<nettime> : Re: New Media Education and Its Discontent

[monica ross <Monica.Ross@ncl.ac.uk>]

Re: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 Are Flagan <areflagan@transcodex.net>:

 "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
Monica.Ross@ncl.ac.uk

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