On One
This is a warning: I may go off on one in the next few days.
Working in education, I can see significant changes in the political climate already. This government have been nothing if not like shit off a shovel for driving through their failing capitalist agenda.
So, I am waiting to see what happens with the vote on university fees later today with interest. I am also warming my hands on the glow of students protesting this afternoon. University fees is not even the half of it.
*stokes brazier*
I’ll be starting my rant from about here:
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)
Posted on December 9, 2010, in News, Politics and tagged Education, Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Student Protests, University Fees. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.
On wishes and horses 
Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question. Ivan Illich Deschooling Society (1973: 9)
That is brilliant.
I don’t know what to do about it though.
Buy the book, read the book, realise the whole education system is wrong. Organise a revolution and smash the system.
Put me in charge! 😛 In that order!
I do realise. I don’t think I can smash it today though.
How about working with transformation?
Robot’s in disguise? 😀
Oh yes, we are really onto something here.
Love it.
This is the Twitter feed
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23demo2010