1) the line about “I didn’t create the problem but it’s MY problem.” No kidding, sister, and it can’t be helped. I tried living that line for about 15 years and it got me 17,000 dollars a year in debt with, so far, NO JOB. Hell yeah it’s your problem. If you want to live in the present tense with total freedom, become a freakin graffiti artist.
2) institutions require negotiation and bureaucracy at every level. we can’t, however necessary it may be, overturn the 19th century legacy of pedagogical method overnight, except in flashes and rare opportunities such as living-learning communities situated in and on larger campuses.
3) i can’t speak to teachers who do not or will not integrate technology into a classroom; things like YouTube and online syllabi and posted readings help me to operate outside copyright bureaucracy; half my class happens online, between image display, online reading, and online grading and assignment posting. This, at least in Indiana (and think of how reactionary most people think IN is), is simply HOW IT IS DONE at universities. i am not a revolutionary simply because i have an online gradebook.
4) students where i teach are working artists; to the guy with the page about “i work 2 hours a day”–hah! I have students who work SIX hours a day, manage family and STILL come to school. Sure, some blow it off, some pay and don’t come, too.
5) There are classes of over 100 here, and textbooks of over 100 dollars, but I don’t teach those classes (never have, in fact, in ten years) and I rarely if ever have a class use a textbook.
6) in short, then: this vid is an apt critique of methods and modes that aren’t serving students, but it in NO way should be taken as a wholesale critique of “the academy” or AT ALL as an accurate photo of how “most” or “all” classes in the academy operate.
(Did I just largely defend the same institution that’s not hiring me right now?)
Your points are well taken. You, though, are one of the teachers who incorporates technology and knows there is a new technical reality “out there.” I’m astonished at how many people (teachers/non-teachers alike) say, “Education was fine for me and it ought to be fine for today’s kids, too. And all this technology stuff? It’s a fad!”
I’m confronting similar perspectives in the corporate world, where business leaders can’t fathom the notion that tomorrow’s workers won’t necessarily “settle down” and fit into the usual corporate mold –”Working 80 hours a week got me where I am; they should want to work 80 hour weeks, too! That’s just the way it is and always will be!”
04/20/2008 at 1:53 pm
Commentary, some snarky and some not:
1) the line about “I didn’t create the problem but it’s MY problem.” No kidding, sister, and it can’t be helped. I tried living that line for about 15 years and it got me 17,000 dollars a year in debt with, so far, NO JOB. Hell yeah it’s your problem. If you want to live in the present tense with total freedom, become a freakin graffiti artist.
2) institutions require negotiation and bureaucracy at every level. we can’t, however necessary it may be, overturn the 19th century legacy of pedagogical method overnight, except in flashes and rare opportunities such as living-learning communities situated in and on larger campuses.
3) i can’t speak to teachers who do not or will not integrate technology into a classroom; things like YouTube and online syllabi and posted readings help me to operate outside copyright bureaucracy; half my class happens online, between image display, online reading, and online grading and assignment posting. This, at least in Indiana (and think of how reactionary most people think IN is), is simply HOW IT IS DONE at universities. i am not a revolutionary simply because i have an online gradebook.
4) students where i teach are working artists; to the guy with the page about “i work 2 hours a day”–hah! I have students who work SIX hours a day, manage family and STILL come to school. Sure, some blow it off, some pay and don’t come, too.
5) There are classes of over 100 here, and textbooks of over 100 dollars, but I don’t teach those classes (never have, in fact, in ten years) and I rarely if ever have a class use a textbook.
6) in short, then: this vid is an apt critique of methods and modes that aren’t serving students, but it in NO way should be taken as a wholesale critique of “the academy” or AT ALL as an accurate photo of how “most” or “all” classes in the academy operate.
(Did I just largely defend the same institution that’s not hiring me right now?)
04/20/2008 at 2:02 pm
Stockholm syndrome.
Your points are well taken. You, though, are one of the teachers who incorporates technology and knows there is a new technical reality “out there.” I’m astonished at how many people (teachers/non-teachers alike) say, “Education was fine for me and it ought to be fine for today’s kids, too. And all this technology stuff? It’s a fad!”
I’m confronting similar perspectives in the corporate world, where business leaders can’t fathom the notion that tomorrow’s workers won’t necessarily “settle down” and fit into the usual corporate mold –”Working 80 hours a week got me where I am; they should want to work 80 hour weeks, too! That’s just the way it is and always will be!”