personal

I keep reflecting on Teemu’s recent comment…

The aim of reaching everyone is immoral. It seems to be a project of expanding the banking concept of education where “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.”

Going back several blog posts to the original statement, it seems that much of the stir was caused by my (perhaps unfortunate) use of the word “education.” Some will say that “education” is evil because it is traditionally forced on people who don’t want it by people who feel like they need it.* But if I did not mean that we need to work so that the “education forcibly imposed on poor, helpless individuals by an evil empire” will reach out to everyone, what did I mean? If educators and instructional technologists aren’t the pawns of Satan, what is that I imagine them doing? To put it simply, I imagine them empowering or, more simply, helping. I think our primary task is helping.

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