10-14-2016, 08:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-14-2016, 09:32 PM by Eric the Green.)
Sometimes Democracy Now really scores a bulls-eye. Today they had on Henry Giroux, author of American at War With Itself. He's an early Boomer-war baby cusper born Sept. 18, 1943 (but still has great hair 
)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Giroux
I wish I was as articulate an author and speaker as he; who knows? But I'm glad to discover another spokesman for the real Awakening with its legacy still going on; another visionary for our times. An author who understands what's going on and what our needs are. Bravo!
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/14/i..._result_of
He says we are sliding toward authoritarianism because we are living in a state of imposed ignorance. We can't have a democracy if our people have no civic knowledge and literacy, and if our imagination is schooled out of us. The rise of Trump is a sign of our times.
America has declared war on itself in the war on education and dissent. Schools are modeled on prisons, he says. Dress code violations are criminalized. How do we understand what's happening? The punishing state is taking over. Ours is a culture of the immediate and celebrity, which paralyze us and kill the radical imagination. Trump is a symptom of a decline of a culture that can form thoughtfulness about justice. Money has corrupted politics, and we can't equate capitalism with democracy. If the ethical imagination dies, then we live in a state of terrorism.
Today younger people are mobilizing and linking issues together. Violence and militarism are linked; modes of repression are global. Politics is local and power is global. Schools should be places where children learn to imagine a world that's a better place. Our schools instead teach to the test and see students as the work force; a place to make kids boring and ignorant. Schools can't take education seriously when they are under assault with charter schools and school choice as Trump and Republicans want, and Obama goes along with.
Was "America great" as Trump proclaims? Camus wrote that democracy and freedom depend on memory. We forget about the ways America was not great. The progressive left has failed in some ways, especially about schooling. School is about changing consciousness, to make what we learn relevant to our lives. We need to see how issues are related.
)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Giroux
I wish I was as articulate an author and speaker as he; who knows? But I'm glad to discover another spokesman for the real Awakening with its legacy still going on; another visionary for our times. An author who understands what's going on and what our needs are. Bravo!
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/14/i..._result_of
He says we are sliding toward authoritarianism because we are living in a state of imposed ignorance. We can't have a democracy if our people have no civic knowledge and literacy, and if our imagination is schooled out of us. The rise of Trump is a sign of our times.
America has declared war on itself in the war on education and dissent. Schools are modeled on prisons, he says. Dress code violations are criminalized. How do we understand what's happening? The punishing state is taking over. Ours is a culture of the immediate and celebrity, which paralyze us and kill the radical imagination. Trump is a symptom of a decline of a culture that can form thoughtfulness about justice. Money has corrupted politics, and we can't equate capitalism with democracy. If the ethical imagination dies, then we live in a state of terrorism.
Today younger people are mobilizing and linking issues together. Violence and militarism are linked; modes of repression are global. Politics is local and power is global. Schools should be places where children learn to imagine a world that's a better place. Our schools instead teach to the test and see students as the work force; a place to make kids boring and ignorant. Schools can't take education seriously when they are under assault with charter schools and school choice as Trump and Republicans want, and Obama goes along with.
Was "America great" as Trump proclaims? Camus wrote that democracy and freedom depend on memory. We forget about the ways America was not great. The progressive left has failed in some ways, especially about schooling. School is about changing consciousness, to make what we learn relevant to our lives. We need to see how issues are related.