Friday 10 August 2012

Prof. Sugata Mitra and the Enemies Within

We want to raise a warning to teachers - warning them that in their midst are some very dangerous figures. They are arguing that the practice of teaching should end - that teachers should be made redundant. This is the anti-teacher movement.

Teaching - according to the people in that movement - is a very dubious business - something that smacks of the gulag, or at the very least, that horrible kind of schooling that Pink Floyd sang about - the school as factory, churning out bricks for the walls of the economy. The impulse to teach is the impulse to dictate, to impose, to bring one's pedagogical boot down hard on the innocent face of the child. (I exaggerate, but the implied association of teaching with Fascism is discernable.) Learning is good. Education is good (as long as there is no one at the front of the room), but teaching is bad.

Click to see the rest of the post about Sugata Mitra and the anti-teacher movement.

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