[Music]
what is education the picture here is of
course anyone who’s been in my classroom
knows this is Raphael’s depiction of
school animus Plato’s of School of
Athens the Academy this is where the
process of Education 70
this process is socially messy
disputatious and yet it certainly
appears to be purposeful and one could
presume productive given Plato himself
has been a best-selling author or
something like I think the picture I’m
allowing is even more interesting this
is the product of Education look at the
mine Network and play
confident skill focused entirely human
so if I ask you in what short and simple
sentence to write down what his thought
education was definition this is
education I rather doubt that we would
come up with the same response given how
long this process has been going on it
strikes me as a little strange but
perhaps not my story the most important
event of my young life perhaps the most
important event of my entire life
came completely out of the blue it was a
school year 1970 1971 and I had been
transferred around to different schools
in the eighth grade I was in on these
large brick warehouse schools with no
windows and I was a little boat trapped
in the machinery of Education let her
leave a difference to my fate to my
thoughts I found myself in a classroom
any classrooms that seemed pointless
half-hearted at best I particularly
remember my English teacher I don’t know
her name
and because he’d rather old to be at the
dying but let’s assume she was probably
twenty six or seven it’s all relative
isn’t it completely inadequate to the
task that had been presented to her to
bring life and meaning to that room full
of sullen suspicious ignorant and
entirely monthly subjects I suppose that
was one of them one day with no preamble
no context no explanation no follow-up
nothing no connection to anything that I
could see or know and have ever been
able to retrace she walked by my desk
and dropped a book on my desk looked at
me and said this and this only I think
you should read this
it was Walden by Henry David Thoreau now
this gift should not work I don’t know
whether you have read the Knievel wallet
but it doesn’t rest on any young adult
literature bestseller lists not everyone
recognizes the moment the precise moment
in their life their identity and their
purpose flash into focus
I did just a short simple remember I’m
13 I come from a working-class family my
father was functionally illiterate he
was an orphan from the Great Depression
there were no books in my house except
what I bought with my lunch money and
yet I kept this book already the Roses I
went to the woods because I wished
to front only the essential facts of
life and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach and not when I came to
Donnie discovered I had monthly at 13 of
reading this book and it it sends me
into some kind of internal exalted state
I began to learn things and think things
let’s take a look
a person’s truest state of being is
inside
the world outside is mysterious and
demands our full attention reality is
not obvious
as a Harvard College graduate thorough
already knew many things and yet he
deliberately retreated into a state of
higness about the world living for years
in a one-room cabin and apparently doing
almost nothing except a bit of gardening
and lots of walks why would he do that
this simple uncluttered life gave him
space for thinking and the possibility
of finding truth finding the true shape
of the world is the most important thing
person can aim for
that this truth what smell you might be
unsatisfying and inconvenient is simply
don’t know lots of place the truth is
truth
also as if he had spent when he was
locked up for protesting this match
American War I learned that a person
having found a truth must bring it into
the public world activated what head
possessed this woman to drop this book
on my desk what is the extent of what
can be accomplished inside a classroom
but one thing I know that learning is a
human thing humans learn that what
so I set myself to answer that question
still the process after 31 years of
teaching and a few years of doing some
other things back to Aristotle now you
see
when did aerosol well you remember the
picture previously the young man who was
in vigorous disputation with the old man
that was Aristotle but the old man was
of course a famous teacher Plato
Aristotle believed that education was
excellence
now please stop thinking about run
faster jump higher as they used to say
when I was eight years old them by PF
Flyers tennis shoes this excellence had
nothing to do with competition which
Aristotle would have stared at and
thought to be entirely unproductive as a
means of discovering something important
so I better than you what if that’s a no
I’d rather it was a kind of focused and
efficient itself
a person who performed acts of living
with exceptional competence eternal
dedication
it was the art of living freely chosen
thousand years or two ahead the zero-sum
game hogs called this called life in
general the war of every man against
every man competition is our true state
of being the only possible state of
being and that there is a single fixed
amount of social good that exists and
will always exist and the only function
of life is to grasp as much of this as
possible and holding successfully
defended such as higher education we
have somehow bizarrely managed to allow
ourselves to be convinced that there
only perhaps 130 schools in the world
where a person can receive an adequate
education and the rest of them are
chicken print rather silly don’t you
think some of you education as a
conveniently organized future customer
base to be managed for future
achievements
if these potential customers are
carefully constructed and managed they
can guarantee happy stockholders and
endless retirements for decades to come
then what should we as teachers do if
this is true well we should stand beside
applaud and let the process go on as the
economists fictive above stated in 1955
he said this our enormous lead
productive economy is ready about 1955
demands that we make consumption our way
of life that we convert the buying and
use of goods into rich means that we
seek our spiritual satisfactions our ego
satisfactions in consumption the measure
of social status and social acceptance
of prestige must now be found in our
consumption patterns the very meaning
and significance of our life will from
now on be expressed in consumption
attorneys others believe see human
nature as essentially dangerous and NRT
be able properly regulated humans are to
be here
classrooms education are instruments of
where the doxy orthodoxy produces
stability nothing else matters to people
who hold this point of view any change
to the present cultural political
economic it’s unthinkable the question
is what are my what what
or consensus
do I work for stability or creativity do
I partner myself with the generation of
wealth or prosperity divide is truth can
be troublesome and creativity can be
destabilizing the most important the
most revolutionary technology is in the
form of ideas not much James was it the
printing press or was it the ideas is it
the books
was it the minds was it the Restless
questions that found their way into
these books the creative mind and the
Orthodox mind now as my father used to
say when I was a kid son a game and
nothing you’re bound to hit it so what
do I need that in my classroom
your thoughts mind cannot create it
doesn’t actually think it recites push
the button the loop starts push the
button again stops push the button the
loop starts the creative mind works
because it sees things that are
go to sleep at night just as I did
after reading Walden you wake up in the
morning you open your eyes and look
around and you see things that simply
weren’t there the day before and things
that were there the day before that
loomed on the conceptual horizon get
smaller things move around values change
that is the value that I assigned to
this or the value that I sign that is
not a corporate activity it is not an
industrial activity it’s a mysterious
process it’s an organic process let’s
consider the Brazilian education reform
Paulo Freire famous quotation
education either functions as an
instrument which is used to facilitate
integration of the younger generation
into the logic of the present system and
to bring about conformity it becomes the
practice of freedom the means by which
men and women deal critically and
creatively with reality
discover how to participate information
of their world so what do you know mr.
self after all these years
and I would like my students to achieve
excellence
and they may find the measure of
I would like them to discover and
embrace their obligations so that they
might be truly free
[Applause]
[Music]
what is education the picture here is of
course anyone who’s been in my classroom
knows this is Raphael’s depiction of
school animus Plato’s of School of
Athens the Academy this is where the
process of Education 70
this process is socially messy
disputatious and yet it certainly
appears to be purposeful and one could
presume productive given Plato himself
has been a best-selling author or
something like I think the picture I’m
allowing is even more interesting this
is the product of Education look at the
mine Network and play
confident skill focused entirely human
so if I ask you in what short and simple
sentence to write down what his thought
education was definition this is
education I rather doubt that we would
come up with the same response given how
long this process has been going on it
strikes me as a little strange but
perhaps not my story the most important
event of my young life perhaps the most
important event of my entire life
came completely out of the blue it was a
school year 1970 1971 and I had been
transferred around to different schools
in the eighth grade I was in on these
large brick warehouse schools with no
windows and I was a little boat trapped
in the machinery of Education let her
leave a difference to my fate to my
thoughts I found myself in a classroom
any classrooms that seemed pointless
half-hearted at best I particularly
remember my English teacher I don’t know
her name
and because he’d rather old to be at the
dying but let’s assume she was probably
twenty six or seven it’s all relative
isn’t it completely inadequate to the
task that had been presented to her to
bring life and meaning to that room full
of sullen suspicious ignorant and
entirely monthly subjects I suppose that
was one of them one day with no preamble
no context no explanation no follow-up
nothing no connection to anything that I
could see or know and have ever been
able to retrace she walked by my desk
and dropped a book on my desk looked at
me and said this and this only I think
you should read this
it was Walden by Henry David Thoreau now
this gift should not work I don’t know
whether you have read the Knievel wallet
but it doesn’t rest on any young adult
literature bestseller lists not everyone
recognizes the moment the precise moment
in their life their identity and their
purpose flash into focus
I did just a short simple remember I’m
13 I come from a working-class family my
father was functionally illiterate he
was an orphan from the Great Depression
there were no books in my house except
what I bought with my lunch money and
yet I kept this book already the Roses I
went to the woods because I wished
to front only the essential facts of
life and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach and not when I came to
Donnie discovered I had monthly at 13 of
reading this book and it it sends me
into some kind of internal exalted state
I began to learn things and think things
let’s take a look
a person’s truest state of being is
inside
the world outside is mysterious and
demands our full attention reality is
not obvious
as a Harvard College graduate thorough
already knew many things and yet he
deliberately retreated into a state of
higness about the world living for years
in a one-room cabin and apparently doing
almost nothing except a bit of gardening
and lots of walks why would he do that
this simple uncluttered life gave him
space for thinking and the possibility
of finding truth finding the true shape
of the world is the most important thing
person can aim for
that this truth what smell you might be
unsatisfying and inconvenient is simply
don’t know lots of place the truth is
truth
also as if he had spent when he was
locked up for protesting this match
American War I learned that a person
having found a truth must bring it into
the public world activated what head
possessed this woman to drop this book
on my desk what is the extent of what
can be accomplished inside a classroom
but one thing I know that learning is a
human thing humans learn that what
so I set myself to answer that question
still the process after 31 years of
teaching and a few years of doing some
other things back to Aristotle now you
see
when did aerosol well you remember the
picture previously the young man who was
in vigorous disputation with the old man
that was Aristotle but the old man was
of course a famous teacher Plato
Aristotle believed that education was
excellence
now please stop thinking about run
faster jump higher as they used to say
when I was eight years old them by PF
Flyers tennis shoes this excellence had
nothing to do with competition which
Aristotle would have stared at and
thought to be entirely unproductive as a
means of discovering something important
so I better than you what if that’s a no
I’d rather it was a kind of focused and
efficient itself
a person who performed acts of living
with exceptional competence eternal
dedication
it was the art of living freely chosen
thousand years or two ahead the zero-sum
game hogs called this called life in
general the war of every man against
every man competition is our true state
of being the only possible state of
being and that there is a single fixed
amount of social good that exists and
will always exist and the only function
of life is to grasp as much of this as
possible and holding successfully
defended such as higher education we
have somehow bizarrely managed to allow
ourselves to be convinced that there
only perhaps 130 schools in the world
where a person can receive an adequate
education and the rest of them are
chicken print rather silly don’t you
think some of you education as a
conveniently organized future customer
base to be managed for future
achievements
if these potential customers are
carefully constructed and managed they
can guarantee happy stockholders and
endless retirements for decades to come
then what should we as teachers do if
this is true well we should stand beside
applaud and let the process go on as the
economists fictive above stated in 1955
he said this our enormous lead
productive economy is ready about 1955
demands that we make consumption our way
of life that we convert the buying and
use of goods into rich means that we
seek our spiritual satisfactions our ego
satisfactions in consumption the measure
of social status and social acceptance
of prestige must now be found in our
consumption patterns the very meaning
and significance of our life will from
now on be expressed in consumption
attorneys others believe see human
nature as essentially dangerous and NRT
be able properly regulated humans are to
be here
classrooms education are instruments of
where the doxy orthodoxy produces
stability nothing else matters to people
who hold this point of view any change
to the present cultural political
economic it’s unthinkable the question
is what are my what what
or consensus
do I work for stability or creativity do
I partner myself with the generation of
wealth or prosperity divide is truth can
be troublesome and creativity can be
destabilizing the most important the
most revolutionary technology is in the
form of ideas not much James was it the
printing press or was it the ideas is it
the books
was it the minds was it the Restless
questions that found their way into
these books the creative mind and the
Orthodox mind now as my father used to
say when I was a kid son a game and
nothing you’re bound to hit it so what
do I need that in my classroom
your thoughts mind cannot create it
doesn’t actually think it recites push
the button the loop starts push the
button again stops push the button the
loop starts the creative mind works
because it sees things that are
go to sleep at night just as I did
after reading Walden you wake up in the
morning you open your eyes and look
around and you see things that simply
weren’t there the day before and things
that were there the day before that
loomed on the conceptual horizon get
smaller things move around values change
that is the value that I assigned to
this or the value that I sign that is
not a corporate activity it is not an
industrial activity it’s a mysterious
process it’s an organic process let’s
consider the Brazilian education reform
Paulo Freire famous quotation
education either functions as an
instrument which is used to facilitate
integration of the younger generation
into the logic of the present system and
to bring about conformity it becomes the
practice of freedom the means by which
men and women deal critically and
creatively with reality
discover how to participate information
of their world so what do you know mr.
self after all these years
and I would like my students to achieve
excellence
and they may find the measure of
I would like them to discover and
embrace their obligations so that they
might be truly free
[Applause]
[Music]
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