Although I’m terrified and bored by anything that has a website that lists bell hooks first under recommended reading, this event at New Urban Arts tonight sounds pretty neat:

 “ I WANT TO DO THIS ALL DAY“

Audio Documentary on Radical Education

    In March and April of 2006, Amina Althea and Amber Woods visited 23 radical learning spaces, including free schools, charter and privateschools, community centers, and after school programs. They interviewed students, parents, teachers, and administrators about creating and sustaining these non-compulsory, non-coercive environments for learning and projects.
Based on these interviews and extensive research, Althea and Woods produced an audio documentary, entitled “I Want To Do This All Day.” It illuminates a grassroots movement of people and communities taking power over their own education and creating learning environments based on freedom, cooperation and social change.
In May of 2008, the pair will launch the documentary with a national tour of 17 cities. At each stop four dancers and two visual artists will offer a performance piece, that weaves excerpts from the documentary with dance, song, and projections to bring to life the stories of young people making their own paths in learning and life.

With public schools cutting programs faster than you can say Every Child Left Behind and private education out of the reach of most people, it definitely makes sense for a movement to start happening right about now.

Sliding scale $3-6 no one turned away for lack of funds

Well! Classes for February filled up so fast I didn’t really have time to post the schedule, but March is well on it’s way and there’s still room in most of the classes!! I’m only going to post the classes that have space left, but you can see what you’re missing out on in the calendar. Also, there is now a $10 general shop materials fee included in the cost of the classes. Regardless of the fee, some outside supplies may be required. Our official site is here. Myspace here.

Are you ready? Onward, friends! (more…)

Partly to remind you about our Parade for Accessible Education tomorrow at Brown (right) and partly because my friend Mike Da Cruz is really articulate, here are six reasons why Brown Students for a Democratic Society is calling on the Brown Corporation to freeze tuition:

1) High tuition sticker prices, even when they are defrayed in actuality by aid discourage many lower-income people from applying to universities at all.

2) At a time when the asking price for a year Brown exceeds the US median household income by thousands of dollars, it seems unreasonable to continue to raise tuition only to increase aid, if fully half of Americans couldn’t afford to go to Brown even if their families live in their dorms and ate on meal plan without massive aid. Brown is in a position to stop asking for money the vast majority of people don’t have.

(more…)

As members of the Brown corporation descend on Bruronia’s fair campus for their semesterly meeting this Saturday, join Brown students and our allies in a parade calling for a “More Open and Public Brown.” Festivities start at 10AM:

Education is a Right! Join a Parade, Marching Band, students, and community members to call for:

Grants not Loans!
A Tuition Freeze!
Expanded Finical Aid!
Brown Support for Public Funding of Education!
Expanded Brown Programs for Providence Community Members!

Sponsored by Brown Students for a Democratic Society

This is pretty cool news, off of the East Side Public Education Coalition’s website:

Arts supporters and dedicated ESPEC readers will remember that the theater progam at Hope High was almost killed in the summer of 2006, but was saved at the last minute through the efforts of many supporters. This week, Ari showed us why it was all worthwhile.

Ari Brisbon, a student at Hope High School on Providence’s East Side, has won the state Shakespeare Acting and Recitation competition.

So you can be pretty confident it ain’t great news:

Dear library advocates,

As we move toward a new year, PPL is moving toward a mass-layoff of all seven branch children’s specialists, which will have disastrous consequences for branch services and programs. Meanwhile, PPL administrators are projecting a nearly $1 million deficit for the next fiscal year, and they are suggesting drastic measures for balancing the budget.

For details about these developments, please visit the new Library Reform Group blog — at — which supplements our ongoing Library Reform Group website.

Please feel free to post comments and suggestions on our blog.

Hopefully, we can save the Children’s Specialist positions for the rest of this fiscal year and find a way to avoid the draconian cuts which the PPL trustees are likely to recommend for next year.

Patricia Raub
Chair, Library Reform Group

Rules to live by: Distrust the Projo, and quote Spiro Agnew whenever possible.

One should be skeptical of all these damn lists, but given the Projo’s obsession with RI’s rankings along any of a million metrics — especially when we turn up low — don’t you think that this should make the paper:

US News and World Report just ranked Rhode Island’s public high schools 4th-best in the country.

**The link above is to an extensive “best high schools” report. I can’t find a link to the state-by-state rankings, but they’re in the hard copy from Nov 29th, which I had in my lap earlier today. Let me know if you can find it online.

Watch out! AS220’s community print shop is now open for the public to use!

The print shop, located at 95 Mathewson Street #210 downtown in the Dreyfus Building offers affordable introductory classes is many forms of printmaking; including but not limited to: silkscreen, letterpress, intaglio, monoprinting and relief printing! People of all ages are encouraged to come and take a class or two!

The print shop also offers blocks of time in which someone can sign up to print, provided they already know how. There is a print shop “open house” the first Monday of every month at 6pm, anyone who is interested should come and check it out!

The shop is open daily from 1pm to 1am. For more information and classtimes, please email morgan@as220.org, call 401-831-9327, or visit our myspace page.