The brand-spanking new Mediascapes book

The Challenge for Change book, all 700+ pages of it, has gone to the publishers for a copy edit. That means that beast has been laid to rest for now, until we get it back from MQUP at which point we’ll have to go through the copy edit comments, incorporate them (or justify not incorporating them), come up with an index, and wax and polish. The book will likely come out in February 2010, although I’m still hoping for a Xmas release. That will be my first major academic publishing credit and I can hardly wait…

In the mean time, however, I have reason to celebrate: the new third edition of “Mediascapes: New Patterns in Canadian Communication,” (pictured above, held by a sun burnt me) edited by Leslie Shade, has been released by Nelson. This dandy undergraduate textbook for media and communication students is awesome. Leslie has done a bang-up job polishing this new edition into a gem of a pedagogical tool. With many new contributions and a shuffling of the structure of the book, the new version beats the old by leaps and bounds. Add to that a cover designed by my friend and colleague Mél Hogan, and I’m stoked to have a chapter in there! I co-authored a chapter on Canadian cultural policy with Ira Wagman, and I owe him (and Leslie) mucho thanks for this amazing opportunity. To contribute to a textbook while still a student is a great honour, one I won’t forget any time soon.

In other news, we just finished with our Five Year Cinema Politica Anniversary party - an amazing event that the super-human Svetla organized while coordinating the network, working part time, going to student tribunals and senate meetings, running in and winning the GSA election, and writing a paper for Leslie. Man, we need a vacation! Now, it’s time to get this Canada Council grant application finished, plus my two papers for the upcoming congress conference at the end of May…oh and that pesky Framing Harper Art Threat contest…

Oh, and if you’d like to help sales, you can read about the book here and even buy it!

I don’t usually post other articles or essays in their entirety, but this one is pretty good and not too long, and since this is one of my few professed academic interests, it just seems like the thing to do. I’ve lifted it from the ICAAP Radical Pedagogy site [pictured at left is one of the "founding figures" of radical pedagogy, Paulo Freire]:

What is Radical Pedagogy

Timothy McGettigan

The concept, “radical pedagogy,” has many different meanings. For some, a discussion of radical pedagogy implies an analysis of the deeply politicized aspects of educational institutions, policies and practices—and, further, that education can and must be oriented towards radical social change (Freire, 1970, 1997; Giroux, 1997; McLaren, 1998; Shor, 1992). For others, radical pedagogy refers to cutting edge developments in the field of education: the latest theories, methods and practices that promise to reinvent fundamentally the processes of teaching and learning. Different as these perspectives may appear to be, they are, nevertheless, linked quite closely. Radical pedagogy is all about knowledge and education, and how they can (or should) change to best serve the purposes of both educators and the educated. Since the one constant in the universe is change and because education has come to be among the most important social institutions in the world, then it is very important to consider as broadly as possible the nature of education as it exists today—as well as how it might change as we move into the future. That will be the task of this journal. Radical Pedagogy will be a forum for the discussion of education and change.

Important as the institution of education happens to be, it is far from perfect. There are many who do not have adequate access to education, there are places where educational opportunities exist, but they are woefully inadequate (Kozol, 1991), and there are those who are ill-served by being a part of educational institutions (Eisenstein, 1996; Ladsen-Bilings, 1997; Murrel, 1997; Willis, 1977). For these and a myriad of other reasons education will change. No institution that has so many vocal critics can ignore the call for change. There are millions, or, more likely, billions of people who have opinions about what is wrong with education and why it must change “for the better.” But, what is “better education” and how can the enormous institutions that serve the goal of education be changed for the better?

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