Saturday, November 17, 2012

Change the Paradigm. Now!

Greetings, dear reader and happy happy Thanksgiving week. We have so much to be grateful thankful happy about and daily I attempt to remember and express my awareness that I have been given so much and feel a great pull to give it back.

In the time I have left, I'm trying. I'd like to make a dent in the closing of American higher education to the masses of young people being told they're not smart enough, wealthy enough, or special enough to understand the "boring stuff" (Robinson, 2012) that no longer seems relevant as we drift out of the industrial age. I'm driven in urgency as I see students who love learning be pushed from education by the deadening anaesthetization of self in passive, industrial, factory education.

But, when I talk about this broken broken hurtful paradigm, so many roll their eyes and ask me to say it more nicely, say it with more feminine flair, say it without being heard. It's hard to change a broken machine from the inside, but it matters that I'm here, because this is where our learners put their trust. So here's my latest attempt to soften voice: do it with a brilliant, funny British accent.

Sir Ken Robinson is much more brutal about saying the Emperor has no clothes, but he's so charming no one rolls their eyes or complains. I wish I were charming. I have to settle for determined and persistent. So, in my best British voice I coo "WATCH THIS VIDEO. NOW!"