"The School of Walls & Space investigates contemporary notions of space, its production, privatization & the role of the artist as a critical and political agent within it, & uses both traditional & more experimental pedagogical methods.

The School is a multi-layered micro-institution that encourages the development of an inter-disciplinary research-based practice. It balances individual mentoring w/ collective group activities. The school uses traditional pedagogical methods: group & one-to-one crits, seminars and talks, in conjunction w/ the exploration of more experimental collaborative teaching models which the School researches and develops collectively as a group. These include brain storming techniques, games, charettes, group activities, actions & happenings. It also explores historical practices, such as psychogeography & the derive, & the experimental teaching methods of Paolo Freire, Roy Ascott, Paul Goodman, & Colin Ward…"

[See also: http://wallsandspace.wordpress.com/ ]

"…perhaps most importantly, [this revolution] is driven by what one might call a “rethinking the basics” movement, in which educators everywhere cannot help but see a disconnect between their traditional modes of teaching and the world in which we all now live.

As Dewey noted, the goal is not to counter traditional education and its strict organization with its perceived opposite (disorganization)—but instead to create what Web designers today might call an “architecture for participation.” The learning environments we need may be more fluid, adaptable, collaborative, and participatory, but they are not unstructured and unorganized. As Maurice Friedman noted while explaining Martin Buber’s educational philosophy, “The opposite of compulsion is not freedom but communion…” (1955). [Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, by Maurice S. Friedman, 1955]"

"Despair is a black leather jacket in which everyone looks good, while hope is a frilly pink dress few dare to wear. Rebecca Solnit thinks this virtue needs to be redefined.

Here she takes to our pulpit to deliver a sermon that looks at the remarkable social changes of the past half century, the stories the mainstream media neglects and the big surprises that keep on landing.

She explores why disaster makes us behave better and why it's braver to hope than to hide behind despair's confidence and cynicism's safety.

History is not an army. It's more like a crab scuttling sideways. And we need to be brave enough to hope change is possible in order to have a chance of making it happen."

"This is the final version of my video for Dr. Wesch's Digital Ethnography course at Kansas State University. It addresses the current on-the-cusp-of-revolution state of education today, how education reform movements aren't really anything new, and how previous efforts have failed. It also raises the question of whether the latest revolutionary-minded ferment will pan-out this time around..."

"The globalization of West’s view of economic & technological development is now being accompanied by aggressive promotion of Western values & ways of thinking—through TV & Hollywood films, & by Western universities that have established in public’s mind what constitutes high & low-status knowledge. High-status knowledge, which is represented as basis of modernization, includes the assumption that the individual is the basic social unit, the source of intelligence & moral judgment; that literacy & other abstract forms of representation for encoding and communicating knowledge lead to a more rational & progressive mode of being; that change is the expression of progress; that Western science & tech are both culturally neutral & at same time the highest expression of rational thought; that cultural development is governed by laws of natural selection…; & that the major challenge is to bring nature under human control & to exploit it in ways that help to expand economic markets."

"Gramsci's tracing of Italian history & nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory & educational theory associated with his name, such as:<br />
*Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the capitalist state<br />
*The need for popular workers' education to encourage development of intellectuals from the working class<br />
*The distinction between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.) which dominates directly & coercively, & civil society (the family, the education system, trade unions, etc.) where leadership is constituted through ideology or by means of consent<br />
*"Absolute historicism"<br />
*A critique of economic determinism that opposes fatalistic interpretations of Marxism<br />
*A critique of philosophical materialism<br />
<br />
…"organic" intellectuals do not simply describe social life in accordance with scientific rules, but rather articulate, through the language of culture, the feelings & experiences which the masses could not express for themselves"

"Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was a French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism. Fanon is known as a radical existential humanist[1] thinker on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization.[2]Fanon supported the Algerian struggle for independence and became a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front. His life and works have incited and inspired anti-colonial liberation movements for more than four decades."<br />
<br />
[via: http://steelemaley.posterous.com/taiaiake-alfred ]

"first authoritative reference work to provide an international analysis of the relationship btwn power, knowledge, education & schooling. Rather than focusing solely on questions of how we teach efficiently & effectively, contributors to this volume push further to also think critically about education's relationship to economic, political, & cultural power. The various sections of this book integrate into their analyses the conceptual, political, pedagogic & practical histories, tensions & resources that have established critical education as one of the most vital & growing movements w/in field of education, including topics such as:<br />
<br />
social movements & pedagogic work<br />
critical research methods for critical education<br />
politics of practice & recreation of theory<br />
Freirian legacy<br />
<br />
…this Handbook provides the definitive statement on the state of critical education and on its possibilities for the future."

"Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action."[1]<br />
<br />
Based in Marxist theory, critical pedagogy draws on radical democracy, anarchism, feminism, and other movements that strive for what they describe as social justice. Critical pedagogue Ira Shor defines critical pedagogy as:<br />
<br />
"Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse." (Empowering Education, 129)"

"Education and learning are, first of all, a matter sense: people wants to live in a world which makes sense to them, and students learn immediately what makes sense in their lives -- anything you say in a classroom that connects with one's effort to make sense of her/his life will be remembered for a long time.<br />
<br />
Freire noticed and formalized this, while interested in helping people to be autonomous individuals, and not just labor-force for a world order which makes sense just for others. <br />
<br />
In my modest opinion, one of the main challenges we have in this intense times we're living, is to build a world which is meaningful and makes sense in the most plural way for everybody. I doubt this is what's going on. But anyway, education and knowledge are certainly a matter of sense and not of neurons." [related: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/1947]

"critical pedagogy insists that one of fundamental tasks of educators is to make sure future points way to a more socially just world in which critique & possibility—in conjunction w/ the values of reason, freedom & equality—function to alter grounds upon which life is lived. Though it rejects notion of literacy as transmission of facts or skills tied to latest market trends, critical pedagogy is hardly prescription for political indoctrination as advocates of standardization & testing often insist. It offers students new ways to think & act creatively & independently…educator's task…"is to encourage human agency, not mold it in manner of Pygmalion." What critical pedagogy does insist upon is that education cannot be neutral. It is always directive in attempt to enable students to understand larger world & their role in it…inevitably deliberate attempt to influence how & what knowledge, values, desires & identities are produced w/in particular sets of class & social relations."

"Shikshantar is an applied research institute dedicated to catalyzing radical systemic transformation of education in order to facilitate Swaraj-development throughout India."

"Did you know Paulo Freire was a school district superintendent? His ideas are as thought provoking as ever. ...

"Praxis is used by educators to describe a recurring passage through a cyclical process of experiential learning, such as the cycle described and popularised by David A. Kolb.[1]

"I was asked, what are the most important questions that need to be resolved during, say, the next five or so years? There's only one: under what conditions can a learner manage his or her own learning? ... there is globally an even increasing onslaught of rich media and other content, including even inside schools, which is intended not to educate or to inform, but to sway or to sell. Against this, especially in web 2.0 circles, there is a school of thought modeled loosely along the lines of Freire's 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' which suggests that people, working for their own benefit & creating their own association, can take charge of their own learning, and hence, their own understanding of the world. If it possible for people to effectively mount a counter to propaganda or corporate-based 'content learning' on their own, or is some manner of public intervention required, and to what scale."

"At a time when education has become one of the official sites of conformity, disempowerment and uncompromising modes of punishment, the legacy of Paulo Freire's work is more important than ever before."

"Commissioned by Art in General, Carlos Motta's new Internet archive, The Good Life, is the latest part of a project the artist has developed since 2005, comprising 360 video interviews with pedestrians in twelve Latin American cities. In his essay, "Postscript: Civilization or Barbarity," the Colombian artist outlines the shift from politicized, creative practices, like those of Argentina's Third Cinema and Brazil's Paulo Freire, to increasing U.S. incursions, since the 1970s, into Latin American governments and economies. Attempting to close the divide "between democratic theory and practice" and reclaim, according to essayist Stamatina Gregory, an older conception of participatory politics, explored by Aristotle and revived by Hannah Arendt, Motta asks his interviewees about their own conceptions of democracy, democratization, and U.S. interventions in the region."

"The concept hidden curriculum expresses the idea that schools do more than simply transmit knowledge, as laid down in the official curricula. Behind it lies criticism of the social implications, political underpinnings, and cultural outcomes of modern ed

"school reform won't work" "People are not just opting out of traditional education. They are also opting out of traditional business and traditional government."

"re-envision and to design a new system - one that supports both personal and social transformation and creates 21st century learning. This thinking resulted in the birth of Project Vision."