Like a lot of illustrations I do for education sociologist Mark Garrison, this one draws on my political cartooning skills, as much as my caricature and illustration skills. The focus of Mark’s article, Infaming the Public, Part IV: Public Self-Consciousness and Assessment for Democratic Renewal is much broader than this cartoon would imply, but draws upon his discussion of the public – parents, teachers, students – fighting back against top-down imposition of the Common Core Standards. Michelle Rhee has become the poster child of the school reform movement; as such she has made herself an excellent target for satire. That broom she wields was prominent on her TIME magazine cover.

Here is a caricature of Emile Durkheim for the Cranky Sociologists blog. You can see more of these at the gallery of the Cranky Sociologists blog, with commentary by SocProf. Durkheim is one of the Big Three of sociology, along with Max Weber and Karl Marx. He did a great deal in defining the unique subject of the discipline – the social – and in developing rigorous standards of study, proof and argumentation to establish sociology as a real science.

This illustration shows Durkheim railing against two social forces, individualism and anomie that he felt were destroying traditional social fabric and undermining modern attempts at social cohesion. So naturally Thing One and Thing Two sprung to mind.

As education becomes more and more privatized, the more the intellectual property concerns of education services companies become a problem for a publicly accountable system of education. Mark Garrison explores the consequences of the “user agreements” public school teachers must sign before administering Common Core Standards testing – a commitment which poses problems for public assessment of the tests themselves, curricular planning, due process and transparency of democratic government. My cartoon above provides some comic relief — but Mark’s a cranky, funny writer, so don’t stop with me. Worth a read.

These two illustrations accompany the third installment of Mark Garrison’s critique of the Common Core Standards and the politics of education reform. Such strange times we live in, when public education is under attack.

Famous theorist of the “power elite”, C. Wright Mills is one of my favorite sociologists. SocProf writes about him at Cranky Sociologists, and the above illustration goes with it. Pay the article a visit, Mills is always worth another look.

Another cranky sociologist profiled by SocProf at the Cranky Sociologists blog. SocProf tells me that Gans saw this illustration and appreciated it, which is always nice to hear. His classic article on the Fifteen Uses of Poverty is a lovely piece of dry-witted snark — but not published on some blog, but in a peer-reviewed journal.

I have begun illustrating a series on formative sociologists at the Cranky Sociologists blog. The above is Harriet Martineau, about whom you can read more here. I will add, though, that given Martineau outsold Dickens during her time, it is sad she is not more well known today. Add her to the long list of neglected women intellectuals.

Speaking of illustrations for Mark Garrison, I thought I had posted this earlier. But, no, I got distracted by the social media I posted it to. Anyway, this illustration accompanies Mark’s critique of a scheme by education companies to mine data on students and sell it back to schools to tailor (or Taylorize, as the case may be) hi-tech education solutions in place of teacher creativity. Ridiculous and irritating.

Illustration for a critique of Common Core propaganda by Mark Garrison, sociologist of education.

Relatedly, the Washington Post published a letter of resignation by a public school history teacher in Syracuse, NY, based mostly on his disgust with the standardization of education the Common Core inflicts on teachers, students and parents alike.

Arizona and Tennessee seem to be in competition for who can impose the cruelest and dumbest laws on its citizens. In Tennessee, the legislature is moving forward with a bill to deduct 30% of TANF benefits to families whose children do not perform well in school. In Arizona we see yet another bathroom policing law, attempting to prevent people who identify with a gender different from what they were born with from using the bathroom they prefer. To get as far as trying to regulate this sort of thing, it must be keeping some folks up at night. I don’t know why. Maybe real social problems are too complex for their little minds.

Drawn in Paper by 53.

UPDATE: Some readers seem confused by the word “prevert.” I assure it is not an unintentional misspelling on my part, but actually a deliberate use of a mispronunciation of “pervert.” You can find it in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” and in other satirical treatments of moralistic people in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Another option would be “poivoit” – that derives more from a downstate NY regional dialect. Anyway, there ya go.