"And so we find ourselves in the position of having narrowed our view of curriculum from the promise of a broad social, emotional and intellectual experience (in theory) to the mere acquisition of information; over time, and under controlled conditions.Age appropriate even. Students’ status in school depends on how much of this information they demonstrably possess. Fear is the driving force. Will they be employable? As for the resultant teacher education: it is quick, cheap and scale-able, but it has also meant that teachers are no longer aware of their cultural value. They are merely parts of a machine. Their intellectual life has been subsumed by the weight of administration required to transmit the contents of curriculum in a measurable way. Their professional development consists of training to do that one thing better. Minor adjustments, or slight changes in operational methodology, are hailed as ‘teaching & learning innovations’, probably because the average teacher is not aware of the rich history of every aspect of human scholarship, the study of learning being only one of those aspects.
In addition, teachers may or may not be aware that the transfer process they are involved in is not neutral. Systematized schooling is primarily about socialization, not learning for its own sake, and it was designed to be this way." Portion of the transcript of a presentation at the 21st Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong 13/12/2014

To paraphrase Paulo Freire, “Education either functions as an instrument which… brings about conformity, or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”

Video source :
Noam Chomsky speaks about language and philosophy as part of the Dean's Lecture Series from UMD College of Arts & Humanities .
Date of Event: Thu, 1/26/12

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