William Ayers: Diving Into the Wreckage -- Big Ideas in Baby Steps
(cross posted in Occupy Underground)
I was fortunate enough to be in the audience for this 36 minute presentation mostly about education but so broad in principle as to apply to everything.
Bill does a mic check within the first minute, I was one of only two who responded to the first one, sadly, but everyone in attendance is on the good side, I think.
One pertinent part at around 28 minutes is the question, "what are we NOT seeing because it's become naturalized?".
Like slavery at one time, abhorrent but widely accepted, or so many other embarrassing aspects of our society, like privilege and the lack of access to education, health, etc.
Like South Africa and Fascist Germany, we teach obedience and compliance. What is the something else that makes education in a democratic society different?
If you have time, watch it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
So I was delighted to learn, and he was the best speaker, most engaging, and with by far the biggest and best ideas.
The future is in our schools, our teachers, our 54 million plus students (more than 1/6 humans in the US is a K12 student).
Every minute of instructional time counts and we have got our work cut out for us!
He didn't pull any punches either, with enough criticism to go around, of Obama and Duncan, but also of unions and broken schools.
He supports any thing that works, home school, charter school, parochial school, traditional school, whatever works.
I laughed at the "drink the Koolaid" commentary around Jung and Montessori.
