July 2, 2015

William Deresiewicz recently published a book entitiled “Excellent Sheep”.  Besides outlining the failings of our educational approach in our elite systems, he focuses on “the meaningful life”.  I love his last quote of Thomas Hardy:

“The beggarly question of parentage-what is it, after all?  What does it matter, when you come to think about it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care.”

If we can treat every child with this fairness and equity-not to mention love, we can change the world!

which are “empty receptacles”. It’s an oppressive relationship: the teacher takes control and takes the role of an oppressor. The student is expected to be a passive follower.

Freire proposes a “problem posing” education structured to encourage thinking in students. The student and teacher enter into a partnership relationship of dialogue to jointly come to conclusions about problems. The teacher must not pre-determine solutions but these solutions must come together with the student through dialogue. The teacher and the student must learn from each other.