« back one page
« Speakers, Writers, and Researchers database
Heather-jane Robertson
Heather-jane Robertson is an author, educator and activist who has been at the forefront of public education debates for three decades. She has contributed to many scholarly and popular publications dealing with education and society, and addressed audiences around the world on the vulnerability and resiliency of public education. She is the co-author (with Maude Barlow) of 1994’s best-selling book, Class Warfare: The Assault on Canada’s Schools, author of No More Teachers, No More Books (1998) and Great Expectations: Essays on School and Society (2007). She has performed (with varying degrees of success) as a political candidate, as fodder for a weekly right-wing panel of political pundits, as an actor in amateur theatre, as a cat-trick trainer, a grade three teacher, a ‘difficult’ employee and as the mother of two deeply subversive adult children. Currently, she is Vice-President and Treasurer of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Ottawa. What the Right has done right, and what the Left can learn. The Right has successfully forged a (pardon-the-expression) synergy between voters and their subconscious yearning for the simple, the familiar and the safe. When the real issues are complex, unfamiliar and risky, the Left faces a disadvantage that is difficult to counter through reasoned debate. ‘Framing’ issues in ways that resonate with hopes and fears may have debased political discourse, but it sure has translated into votes. Should the Left also go-for-the-gut? What would that look like?
top of page