Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Chris Lehmann on educational colonialism | Dangerously Irrelevant

Chris Lehmann on educational colonialism | Dangerously Irrelevant:


Chris Lehmann on educational colonialism

I am posting Chris Lehmann’s recent post almost in its entirety because it’s that important. Some pictures are below…
there are a lot of powerful folks right now who are advocating for a pedagogy that they do not want for their own children. Some of these powerful people are running networks of schools that have a pedagogical approach that is directly counter to the educational approach they pay for for their own children. Moreover, these same powerful people tend to get upset when asked about the disconnect, saying that that question is off limits.
I don’t think it is.
I think we should ask why people of power advocate for one thing for their own children and something else for other people’s children, especially when those other children come from a lower rung on the socio-economic scale or when those children come from traditionally disenfranchised members of our society. I think that’s a very dangerous thing not to question.
Because we’ve done this before in America, and when we did that to the Native Americans, it did