Stratman, Dave
Recommended Author Index

Clicking on the title of an item takes you to the bibliographic page for the resource, which typically also contains an abstract, a link to the full text if it is available online, and links to related topics in the subject index. You can find items through the Title, Author, Subject, Chronological, Dewey, Library of Congress, and Format indexes.
Particularly recommended items are flagged with a red Connexions logo:

  1. Does Revolution Make Sense?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1998
    Fighting for revolution allows and demands that we abandon petty concerns and narrow issues and think big. Revolution forces us to try to understand the whole world and to imagine a new one. As we explore the inter-relatedness of the problems which we face, we can begin to understand all the many human interconnections which will provide the solution. A truly revolutionary movement will touch people's deepest desires and encompass their highest dreams.
  2. High Stakes Testing
    Why Are They Doing This To Our Kids?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    The tests are very destructive educationally. They test students on such a broad range of materials that teachers have to rush through the curriculum; they cannot allow real discussion or in-depth study. Education is reduced to memorization of disconnected facts.
  3. How Can We Step Outside the Box?
    Resource Type: Article
    To sustain our efforts and help them to grow, we need a solid core of relationships and ideas that confirm the best of what we know and do against the pressure of capitalist ideas and values. Building an organization of our own, an organization not dominated by capitalist ideas or by anti-worker ideology or by creeps, is how we step outside the box of corporate and elite domination.
  4. How the Unions Killed the Working Class Movement
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    An analysis of how the vertical integration of unions disempowers workers and forces them to use captilist systems such as courts instead of relying on friendship and solidarity.
  5. Let's Be Practical
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1997
    Building a movement to destroy capitalism and create a society which truly reflects the aspirations of most people, though it may sound scary, is actually more practical than trying to reform a union.
  6. Making Connections
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2001
    The pressure to view things narrowly and out of context is a form of social control. Without seeing connections, we can't make sense of the world, and if we can't make sense of the world, we can't change it. "Making connections" among the many different issues and areas of our experience is a vital task of the revolutionary movement.
  7. School Reform and the Attack on Public Education 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1997
    The education reform movement is part of a wider corporate and government plan to undermine democracy and strengthen corporate domination of our society.
  8. We Can Change the World 
    The Real Meaning Of Everyday Life
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1991
    Stratman draws on his experiences as a parent in the Boston school busing battle and later as Washington director of the National PTA, interviews with British coal miners and striking American meatpackers, and wide ranging research and historical analysis, to show that fundamental social change is possible. The key to changing the world he argues, lies in a different view of ordinary people.
  9. What Is Missing From the World?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1998
    The lack of a revolutionary alternative to capitalism has had a very negative effect on people's ability to organize a new movement for change. If there is no alternative to capitalism, then it seems we will forever have to give in to the companies' demands for jointness or pay cuts or two-tier systems and all the other claims made in the name of "competitiveness." With no alternative to capitalism, we cannot oppose its logic.
  10. Why We Can Change the World
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    Many good people support the "diversity" concept, because they see it as a way of building unity and respect for each other across cultural divides. But diversity is about "celebrating and respecting our differences." Despite many people's best intentions, it's not really about finding what we have in common, but about focusing on differences as if these supposed differences are what define us as human beings. Diversity as a framework, as a way of thinking about each other, will always stand in the way of the goal that most of us share, of multi-racial, multi-ethnic unity. Diversity in fact is no different from the basic capitalist view that society consists of various groups competing for their own interests. Such a view does not present any threat to capitalism or to inequality but reinforces it.
  11. You'll Never Be Good Enough: Schooling and Social Control
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1998
    The remarkable thing about the public schools isn't that some teachers become demoralized and "burned out," or that some students drop out or do poorly, but that so many teachers and students achieve so much in the face of a system designed to fail.