September/October 2012 cover

For the the past three decades, the neoliberal restructuring of education has sought to implant market logic and coroporate-style management into the classroom, transforming students into clients who shoulder the financial burden of their education. This issue of Briarpatch looks at the university as a critical field of contestation, and how students and youth are organizing in the classroom and in the streets.

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  • Magazine

    Students, not clients

    by Valerie Zink   Sep 1, 2012   3 min read

    At a time when post-secondary education is a minimal requirement for obtaining an average income, much the same as a high school diploma was for the parents of striking students, demands for free tuition hardly betray inordinate entitlement or fanciful utopianism.

  • Magazine

    Pipeline to prison

    by Amanda Gebhard   Sep 1, 2012   7 min read

    Canada’s education system, imposed upon Indigenous people for hundreds of years, plays a powerful role in constructing the notion of public enemies in need of discipline and containment.

  • Magazine

    From the classroom to the boardroom

    by Student organizers in Montreal*   Sep 1, 2012   13 min read

    With constitutional challenges to the Special Law pending in Quebec courts, the fate of the student movement very much depends on whether the law will be massively defied beginning August 13, when three of 14 CÉGEPs are scheduled to reopen for the completion of the suspended winter semester.

  • Magazine

    Defunding the public interest

    by Clare O’Connor and Kalin Stacey   Sep 1, 2012   14 min read

    Some PIRG supporters fear that adopting controversial positions will provoke attack. Especially after a defunding effort, PIRGs tend to endure a chilling effect during which volunteers and staff can be seduced by “neutrality” and engage in self-censorship.

  • Magazine

    Red light on the Red Cross in Haiti?

    by Stefan Christoff   Sep 1, 2012   7 min read

    More than two years after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti, there’s little to show for the $200 million in donations pledged to the Canadian Red Cross for reconstruction efforts. After historic outpourings of support, why has there been so little progress on the ground in Haiti?

  • Magazine

    Sing, Brother

    by Anonymous   Sep 1, 2012   10 min read

    I reached Edmonton’s High Level Bridge as clusters of snowflakes clouded the sky. It was Friday night, already dark, and I was alone but for a young man in black who passed me from the opposite ledge.

  • Magazine

    Hearing Two-Spirits

    by Cortney Dakin   Sep 1, 2012   4 min read

    A combination of both the masculine and feminine, the Two-Spirited are a distinct gender with roles and responsibilities unique to their dual nature.

  • Magazine

    Infored

    by Joshua Campbell   Sep 1, 2012   3 min read

    Rappers like InfoRed and Eekwol have great potential to reconnect youth to their culture through Aboriginal storytelling.

  • Magazine

    Captain Naphi and the great white mole

    by Yutaka Dirks   Sep 1, 2012   3 min read

    The origin of the railsea is unknown. Some say the gods put down the train tracks or that they extruded from the ground like exposed fossils. Others say that the rails were written “in heavenly script, that people unknowingly recited as they travelled.”

  • Magazine

    The combustible campus

    by Enda Brophy   Sep 1, 2012   5 min read

    The neoliberalization of the university has produced its own antagonists, and it is from the ranks of those who stand to lose the most from this transformation – students and academic workers – that the greatest conflicts have emanated.