0112: Good Morning World. Who Turned Off the Fiction?
#education #NDAA #occupy #panopticon
I have always read dystopian fiction with great fervor. The stories always seemed just beyond reality. It could happen, but it wasn’t happening. It was a nice escape that came with a warning. I’ve returned to these books and stories throughout my life with increasing alarm. 1984, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, numerous comics, games, and other dystopian landscapes have all been, or seemed to have been, a disturbing release from the day to day. A release with a warning. I was bouncing back and forth between Warren Ellis’ ‘Transmetropolitan’ and Cory Doctorow’s ‘Little Brother’ the other night and became a little more uneasy than usual. My beloved dystopian fiction genre no longer seems to fit in the realm of fiction at all. Huxley was considered a futurist. The future seems to have arrived, ____________ (insert your own observations). Every institution from public schools to the military to our beloved government is waxing strangely Orwellian. I am not shocked. This has been a long time coming, I know, but it certainly hurts as the light grows brighter, as the fiction grows dimmer.
Good morning world. Who turned off the fiction?
0072: Public #Education, #Schools from Hell, and the Dystopian Landscape
#SOS #revolution #teaching
I think my view of public education via my experience, micro- and macro-, has merged with my views of dystopian realities. The places I’ve worked give or take a few have filled me each day with that feeling of grayness that is delivered in Orwellian dystopias. Bells ringing each hour, students being herded through halls to their next box for training, a regimen so strict and insidious that it can’t even be escaped with outright rebellion, students occasionally disappearing to alternative schools who can quite cut the mustard, and finally the Test. Those are all environmental, but the worst part is the deadness in everyone’s eyes. Every pair is overcome with a great sense of ennui and spiritual resignation— every pair, teachers, students, administrators. We are all chained to our numbers, our scores.
I left the glorious field of algebra, to a kinder music for this reason. I get to try to rekindle a fire of some sort in those eyes. I, with my class, get to try and create another reality. But, it’s always cut short with the bell. And, I must also focus on the test, building vocabulary and the like, but I am free and crafty enough to do it in my own way. My chain is longer now than when I taught algebra. Surely, it will be tightened when we enter test review, but for now it’s a bit longer.
Freedom, stolen or perceived, in a public school is a rare commodity, and if it is to be had it must be stolen. That is tragic, and a travesty.
