| monica ross on Wed, 8 Oct 2003 08:15:39 +0200 (CEST) |
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| <nettime> : Re: New Media Education and Its Discontent |
Re: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 Are Flagan <[email protected]>: "This is why your >readymade-for-teacher-conference aphorisms about "educators who educate >people to think for themselves" stink of the implicit move toward >intellectual narrowing and oppression that in turn invokes your frequent >anti-intellectual charge." isn't the logic of this sentence a bit like saying that people who encourage free speech"stink of the implicit move toward intellectual narrowing and oppression" ? what is all this fear of thinking as a valid activity in itself? furious students are usually furious about being ripped off financially for a poor education in terms of production facilities, not enough knowledge, not enough teachers, poor teaching or teachers who could not think generously, or independently enough, to adjust their methods or knowledges to a specific constituency of either an individual student or group of students and their always changing agendas. teaching and learning is a discourse between people at different points in a constellation of exchange. a discourse shifts, mutates, allows for difference, invokes and revokes, gives up,starts again, challenges and shares. one students/teachers stance or passion can be respected and can even be illuminating to others whether subscribed to personally or not:- even if it's perceived as a minority or peculiar position. you might not always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need.....isn't the possibility of the unprescribed opening towards an unexpected idea or approach one of the things that any educational discourse should have the potential to provide? How else do you get to know something you didn't know you could know? And how otherwise do non hegemonic knowledges,old or new, get into the official curriculum's discourse? If Are Flanagans angry mail was about an insensitivity to the restrictive conditions of teaching/learning as a commodity exchange wouldn't it more useful to get mad about that rather than attacking an individual who has a different critical perspective on its economically driven limitations? Should some forms of knowledge and knowing be censured if they're not currently fashionable or of immediate market value? Yes, some people are getting paid and others are paying - in some countries, including ones rich enough for it to be free to all. and some rich countries aggressively market their forms of education to students in non western countries at twice the price for their home students, making education a highly profitable business. Maybe the price of having, or not having, knowledge, never mind the restriction of its power through market economics, ironically known as consumer choice, is the issue that is distorting this contest about how and what should be available to know. Maybe the idea of "educators who educate >people to think for themselves" is so sidelined by the economics of >education that we 've been conveniently persuaded into thinking of it as a >superfluous cult activity which shouldn't be encouraged? mr monica ross http://www.justfornow.net 07970 450514 [email protected] # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]