From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Wed May 2 22:17:24 2001 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 22:17:24 -0400 Subject: New issue of Stay Free! out now! Message-ID: Hello, The new issue of Stay Free! magazine should be finding its way to a store near you any moment now. But please consider buying it the old fashioned way (from me): SUBSCRIBE TO STAY FREE! 3 issues for $10 Single issues $4 http:///www.stayfreemagazine.org/order.html - - - - - - - - - - - Issue #18 | the "history" issue Contents include: Introduction [see below] Selling Advertising: Inger Stole discusses the history of the advertising industry's public relations. WarXploitation: A brief look at ads during World War II. Trivial Pursuit: an interview with historian and author James Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me). Top Ten Most Embarrassing Moments in the History of the American Textbook. Dumbing Down the Kids: Jane Healy explains the impact of media use on learning. MeBay! Ebay for Fun and Profit. When Law Goes Pop: Richard Sherwin reveals the influence of television on the legal system. Advertising History According to the Textbooks: reprinted from the Journal of Advertising. Your Ad Here: As advertisers rush to cover every available surface, are they driving us insane? and, naturally, much more! - - - - - - - INTRODUCTION TO THE "HISTORY" ISSUE In New York over the past year, the school board has been soliciting various corporations to revolutionize the public school system. Its solutions? Not increased teacher pay, or lower classroom size, or anything nearly so mundane as adding desks: The school board wants a commercial web portal and laptops for all, fourth grade on up. The plan, as you might imagine, is baldly profit-driven. The Board's feasibility study calculates the "Lifetime Value" of its student "customers"; uses "content" as a synonym for "education"; and promises to move away from "teacher-directed" lessons to computer-centered, "teacher-as-facilitator" activities. But the pitch doesn't stop at the bottom line. In its request for proposals, the Board treats the laptop-ification of grade school as a matter of life or death. In the now standard rhetoric, the drive for computers is compared to "other great American opportunities or crises," like "bringing electricity to all corners of the nation" and "finding a cure for polio." Despite these token nods to the past, the Board's plan is almost willfully ahistorical. The same claims it makes for computers in the classroom were made for radio and film in the 1920s and 1930s, for television in the 1950s (which one broadcaster called a "21-inch classroom"), and even for now obscure devices like John B. Watson's "teaching machine." Some of these technologies have no doubt added real value to learning, but not one has come anywhere near to being the cure-all, the surrogate teacher that techno-utopians promised. So how can anyone who purports to know something about education push computers as a panacea? This question is the focus of this issue of Stay Free! How can history survive in a country ruled by commerce? Short answer: It can't. If Martin Luther King Jr. selling internet gear hasn't yet driven the point home, the repeated attempts of marketers to pass off advertising as education reveals the Man's ingrained loathing of certain types of learning. History--a true, warts-and-all inquiry into the past--is a nuisance. So it should be no surprise that the happily-ever-after pablum that passes as history in schools is, in the end, a lot like advertising. There is, however, a notable difference: Advertising is focused on the future, targeting our ever-increasing quest for the new. So while advertising aims to increase desire, this history (or pseudo-history) hopes to kill it. By decontextualizing events, by erasing competing arguments, by boring students to death, pseudo-history inspires nothing but a distaste for history. Therein lies a great irony, which we discuss elsewhere (starting on p. 22): History has become the least imaginative and most hated subjects taught in school precisely because it is so important. Stay Free! has long wrestled with the need for alternatives to the culture of advertising. Rather than simply attacking something like "advertising" or "corporatization"--rather than defining what you're for by what you're against--to create the culture we want to support. These are, after all, two ways of addressing the same problem. To push for historical understanding, to read and ask questions about the social and political world, this is to counter market ideology... which is why we chose to devote an issue to history, and why, in the future, I hope to provide historical context for everything we write about. Carrie McLaren From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Thu May 3 12:37:49 2001 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 12:37:49 -0400 Subject: Stay Free! errata -- wrong URL Message-ID: whoops, the link for buying Stay Frees is: http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/order.html From carrie at stayfreemagazine.org Wed May 23 14:21:47 2001 From: carrie at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 14:21:47 -0400 Subject: Stay Free! update | 23 May 2001 Message-ID: :: A haphazardly compiled summary from the world of Stay Free! :: Included herein: a) New on Stay Free's website: "True Gentleman Urinates on Dumpster" by Jason Torchinsky (from issue #17) b) Correction (from new issue of the magazine, #18) c) Recent links of interest d) Upcoming New York Event - - - - - - - - - - - a. Hello, Now that the new issue (#18) of Stay Free! is out, I'm finally finishing getting the old issue on the site. This appeared in the last magazine: True Gentleman Urinates on Dumpster: Jason Torchinsky Tours the Playboy Mansion http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/17/playboy.html [ by Jason Torchinsky ] Last week, I received an invitation from Johnnie Walker to "The Journey of Taste." This Journey was to take place at none other than the Playboy Mansion. Wow. I was suitably impressed, not just with the details of the event but that the Johnnie Walker Company was insightful and sensitive enough to realize that I, Jason Torchinsky, was among the "true gentlemen" in Los Angeles. Their feat in deducing this was even more extraordinary when one considers the scene in which I received the invite: after 11 a.m., I'm barely awake, still unshowered, and standing in the living room with one hand firmly in my underpants. Yes, I thought to myself as I walked barefoot through the remains of a pizza that littered the floor, I'd be delighted to have "My Share of the Scotch" with you, fellow gentlemen! After my euphoria at being mistaken for a "true gentleman" had worn off, I began to think about this event. What was Johnnie Walker up to? Obviously, he felt that people of my age, sex, and income just weren't drinking as much Scotch as they could be. Well, they're right. I have no interest in Scotch, largely for the same reason that this invite seems so insipid: Scotch reeks of dorky white guys trying to seem like wealthier dorky white guys. The Johnnie Walker Company is playing on some sort of extinct idea of young manhood-the sort that wrote letters to Playboy inquiring about the best hi-fi to buy or what kind gift one brings to a day of yachting- a type of man I haven't even heard from since I found my dad's book of Playboy party jokes. Still, as posturing and dorky as the event promised to be, it was still the Playboy Mansion, which is probably worth seeing for the hell of it, and there's going to be free food and booze, so why not? I called and made reservations for three.. continued at http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/17/playboy.html - - - - - - b. CORRECTION! (on page 37 of the new issue of Stay Free -- in stores now!) The correct answer to "Pop Quiz" question #3 is C, not D. (Coca-Cola strategists in Germany did just about everything they could to cozy up to Nazis EXCEPT place a swastika on bottle caps.) - - - - c. RECENT ITEMS OF INTEREST "Birds learn to copy cell phone tones" http://itn.co.uk/news/20010511/business/14mobile.shtml "Researchers delve into environmental effects of products" http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/statetimes.html (If you read between the lines in this otherwise dry news story about the environmental hazards of pharmeceuticals, you will find the sad tale of a teeny tiny fish who must endure life in the sea without fins, dependent on the cruel sway of the current, helpless against predators and unable to cure his hunger or find solace in dreams for offspring never born.) - - - - - - - - - - d. NEW YORK EVENT Pranks and Hoaxes: a panel discussion Wednesday, June 6, 8 pm (part I) & 9:30 (part II) Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in association with the T***** Comedy Festival (22nd St. and 7th Ave.) Matt Besser (Upright Citizens Brigade) Joey Skaggs (hoaxster/prankster/pain-in-the-ass) Scott Pelligrino (Mediaattack.com) Andrew Boyd (Billionaires for Bush or Gore.com) Carrie McLaren (Stay Free!) Moderated by Mark Dery, freelance intellectual. Admission is $10, a ripoff considering shows at UCB usually only cost $5...I say skip the panel and go to Harold Night instead! or if you really want to spend ten bucks you can go see Mr. Skaggs, who will have his own show the night before (Tues. June 5; same time/place). If you haven't seen his stuff before, it is worth your while. New issue of Stay Free! magazine in stores now! -- or buy it here: http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/order.html NOTE TO MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBERS: If you are a paid subscriber, you should be on the extra special paid subscriber list -- not this one. Please unsubscribe by following the directions below and email carrie at stayfreemagazine.org to add you to the other list.