The Renaissance Society of America recently posted a brilliant animated version of a lecture by world renowned Education expert Sir Ken Robinson. You’ve got to watch this. Not only is it terribly relevant its also one of the most creative lectures of complicated subjectivity I’ve ever seen [Click on the title up top to open up the image].
But, to be fair. I did read that Robinson is a heavy supporter of Academies which are the United Kingdoms version of American Charter Schools. The Charter school movement has been a controversial subject recently with the release of Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman. Academies, like Charter schools are considered the answer to our public education woes which a lot of people disagree with. What people? Check out an earlier post for that. The gist is that 1) Charter schools (though not all) are undemocratic removing parent, student and community input. They are most often run by a private managerial board. 2) they allegedly represent rich people’s new hustle. They are essentially private institutions that receive public money (but, again, are not beholden to the public) and their product – kids – are ubiquitous. However, there is only one things standing in the way of the proliferation of Academies and Charter schools – Teacher Unions. So, how do you destroy Teacher Unions? You make their teachers look bad.
So, in the interest of balancing out Sir Ken Robinson’s awesome lecture here goes another animated version of a lecture by renowned academic David Harvey. I’ll allow you intelligent people to form your own opinion of the connections between education and capitalism. Needless to say, this is some really good stuff [Click on the title up top to open up the image].
Danger Brain 