The Fault in Our Education System

Education: economic or enlightenment?

[academicactivism]

Working class in relation to neoliberal education and exclusivity...

“One initial approach is to conceive the multitude as all those who work under the rule of capital and thus potentially as the class of those who refuse the rule of capital. The concept of the multitude is thus very different from that of the working class... Working class is fundamentally a restricted concept based on exclusions.” -Hardt and Negri

Perhaps this quote relateds to neliberal education because it is often the working and creative class that are ‘othered’ in the classroom environment for their inability to conform to rigid standards such as sitting still and learning without moving and interacting. 

[academicactivism]

the problem is not with the intellectual quality, talent, or commitment of the individual persons working on a non-professional basis; it's the degraded circumstances in which higher education management compels them to work: teaching too many students in too many classes too quickly, without security, status...

Bousquet, “Your Problem Is My Problem”

[academicactivism]

Public assets and activities intended for the public good have been transferred into private hands.

Bousquet, “Your Problem Is My Problem”

[academicactivism]

It is not for the benefit of society that a few brilliant men should be brought forward at the expense of the multitude.

Mary Wollstonecraft, “On National Education”

[academicactivism]

Mixing a number of children together, and making them jointly pursue the same object.

Mary Wollstonecraft, “On National Education”

[academicactivism]

The primary strategy of turn-of-the-millennium neoliberalism is privatization, the term that describes the transfer of wealth and decision-making from public, more or less accountable decision-making bodies to individual or corporate, unaccountable hands."

Lisa Duggan, “Downsizing Democracy”

[academicactivism]

Neoliberal Education is....

Neoliberal education favours “reduced income and stagnant wages, long work hours, diminished community and commonwealth. fewer private and government services, poor physical and mental health care, competitive consumption, and the spread of money culture values.” 

-Lisa Duggan, “Downsizing Democracy”

[lolmythesis]

Teaching Students to Write for Standardized Tests Only Teaches Them to Write for Standardized Tests.

Rhetoric, Composition, and Pedagogy, University of Houston

Teaching in the Aftermath of the Test: Understanding and Addressing Student Conceptions of Writing in the Era of High-Stakes Testing

[fuckyeahdialectics]

Education doesn’t change the world. Education changes people. People change the world.

Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator, philosopher, critical pedagogist (unattributable)  (via fuckyeahdialectics)

[curlicuecal]

excellent X3

[libertarianhumanitarian]

[academicactivism]

Learning exists beyond the classroom! Neoliberal education attempts to organize and restrict specific subjects and topics from the curriculum. If people learn to question what they see and explore in any way that they can, then they will learn a lot more about themselves and the world around them,. 

[art-and-anarchism-deactivated20]

[giraffeteacher]

As you enter a classroom ask yourself this question: “If there were no students in the room, could I do what I am planning to do?” If your answer to the question is yes, don’t do it.

General Ruben Cubero (via giraffeteacher)

Teaching and learning is a process that requires collaboration, not just one-sided lectures. 

[fullpraxisnow]

Teachers whose dream is the transformation of society have to get control of a permanent process of forming themselves, and not wait for professional training from the establishment.

Paulo Freire | A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education (via fullpraxisnow)

Learning and teaching can be established beyond the formal classroom. If you want to teach, then help those around you to better understand their environments and the subjects not seen as significant in schools. If you want to learn, help yourself and others to question all that you see around you (you may not have all of the answers, but that just means that you will always have something to learn). 

[theyearofselfeducation]

There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes “the practice of freedom,” the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. The development in an educational methodology that facilitates this process will inevitably lead to tension and conflict within our society.

Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

[swamp-elf]

i hate how people with adhd/add/etc are made to feel like they are a problem. no. fuck you. you wanna talk problems? then let’s talk about our piece of shit system of education first. 

[academicactivism]

Neoliberal education is geared towards students who can sit still for long periods of time and stare at the same subject for extended amounts. Also, larger classroom sizes with fewer teachers prevents those who need additional help to get the help that they need. students with ‘learning disabilities’ should not feel alienated in educational environments and should instead get the attention that they need to flourish and learn. Neoliberal education is ableist. 

[azspot]

The problem is that we have an educational system that’s based on taking our natural penchant for exploration and fashioning it into a willingness to take on mind-numbing routine. This is because our educational system was designed to produce employable products suitable for jobs, but it is jobs that are precisely going to give way to an economy increasingly based on one-off opportunities.

Eric Weinstein (via azspot)

This is a great explanation for what neoliberal education is and how it impacts students and teachers negatively.