Schools have long been places of innovation and resistance. Why, then, are they failing us? Schools, despite our best efforts, have not halted or slowed the trajectory of global ecological and social devastation. They used to embrace the wisdom of imagination, so why do they now uphold the fallacy of conformity?
Education should be about not just knowledge, but wisdom.It should be about broadening our minds so that we could use that knowledge make sense of the world, and make it a better place. It should be about fostering understanding, sharing, and community. It should be about creating citizens.
Now, our schools are quickly becoming wagons of worldwide homogenization; they have become the cash cows of big business. Commercialization is stampeding over the rights and opportunities of students, faculty, and staff alike. Instead of fostering citizens, many students of today are being shaped into detached consumers with stunted critical thinking skills, a dollar sign fixed to every thought, and a piece of paper that put the majority of them into debt that says, “I'm ready to go out into the world and reinforce the status quo.”
You only have to take a brief glance at the state of the world- the war, the climate, the violence, the poverty, the inequality- to see that the status quo needs anything but reinforcing.
Einstein said that “no problem can be solved using the same consciousness that created it. We have to learn to see the world anew.”
This is not just about more efficient light bulbs in every office and a few more cans of beans or loaves of bread on every shelf. This is about questioning the powerful mindsets that have set the agenda for our modern world, and have warped education into an agent of their operation. This is about turning education from a machine churning out robots into a living, breathing entity that embraces the beauty of diversity of human imagination. This about wresting education from that hands of big business and giving it back to the people.
I want you all to ask yourself a question; will you bow and scrape before the education industry?
Will you simply fall in line year after year, and reinforce the status quo?
I ask you to join in with us, and cause shit, disturb "the peace" and agitate on campus. Because, in the words of The Lorax, unless people like you and I care a whole awful lot, nothing is going to change - it's not.
