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Education
With a possible new educational project to be announced in the new year, I am reposting some articles on ‘alternative’ education that make for good reading. This is a piece published by Neil Cooper in Line Magazine earlier this year. Saturday, 30 July 2011 Agitate! Educate! Organise! – The Day Noam Chomsky Came To Town [...]
My first piece of coursework is due in this week. It's a "self reflective" piece of a thousand words on one's own political socialisation: how, when and with what influences did you become aware of politics. It will be a challenge for me - I have twice as many years to cover as most of my classmates for a start! And have written many tens of thousands of words about my "political journey". But it will be an interesting exercise for later today.
But in the lectures leading up to it we've been exploring the mechanisms by which people acquire political awareness and this too is interesting in itself, not least because it leaves me wondering whether it is even possible to break people's acquired political culture in any great numbers sufficient to achieve a critical mass capable of engendering radical change.
The "Arab Spring", the images from the nineties of people who had never been allowed to vote before queuing for hours to take part in this strange thing called "democracy" and so on seemed to hold out hope that big change was possible.
But, as Albert Jay Nock said in "Our Enemy the State" these are all examples not of overthrowing the basic principles on which states are run, but seeking to emulate them, changing them in only small ways such as extending the franchise, demanding more say in an otherwise indistinguishable system. Just as the Reformation did not reject the Church so much as replace one type of Church with another.
One thing I found especially interesting was a discussion about the debate between the so called "primacy" school of thought and the "recency" idea. The former, as I understand it, says that we develop political awareness young, the latter that it happens as a result of later experiences. My immediate thought was that the latter cannot happen unless we have experienced the former, for the most part. And that seems borne out by recent events.
Spurred on by things that happen to them in adulthood, however traumatic or momentous they might be, people appear to choose to seek to change an existing system, not develop a system from first principles. However many people say that the 2003 anti war march, the 2010 anti cuts marches or the 2011 "Occupy Whatever" events are the first time they've got involved in such activities, and that they are a response to a deep felt sentiment at some current policy, very few are seeking to change radically the way things work.
Very few people advocate a whole new monetary system, instead just seeking to manipulate the current broken system to their ends not the hated bankers'. Few demanded absolute non-interventionism in response to moves to war against Iraq, but just to change the way we decide to go to war (many support the Afghanistan but didn't support the Iraq campaigns for example). Few stop to think, in one of my current pet hates, that it is the entire planning system that makes housing unaffordable: they just believe that a little tinkering here or there may change the beneficiaries a little.
They can only do this if they accept, somehow, deep down, the basis of the current systems. And this can only come from early inculturation in that system and an acceptance of it, even if they think its current manifestation is wrong around the edges.
Most people would hate to think that the Jesuits were right when they said "give me boy until the age of seven and I will give you the man" but they really do provide the evidence in their own inability to countenance radical change that Ignatius was onto something very profound.
Can we change it? When Obama said "yes we can" - it now appears he didn't really mean to do so in any radical way. But then he was standing for an office that possibly most epitomises conservative incrementalism. What in the world has to happen before radical change becomes possible?
the promo for anderson cooper's special on bullying: "everyone's a bully, and everyone's a victim." damn, gettin rough out there!
The new academic year has started with protests against significant increases in fees for UK students who are not from Scotland. In September, the University of Edinburgh announced that fees would increase from £1,820 to £9,000 for affected students. St Andrews University and the Royal Consevatoire have also set fees at the maximum threshold, with other Scottish Universities expected to [...]
A massive November walkout of up to 2 million public sector workers is now on the cards as the UK’s largest unions announce their intention to ballot for strike action over pension reform. Unison, Unite and the GMB, the UK’s largest biggest unions, have announced their intention to ballot for coordinated strike action against cuts [...]
We Glasgow students were inspired by the spirit of Red Clydeside Our stunning victory over Glasgow University’s management shows that the dreams of former rector Jimmy Reid live on It was with the words “It’s not an eviction – it’s an upgrade” that, in late March, Newsnight Scotland viewers learned of the resilience of the [...]
no walk of life is more subject to fads and sudden profound bland moral commitments than education. this year, it's bullying. it is a very slippery notion of course, though there are egregious cases about which any institution would want to do something. but no one can make even a decent notion more meaningless or irritating than a school administrator. my daughter jane (who started middle school today! first two days canceled by power outages in baltimore) is so tired of the whole thing that the mere word or any sort of depiction on a tv show or the psa's make her actually angry, as many a student in the previous cohort was mighty tired of drug education. her objection is simple: it's everywhere, all the time; it's insanely repetitive; it's an obsession; maybe we could talk about something else for a bit? her school is wallpapered in anti-bullying posters. there are assemblies. every teacher talks about it etc etc. that's the only idea these folks really have about changing the way kids behave: a barrage of non-stop propaganda until you can't hear it anymore, or are tempted to bully someone or do drugs just to defy these people who so evidently despise your intelligence and moral insight. this is no way to approach or persuade human beings; it's more like training pigeons. i tell her not to worry. by the time high school rolls around there'll be another obsession.
so let's say i kidnapped and detained you. then, when you got pissy and insulted me, i called the cops, and the law was such that, in virtue of these insults, you turned out to be the criminal. that is what we call 'education' or, alternately, 'investing in america's future.'