I haven't learned any of the most useful things in life through school, not even media literacy. In fact, having done both academic and non academic learning at the same time since even high school (I'm 30+), it has only blatantly shown me how far behind academia really is. I mostly just spend time UNLEARNING what academia has taught me.
Hey Hey--this post is about higher ed and YES so with you on all of this. I've often thought about going back for my PhD and so many liberatory folks I talk to tell me how awful the institutions can be around trying to follow non-normative, out of the box, or disruptive interests. Which beckons to your question: what's the point!
The problems actually start so much earlier in k-12, where our systems basically indoctrinate students into being industrialized workers, compartmentalizing their time into bite-sized chunks, with gutted budgets so the good exhausted educators' ability to actually create an educated population in even just the very basic ways is so hampered.
I've been thinking and writing and actively working through alternatives to that model, ones that especially center kids owning their interests, time, and life while understanding their responsibility to know the histories of oppression we're all playing out and our responsibility to change that.
My hunch is: if kids know in their bones what it means to have their personhood and freedom protected, know how to dream audacious things and create them, and are taught history and our collective story in a way that centers the most harmed, they will go into the world challenging the status quo.
That type of education is a very far cry from the industrialized model we see today.
PS thanks for the shout out with the winter solstice zine!
Just posted a "girl, same" note because FUCK, the energy has been so so intense at work. The institution is just so so so not built for creating safer spaces for this kind of collective trauma/processing...I hate so much about it!! Thanks for this, it helped me feel less alone.
I haven't learned any of the most useful things in life through school, not even media literacy. In fact, having done both academic and non academic learning at the same time since even high school (I'm 30+), it has only blatantly shown me how far behind academia really is. I mostly just spend time UNLEARNING what academia has taught me.
Hey Hey--this post is about higher ed and YES so with you on all of this. I've often thought about going back for my PhD and so many liberatory folks I talk to tell me how awful the institutions can be around trying to follow non-normative, out of the box, or disruptive interests. Which beckons to your question: what's the point!
The problems actually start so much earlier in k-12, where our systems basically indoctrinate students into being industrialized workers, compartmentalizing their time into bite-sized chunks, with gutted budgets so the good exhausted educators' ability to actually create an educated population in even just the very basic ways is so hampered.
I've been thinking and writing and actively working through alternatives to that model, ones that especially center kids owning their interests, time, and life while understanding their responsibility to know the histories of oppression we're all playing out and our responsibility to change that.
My hunch is: if kids know in their bones what it means to have their personhood and freedom protected, know how to dream audacious things and create them, and are taught history and our collective story in a way that centers the most harmed, they will go into the world challenging the status quo.
That type of education is a very far cry from the industrialized model we see today.
PS thanks for the shout out with the winter solstice zine!
Just posted a "girl, same" note because FUCK, the energy has been so so intense at work. The institution is just so so so not built for creating safer spaces for this kind of collective trauma/processing...I hate so much about it!! Thanks for this, it helped me feel less alone.
Yes! I'm sure you're dealing with it, too. It's so intense. Glad we're in this together!