We need to take sports seriously as arenas of immense power, with a mass appeal. Yet intellectuals have long since abandoned the sporting world. Why? What do we gain by handing over the persuasive power of sports to the worst elements of our culture, by allowing sports to become plagued by hyper-consumption, militarism, violence, sexism and homophobia? According to Matt Hern, not a whole lot. In a series of narratives, Hern makes an impassioned and entertaining plea for a more active engagement with sports, both physically and intellectually.

"If you are an unschooler, this book will be a joyful affirmation ... if you are still a little unclear about the history and philosophy of deschooling, here is a perfect introduction."--Kerlin Richter, "Hip Mama "

Debates about education often revolve around standardized testing, taxes and funding, teacher certification--everything except how to best help kids develop learning skills. "Everywhere All the Time" presents an array of historical and contemporary alternatives to traditional schooling, demonstrating that children's capacity to learn decreases as soon as they enter bureaucratic, institutional facilities.

Census data in the United States alone places the number of home-schooled children at five hundred thousand. Trends point toward an increasing skepticism of the ability of public schools--and private ones, based on similar pedagogy--to give kids what they need to be healthy, self-directed life learners. Major themes in this book include: children's self-directed learning, encouraging community-building and participation from parents in the learning process, critical thinking for active engagement and democratic self-governance, and alleviating the negative psychological effects of traditional schooling methods. It also includes the voices and artwork of alternatively schooled children themselves.

From Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Illich, and Emma Goldman to John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, and Grace Llewellyn, Matt Hern has compiled an impressive cast of educational pioneers to aid parents, kids, and teachers in the quest for effective learning strategies.

Matt Hern lives in Vancouver with his partner and daughters. He directs the Purple Thistle Centre (an alternative-to-school community center), is a founder of Vancouver Car-Free Day, is the author of "Deschooling Our Lives "and "Field Day," and lectures widely. His writings have been published on six continents and in many languages.

From dealing with the cops to dealing with your peers, from school and community to drugs and sex, from race and class to money and mental health, 'Stay Solid ' provides essential support for radically inclined teens who believe that it's possible for everyone to hold on to their values.

All countries have distinctive urban regions, but Canadian cities especially differ from one another in culture, structure, and history. Anthony Perl, Matt Hern, and Jeffrey Kenworthy reveal that despite the peculiarities and singular traits that each city embodies, a common logic has guided the development of transportation infrastructure across the country. Big Moves analyzes how Canada's three largest urban regions - Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver - have been shaped by the interplay of globalized imperatives, aspirations, activism, investment, and local development initiatives, both historically and in a contemporary context. Canadian urban development follows a distinct pattern that involves compromise between local viewpoints and values and the pursuit of global capital at particular historical junctures. As the authors show, the success or failure of each city to construct major mobility infrastructure has always depended on the timing of investments and the specific ways that cities have gained access to necessary capital. Drawing on urban mobility history and global city theory, this book delves into the details of the big moves that have affected transport infrastructure in major Canadian cities. Knowing where urban development will head in the twenty-first century requires understanding how cities' major mobility infrastructures were built. Big Moves explains the shape of Canada's three biggest cities and how their mix of expressways and rapid transit emerged.

Parks are importantly fertile places to talk about land. Whether its big national parks, provincial campgrounds, isolated conservation areas, destination parks, or humble urban patches of grass, we tend to speak of parks as unqualified goods. People think of parks as public or common land, and it is a common belief that parks are the best uses of land and are good for everyone. But no park is innocent. Parks are lionized as "natural oases," and urban parks as "pure nature" in the midst of the city -- but that's absurd. Parks are as "natural" as the roads or buildings around them, and just as political. Every park in North America is performing modernity and settler colonialism everyday. Furthermore, parks are not private property, but while they are called 'public', they are highly regulated spaces that normatively demand and closely control behaviours. Parks are a certain kind of property, and thus creations of law, and they are subject to all kinds of presumptions about what parks are for, and what kinds of people should be doing what kinds of things in them. Parks -- as they are currently constituted -- are colonial enterprises. On This Patch of Grass is an investigation into one small urban park -- Vancouver's Victoria Park, or Bocce Ball Park -- as a way to interrogate the politics of land. The authors grapple with the fact that they are uninvited guests on the occupied and traditional territories of the Musqueam (x ma k ay am), Squamish (Skwxwu7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (salilwata l) nations. But Bocce Ball Park is also a wonderful place in many ways, with a startling plurality of users and sovereignties, and all kinds of overlapping activities and all kinds of overlapping people co-existing more-or-less peaceably. It is a living exhibition of the possibilities of sharing land and perhaps offers some clues to a decolonial horizon. The book is a collaborative exercise between one white family and some friends looking at the park from a variety of perspectives, asking what we might say about this patch of grass, and what kinds of occupation might this place imply.

All countries have distinctive urban regions, but Canadian cities especially differ from one another in culture, structure, and history. Anthony Perl, Matt Hern, and Jeffrey Kenworthy reveal that despite the peculiarities and singular traits that each city embodies, a common logic has guided the development of transportation infrastructure across the country. Big Moves analyzes how Canada's three largest urban regions - Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver - have been shaped by the interplay of globalized imperatives, aspirations, activism, investment, and local development initiatives, both historically and in a contemporary context. Canadian urban development follows a distinct pattern that involves compromise between local viewpoints and values and the pursuit of global capital at particular historical junctures. As the authors show, the success or failure of each city to construct major mobility infrastructure has always depended on the timing of investments and the specific ways that cities have gained access to necessary capital. Drawing on urban mobility history and global city theory, this book delves into the details of the big moves that have affected transport infrastructure in major Canadian cities. Knowing where urban development will head in the twenty-first century requires understanding how cities' major mobility infrastructures were built. Big Moves explains the shape of Canada's three biggest cities and how their mix of expressways and rapid transit emerged.

Seeking new definitions of ecology in the tar sands of northern Alberta and searching for the sweetness of life in the face of planetary crises. Confounded by global warming and in search of an affirmative politics that links ecology with social change, Matt Hern and Am Johal set off on a series of road trips to the tar sands of northern Alberta-perhaps the world's largest industrial site, dedicated to the dirty work of extracting oil from Alberta's vast reserves. Traveling from culturally liberal, self-consciously "green" Vancouver, and aware that our well-meaning performances of recycling and climate-justice marching are accompanied by constant driving, flying, heating, and fossil-fuel consumption, Hern and Johal want to talk to people whose lives and fortunes depend on or are imperiled by extraction. They are seeking new definitions of ecology built on a renovated politics of land. Traveling with them is their friend Joe Sacco-infamous journalist and cartoonist, teller of complex stories from Gaza to Paris-who contributes illustrations and insights and a chapter-length comic about the contradictions of life in an oil town. The epic scale of the ecological horror is captured through an series of stunning color photos by award-winning aerial photographer Louis Helbig. Seamlessly combining travelogue, sophisticated political analysis, and ecological theory, speaking both to local residents and to leading scholars, the authors propose a new understanding of ecology that links the domination of the other-than-human world to the domination of humans by humans. They argue that any definition of ecology has to start with decolonization and that confronting global warming requires a politics that speaks to a different way of being in the world-a reconstituted understanding of the sweetness of life. Published with the help of funding from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan fund