SPSE

After a rich and lively conference this past weekend, there are some exciting new changes on the horizon. Please, lend me your eyes and your time:

The first is this memo and it’s new Gmail source. Our new e-mail address is SPSEChicago@gmail.com This e-mail account will be the central site for SPSE correspondence, including submissions. You should also expect regular updates, reflections, badgering, and more. Feel free to send us your news to share too: a new book, article, a funny story, hate mail, and the like.

The second is new media. We now have a Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts! Click on the hyperlinks to see the newly minted pages. Use and share them with promiscuity! 

The third is the future. We have been very lucky to have a small, stalwart circle of dedicated members. Alex Makedon, Guillemette and Allan Johnson, and Marge Oliker have carried almost all of the weight of the society for the past four years, and beyond. We owe them more than our thanks, we owe them the very fact that SPSE exists at all. And let’s be honest: this also indicates that many of us have not carried our full weight. The trend of hitting and running at our meeting has sadly become the norm. The bright side is that fortune has smiled on us anyway. We have a strong relationship to the American Philosophical Association — the only one of its kind in the field of Philosophy of Education — and a very sustainable conference location and date. Our publications has grown and improved and look more promising today than ever. But fate is an awfully unreliable thing to entrust with our collective future. Let’s not tempt her. I invite you to not only consider submitting and presenting at a future SPSE meeting, I ask for more: that you share the news of our little organization in whatever way you can. That you make it a priority to build and revitalize a dwelling place for ideas and the people who think them. Share your ideas here, too. Take some time to dwell and be present within this academic community.

Last thing: I arrived at the SPSE in 2006, when it was still called the Midwest Philosophy of Education Society. I was a master’s student. I didn’t know anything about anything. I pulled a hit and run. I had to play at a wedding in Texas that evening. Despite my haste and naiveté, I was greeted with Marge’s warm, tender smile and Richard Pipan’s fiery presidential address. My session had three people in it, but each gave me their full attention and took my work seriously. Then, in the hallway, Phil Smith recruited me to Ohio State and the rest is history. My point is that SPSE has had a crucial role in my becoming who and what I am today. I go to different conferences, including PES and the rest, but there is something I cherish about SPSE above all the others: it is a place where you can come as you are, a place and space of acceptance, but not the cheap or easy kind. It is also well-known for its passion and heated exchanges and all the rigamarole of authentic relationships. As you know, these places are RARE. Especially nowadays. Please, consider giving SPSE some of your time, even if it’s the time of reading these memos.

More soon… In the meantime I remain,

Yours truly,

Sam Rocha, SPSE President 

ps —  many thanks and congratulations to David Mosley and Emery Hyslop-Margison, our newly elected vice-president and secretary!