation of digitally literate children is coming to school already literate through the use of digital devices,” Goodman said. “This is whole language in action. Knowledgeable teachers will find this new edition helps them to build on what children are commonly learning on their own.” Ken Goodman describes the kindergartens spawned by NCLB as “sweatshop kindergartens”, and the term
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Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule. IMPRINT / PEOPLE AND SOCIETY BOOK: SAVE OUR CHILDREN SAVE OUR SCHOOL, PEARSON BROKE THE GOLDEN RULE GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
“Save” as it has come to be known, is the next book Garn published. It’s a political satire that Diane Ravitch calls, “Funny, learned, and zany.” The satire takes place in Café Griensteidl, an imaginary restaurant in New York City, but first comes “The End” -Save’s prologue in which Mother Earth is dying and expresses her anger and contempt for nine of her very rich and powerful sons. Each is named and quoted verbatim. “Witless fools!” she says, as she tries to get comfortable. Her skin is wrinkled, parched and cracked, and her veins stand out, spread wide, like deltas of rivers choked with detritus. Every turn is a challenge. “The education of the world’s children cannot be controlled by nine very misguided men,” Mother Earth says, weakened by the effort to speak, “who have neither taught nor been elected.” “Did the oligarch really say they won’t know for a decade if his education experiment has worked?” she asks. “Arrogance!” she cries. “He has abandoned reason for madness!” In Café Griensteidl the nine men of incalculable power and enormous egos, including Bill Gates, Michael Barber of Pearson, Arne Duncan, Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein are having lunch. The statements made by these nine powerful men reveal why Mother Earth is so ticked-off with
them and why she considers them dangerous. “It’s a totally abusive situation,” you say, participating in this imaginary conversation with the narrator of this political satire. “A hostile insurgence,” I say. “A well-financed private militia now occupies the language and thinking of children in US K-12 public schools.” “Except this isn’t make-believe,” you say. “This might be an imaginary conversation, and we might be playing, but my take on it is that we are being played.” “Except we’re excluded from the real conversation that’s taking place,” I say. “No one’s listening to us. Teachers are being threatened into silence. They’re being bullied. Many are afraid. Some are fighting back, but many are leaving the profession.” Diane Ravitch plays a part in Save. Diners send her videos and tweets and Diane blogs and re-tweets. The whole world is listening and watching. “My kids used to love math,” Louis C.K. says, from his table in Café Griensteidl where he’s been watching the scene. “Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core!” “I trust a teacher over Pearson,” Louis C.K. says. “Thirty three thousand parents agree,” a diner shouts.
“Save” as it has come to be known, is the next book Garn published. It’s a political satire that Diane Ravitch calls, “Funny, learned, and zany.” DIANE RAVITCH, 2015
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“Did the oligarch really say they won’t know for a decade if his education experiment has worked?” she asks. “Arrogance!” she cries. “He has abandoned reason for madness!” DENNY TAYLOR, 2014
Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule “The education of the world’s children cannot be controlled by nine very misguided men.”
“Opted their children out of the misery!” Again, diners send Diane tweets and she re-tweets. In the street outside Café Griensteidl, parents and teachers in the Opt-Out movement read Diane’s re-tweets and hold up their placards shouting. “No more Pearson in our school!” they chant. “Pearson broke the golden rule!” Then silence. Sarah Montague of BBC’s Hardtalk has arrived in the café from London to interview Sir Michael Barber of Pearson. “What if we don’t get it right?” Montague asks, with perfect diction, each word loaded, each sound, each syllable, firing. “Well if you are an investor sometimes –” Barber says, in colonizer mode, oblivious to the significance of the question. “I didn’t mean from that point of view,” Montague says. Hardtalk is what the show is about – that well-worded moment when the ugly side of “benevolence” appears, when the nefarious practice, when the avarice and greed, is revealed. Twelve venerable woman scholars also have lunch in Café Griensteidl. Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Mina Shaughnessy, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Wangari Maathai, Louise Rosenblatt, Maxine Greene, Yetta Goodman, and Emilia Ferreiro all appear. They participate in a conversation that makes it clear that the rich and powerful men are small and puny in insight and vision. Their monochromatic rationality and linear reason is
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inwardly focused (I say it is so, so it is so), when compared with the multicolored audacious wit and ferocious intellectual power (we question what you know) of the renowned and venerable women scholars. Save exposes the brute truth about the self-delusion of the rich men who have seized power and have improper influence on public education. It could be dismissed as sexist, if it wasn’t for the all-inclusive ethical stance of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, John Dewey, Noam Chomsky, and Martin Luther King who are also prominent in Save. “What our venerable women and these very great men have in common is that they don’t separate scholarship from human experience,” I say. ”Their students’ lives are not separated from their academic learning.” “Teachers are endangered,” you say. “Soon a whole generation of wise women and great teachers will be extinct.” “So what can we do against such recklessness?” “Tell Gates he does not have the power to dictate how our children are taught in public schools.” “Tell Barber we take back our independence. That US public schools are no longer under Pearson’s colonial rule.” “Support a national Opt-Out day,” you say. “A national Opt-Out Earth friendly day,” I say. “A day of re-imagining public education.” “Not an imaginary opt-out day,” you say, frowning at me, and we both laugh. “No,” I say. “A real re-imagining. A re-visioning. A day in which parents and teachers make public schools anew.”
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The Mission is to Search for the Original Thinkers and Writers of Conscience of the 21st Century. IMPRINT - PEOPLE AND SOCIETY BOOK: BEWARE THE ROADBUILDERS: LITERATURE AS RESISTANCE GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
At Garn Press it is not enough to garner the thinking of great scholars of the past. Garn’s Mission is also to search for the original thinkers of the 21st century -- writers of conscience who embrace social media and the technological revolution to create remarkable books that inspire people to act.
occurs with James Paul Gee’s Blowing Out the Candles. Both writers expose their own vulnerabilities and neither writes as an authority, but of “life among the ruins” and “seeking the rational among the irrational”, as Paul writes in a chapter entitled “Adrienne Rich: Artist of the Possible and Life Among the Ruins.”
P.L. Thomas is both an original thinker and a writer of conscience, and in Beware the Roadbuilders: Literature as Resistance he inspires people to act.
This chapter and many others in Paul’s Beware the Roadbuilders connect with Save. Adrienne Rich is one of Save’s venerable women scholars. Similarly Maxine Green appears in Save and Paul writes about her in Literature as Resistance in a chapter entitled, “Maxine Greene and the ‘Frozen Sea Inside of Us.” Paul begins with a quote from a letter written by Franz Kafka:
Diane Ravitch writes that Paul Thomas “is the conscience of American education.” She calls Paul, “our North Star,” and she supports his “pedagogy of kindness”, stating: In these essays, he demands that we see the world through the eyes of others, that we open our minds and our hearts to the children and families left behind by our culture, that we place the demands of social justice above the demands of accountability and testing. At Garn we have come to recognize that Paul’s writing on Literature as Resistance connects all the books that the Press has published – the first signs of this intertextuality
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading it for? … A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. “I think the core sentiment,” Paul writes, “that a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us, is the perfect entry point into why Maxine Green’s works remain more important than ever, her voice the axe against the frozen sea of relentless but misguided education reform.”
“What are the confrontational texts we should be inviting students to read, that anyone should read?” Paul asks. “How do we expand those texts into how they inform living in a free society and engaging in activism? P.L. THOMAS, 2015
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P.L. THOMAS: Beware The Roadbuilders: Literature As Resistance
Beware The Roadbuilders: Literature As Resistance “Fiction offers avenues to Truths, often hard Truths, that otherwise remain closed or less often traveled.” P. L. Thomas
Paul Thomas brings to our attention the way Maxine uses the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickinson (Gee’s Emily in his poems) to seamlessly frame the writings of John Dewey and Paulo Freire. And so it goes, this work on literature as resistance, the “veneer of certainty” in educational reform outdone by the ambiguity and uncertainty of art. “What are the confrontational texts we should be inviting students to read, that anyone should read?” Paul asks. “How do we expand those texts into how they inform living in a free society and engaging in activism? How do traditional assumptions about what texts matter and what texts reveal support the status quo of power? And how can texts of all types assist in the ongoing pursuit of equity among free people?”
a compelling argument that billionaires, politicians, and self-professed education reformers are doing more harm than good despite their public message. The public, teachers, and children are being crushed beneath their reforms. Then in the very last paragraph he encourages us to act: Armed with books and films and words of all kinds, like the academics and scholars at the end of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 who have memorized precious books, we can join each other in refrain: Beware the roadbuilders.
In the Epilogue, on the last page, Paul writes: Every child that we teach needs our relentless love and patience because childhood is a frail becoming that leads to this thing we call adulthood, which we fail each time we allow ourselves to be callous to the laughter or tears of a child--especially when we do so in the name of education. Thus in Beware the Roadbuilders: Literature as Resistance Paul Thomas shares with us a truth that we should always have known -- that literature can shed light on the destructiveness of educational reform in a way that non-fiction cannot. In Literature as Resistance he presents
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“How do we address such devastating findings? And act? Where are the spaces in which we can maneuver?” DENNY TAYLOR , 2015
Responding to a World that for Many Children and Young Adults is Unequal, Violent, and Hard. IMPRINT - PEOPLE AND SOCIETY BOOK: ROSIE”S UMBRELLA GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
At Garn Press we are focused on these great threats to the future of humanity – to children, teenagers, and young men and women, and on what is being done to them today. In the Financial Times (April 17, 2015) Noreena Hertz writes that for today’s teens, the world is a “Hobbesian nightmare.” Hertz calls 13 -20 year old girls, “Generation K” (for Katniss Evergreen in The Hunger Games) and she states they regard the world to be “unequal, violent and hard”. She surveyed 1000 teenage girls in the US and UK , and carried out a series of interviews in both countries. “They are concerned about existential threats,” Hertz writes. “Seventy-five per cent of teenage girls are worried about terrorism” and “66 per cent worry about climate change.” “They also worry about their own futures. Eighty six per cent (worry) about getting into debt,” Hertz states.
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She notes that they are also “more physically scarred.” “As many as 22% of US female high school students have seriously considered committing suicide.” In the UK, a World Health Organization survey discovered a threefold increase in the number of teenagers who have self-harmed over the past ten years. The statistics on self-harm and cutting are as grim in the US as they are in the UK. “Time and time again,” Hertz writes, the young women told her that they were disturbed by “gender pay gaps, sexist comments” and the attitude that “women cannot be engineers”. Essentially, the message is men can do anything, but women cannot. Hertz writes that teenage girls are also concerned about racial inequality. Only four per cent of teenage girls trust big corporations to do the right thing. Only ten per
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cent trust the governments. Hertz writes these numbers have big implications for the future of business and politics. They also have big implications for people and society. The young women who Hertz calls “teenage girls” nail these great threats when they state that the world is unequal, violent, and hard. How do we address such devastating findings? And act? Where are the spaces in which we can maneuver? Slip behind enemy lines -- past the “masters of mankind”, as Chomsky calls them -- the rich and powerful men of the Common Core, the profiteers of high stakes tests, for the sake of our children and act? At the end of the article, Hertz quotes Sarah, who is 16, on the value she places on being “unique”. Sarah explains, “To me, it’s about being your own person, not having to think the same as others or dress the same as them. It’s about not caring if I’m the same as everyone else.” In Rosie’s Umbrella, the last Garn Press book in this first edition of the Garner Review, Rosie expresses a similar sentiment. “Find your own truth,” Rosie said to herself. She thought about Daisy and her tattooed runes. She found in her notes from the library the symbol for the self that Daisy had drawn and the symbol for strength and womanhood, which is a reminder that new life comes of old. Suddenly it all seemed to fit and Rosie thought it might actually be easier than picking up shards of glass. “When there is a death experience,” she remembered Daisy telling her, “We must seek amongst the ashes for new perspectives and new birth. It’s important we are creative and adapt.” Rosie brings Paul Thomas back to the page. His pen becomes Maxine Green’s axe, and social injustice the shards of glass. Towards the end of Rosie’s Umbrella Jesse, who is in 8th grade with Rosie, has to present his research on his family heritage to Margaret, his teacher, and to the students in his class.
Jesse took a breath and continued quietly, “while these same men, who are thought to be so noble, legalize their violations against your family and your people by putting in place a Policy of Transference.” Instantly Rachel was on her feet, fist clenched, arm raised and without a moment’s hesitation Margaret stood up at the back of the room in solidarity with Rachel and Jesse. She raised her arm and clenched her fist as a matter of conscience. The room was still. Slowly, as if weighted down by the grief of generations and the tragedy that had happened in Wales, Rosie quietly pushed back her chair and stood up, fist clenched, she raised her arm as the rest of her class pushed back their chairs and fists clenched they raised their arms in solidarity. Then Rachel lowered her arm and Margaret sat down and sitting, everyone had focused their gaze on Jesse. Jesse looked out the window for a few seconds, and then he turned and faced the class as the last chair was pulled in. “And Margaret,” Jesse said, his voice rising. “I know you don’t put A’s and B’s on our reports, or a number, or anything like that but we all know when we’ve aced-it or when we have effed-up.” Jesse smiled, his voice dropping, “Sorry Margaret. But right now I’ve had enough of famous men who win great battles and great wars.” Rosie and the students in Margaret’s class lead us back to Paul Thomas and his most brilliant book on the rejection of neutrality and of democracy as activism.
“Yesterday,” he began. “Rosie made a presentation that can’t be beat. And Margaret, I know you’re always telling us we are not in a competition, but the reality is that in the US we all compete. And the only thing that’s important to the government is that America is number one in the world.” “Up until yesterday I was all for that,” Jesse said. “Battle ready, you might say, programmed to win.” “But yesterday I learned winning isn’t everything.” “When you stand-up against tyranny … chances are you’ll end up in jail, or lying bloodied in the road.” Jesse looked at Margaret and then at Rosie. “Or be forced to leave your homeland because powerful men who have made immense profits from working you half-to-death have taken away your rights and made it so God-awful for you to stay in the village where you are born you have no alternative except to get on a bus or a boat.”
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“Visit the new website, meet Garn authors, and find out more about Garn books.” GARN PRESS, 2015
We Have It In Our Power to Change Society by the Ways in which We Use Words and Act Kindly Upon Them. IMPRINTS: PEOPLE AND SOCIETY - PEOPLE AND THE PLANET - IMAGINATION AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
Wars begin with words and it matters who can speak and who cannot. It matters who can write and who cannot. Who is included and who is excluded. The gender inequality in publishing is well documented. Men of power control the printed word, which is at least one argument for why when words fail there is armed conflict. But a profound change is occurring. Diane Ravitch and many others have taught us the power of a blog, a tweet, and a text, and what happens when there are millions of them. We can use social media to act. We have it in our power to change society by the ways in which we use words. We can create spaces on the page for fists to be raised in solidariVISIT GARNPRESS.COM
ty with the young women whose experiences of life are unequal, violent and hard. As writers of conscience we can join teachers of conscience and do everything we can to bring an end to the misogynous and racist environments in which young people are being forced to exist. At Garn Press we’ve added books to the blogs, tweets, and texts. We’re encouraging writers, both men and women, who are often teachers of conscience, to write books that shatter lies and tell the truth. In Rosie’s Umbrella Rosie begins her presentation of her research in school by stating “I am lumpen”. We are lumpen too. Just by starting this independent publishing company we transgress.
authors, and find out more about Garn books. Help us help you in your transgressions too. We are working hard to maintain old friendships and establish new ones by supporting networks of writers of conscience, many of whom are scientists and teachers, who refuse to be separated by gender, race, or ethnicity, in their push-back against the political mainstream to make Earth a child safe zone for the sake of their kids and grandkids.
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PHOTO: Garn supports alternative perspectives. Our task is to remind people there are alternatives
PHOTO: We are here to encourage people to resist succumbing to fear
PHOTO: At Garn we are organizing in the public sphere
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This fall Garn Press will be offering a series of workshops, seminars, and global cafĂŠs for school and community groups in and around New York City. Contact Garn Press on the Garn Press website at www.garnpress.com/contact for further information.
The Garner Review Volume 1, No. 1. Summer VISIT GARNPRESS.COM
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Booking Workshops, Seminars, or Global Cafés IMPRINT - PEOPLE AND SOCIETY BOOK: ROSIE”S UMBRELLA GARNPRESS.COM - FACEBOOK.COM/GARNPRESS - TWITTER.COM/GARNPRESS
To all Garn Press readers:
Rat-a-tat-tat! I can read that!
We send good wishes for strength, health, and endurance, but also for joy and kindness in the hard times in which we live.
This seminar and workshop is for parents and teachers of young children who are learning to read. It is an antidote to the Common Core and more. Denny Taylor, who is in the Reading Hall of Fame and has won many awards for her research and writing, will explore the many ways in which reading picture-story books with young children can play an important role in learning to read and can inspire children to become life-long readers.
Garn Press is completely independent. We receive no financial support from any corporate or government funding agency. Our support comes from readers when they purchase Garn Press books. So to keep Garn running we urge you to buy and read the books we are publishing by all the incredible authors who have put their trust in us. Denny, Ben, and David
Workshops, Seminars, Global Cafés This fall Garn Press will be offering a series of workshops, seminars, and global cafés for school and community groups in and around New York City. Contact Garn Press for further information. Fees will be waived for groups in resource poor communities.
Writing Rosie
This workshop for schools, universities, and community groups, is based on solid scientific evidence on young children learning to read.
Rat-a-tat-tat! I can write that! This seminar and workshop is the companion to Rat-a-tattat! I can read that! It is for parents and teachers of young children learning to write and again it is an antidote to the Common Core.
The Global Café: Finding Local Solutions to Global Problems
Rosie’s Umbrella took 23 years to write. In this author presentation and workshop Denny Taylor will talk about writing Rosie, inspiring participants to write and giving practical suggestions to participants on writing stories that matter to them.
This approach to problem solving originates at the Planet Under Pressure Conference in London in 2012 and is written about in Nineteen Clues. Taylor has since organized several global cafés, including one for high school juniors and seniors in a resource poor NY community.
This workshop is for schools, universities, and community groups
This workshop is for schools, university, and community groups.
Writing Picture, Painting Stories
Support Garn Press by Buying Garn Books!
Part studio activities, part philosophical exploration of imagination and the human spirit, this is a hands-on opportunity to paint, write, and make books.
www.garnpress.com
This workshop is for schools, universities, and community groups, and has a 20 year history of great moments.
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