0170: Dear teachers, students, and other dissidents

Monday, May 28, 2012

0170: Dear teachers, students, and other dissidents

#education #SOSchat #revolution #occupyedu

We’ve been conditioned to do nothing more than consume. While we hear whispers of competing in a global market, and communicating and collaborating on a grand scale, these are but whispers. These are whispers that are intended to silence the would be revolutionaries and sate those of us who are just progressive enough to hope and reflect, but too weak and fearful to act. For years we’ve been subtly conditioned to love the machine that oppresses us. We’re taught to feed it. We teach others to do the same. If we don’t, we’re written off as lunatics or ineffective. As some of us grow weary of lies we become restless and a mite bit bold. We approach the curtain that conceals the fool who claims to be the wizard. We’ve been taught to be blind and love the lie.

If you see or are beginning to see you must do what you can to resist. If you are a teacher, you are the one’s to whom I primarily write, you must do whatever is in your power to lay yourself on the cogs of this machine and disrupt the standardization and massification of the people. Problematicize your lessons. Teach critically. Reject the doublethink and speak that perpetuates the current system.

The specifics of your own action is to be fleshed out by you. I offer no direction other than an idea that may function either as a catalyst or encouragement. You may dismiss me as a fool or embrace me as a friend. I do not intend to be neutral and neither should you. Cheers friends, and happy reflecting.