Against idiocy
In a world confronting a quite possibly lethal dose of American rightwing madness, it's almost always a relief to turn to Canada, where sanity does more than survive in scant pockets. Among Canada's many treasures are its anti-globalization and anti-privatization activists, including one of my personal heroes, Maude Barlow, whose writings, among them the book Blue Gold (co-authored with Tony Clarke), are a wonderful resource for those of us who are trying to educate people about the all-important issue of water privatization. But a no less impressive anti-privatization voice is that of educator Heather-jane Robertson, who epitomizes sweet reasonableness in a marvellous one-hour talk she gave to the British Columbia Teachers' Federation's Public Education NOT FOR SALE conference in Vancouver in February 2005. (You can download the talk in a variety of formats, audio and video, here.) Among the most interesting parts of her talk comes towards the conclusion, when she refers to a recent article entitled Teaching Against Idiocy. She explains that, according to this article, the word idiot derives from the Greek word idios, which refers not to someone who is stupid so much as someone whose mental horizons consist only of their petty personal concerns. For the Greeks, the person who was not concerned with communal interests (and therefore the political) was, quite simply, an idiot. This part of her talk helped clarify for me the nature of my own teaching praxis, which is essentially about trying to turn idiots into citizens. It seems to me that there will be no revival of social democracy on a significant scale until young people tune out of the mass media, which is trying to reduce them to idiots, and embrace communal concerns. Teachers can help them do this a thousand different ways, and I am sure that most of us are at least trying to combat idiocy - which, I'm sure, is one of the main reasons the rightwing wants to see education privatized in the first place.
POSTSCRIPT: 'Teaching Against Idiocy' was written by Walter C. Parker, was published in Phi Delta Kappan in January 2005, and is available online here. (Do read it, it's wonderful.) A 2001 talk by Heather-jane Robertson on education privatization is available here.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Someone who gets what privatization is really all about. The 'strategic objective of those who would “Starve the Beast”, writes The Black Commentator, 'poison the fiscal well with deficits and tax cuts until the federal government cannot deliver popularly desired political goods such as health care, much less help the states and cities provide basic services. Corporations then step into the void – or as much of the needs-market as is profitable – to sell vital services.'
POSTSCRIPT: 'Teaching Against Idiocy' was written by Walter C. Parker, was published in Phi Delta Kappan in January 2005, and is available online here. (Do read it, it's wonderful.) A 2001 talk by Heather-jane Robertson on education privatization is available here.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Someone who gets what privatization is really all about. The 'strategic objective of those who would “Starve the Beast”, writes The Black Commentator, 'poison the fiscal well with deficits and tax cuts until the federal government cannot deliver popularly desired political goods such as health care, much less help the states and cities provide basic services. Corporations then step into the void – or as much of the needs-market as is profitable – to sell vital services.'
