Educated to Death

0081: SOPA Blackout, #Occupy, and #Anonymous Taught My Class the Value of #Democracy and Protest

#revolution #sschat #educ

We’ve been discussing social movements, protests, and democracy in my fine arts classes of all places. We’ve been learning songs from social movements, protest songs and all. Our learning has been aided by the occupy movement, anonymous, and the Blackouts against SOPA and PIPA. Yesterday, during the blackout my class and I called the representatives from our area, and asked via speaker phone that they vote to keep information free for everyone. The passage of this type of legislation would have a huge impact on us as a class. We rely heavily on the internet and our ability to pull from and add to it, not just in class, but in our daily lives. Today we discussed the impact of the blackout, and our class call. Several heard this morning that some senators were backing down from SOPA and PIPA. We confirmed this, but understand that this isn’t final. My learners were elated to have been a part of something so monumental. They wrote reflections. I’ll post those separately. I witnessed new students today. They were more human than yesterday. They were somehow older. Wiser. They were not children; rather, they were powerful citizens who had just discovered their voices. Is this how revolutionaries are born?