Ruth Rikowski's 57th News Update

Well, we seem to have reached the end of a long line of something or other. I am nearly back to something like myself after a long bout of illness (never really felt so ill before, but there you go).

Next, we had to get a new computer with more memory to handle all the latest software. However, the upshot of all that was that I lost all my groups for sending out this newsletter (over 400 subscribers)! Dear oh dear! Oh well – such is life!

So, I have decided to simply insert my newsletter on this blog. For the foreseeable future, I will be writing this 3 times a year – end April, end August and end December. So, if you are interested in reading about some of the latest of what the Rikowski’s have been up to, do check out this blog at around these times. The entries will also be simpler and more succinct.

So, here goes with the first of this variety.

* Glenn Rikowski is now a Visiting Scholar in the Department for Education at Anglia Ruskin University

* Glenn Rikowski is giving 2 talks on ‘Education and Crisis’ over the next couple of months - one at Anglia Ruskin University on 21^st May 2014 and the other at the International Conference on Critical Education, held in Thessaloniki, Greece on 23^rd-26^th June 2014.

* Haralambos and Holborn et al continue to give coverage to Glenn’s work in ‘Sociology: themes and perspectives’ (8^th ed, 2013). Well, better than that – they are saying that the evidence (which they give) is pointing decidedly towards Rikowski being right over Hatcher. Not that we want to be right about these things; we wish that the commercialisation and privatisation agenda did not continue to gather pace, but this is the stark reality and don’t want to be having the ‘wool pulled over our eyes’ and all that.

* Glenn has now put lots of his articles up on ‘Academia’. See: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

* We have a new and improved version of our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website. See:  www.flowideas.co.uk

* We are both now members of the Marx Memorial Library

* The London Radical Book Fair is on at the Bishopsgate Institute on 10^th May 2014. Last year it was held at Conway Hall and we really enjoyed it, so plan to go again. There will be lots of stalls from radical booksellers and publishers, artists and activists and 2 book prizes: Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and the Little Rebels Children’s Book Award.

* There are 2 new items up on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog - http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/: ‘New Left Book Club: Call for Papers’ and ‘Education, Marxism and Society’