[Its.an.education.project] Questions for education projects. The life cycle of a great education.

[Antoine van Gelder]

On 06 May 2008, at 23:04, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>>> Much of this is a war zone but OLPC was prepared to fight some  
>>> sort of war
>> from the start. Which war(s) are we prepared to fight and which  
>> ones not?
>
> We are already engaged in several, and the larger society has more
> waiting for us. It is not our choice.
>
> * Software freedom
> * Child-centered education
> * Freedom of thought and of speech
> * Fundamental human rights of all kinds
>
> These ideas are all "out of the mainstream" in our current education
> systems and the US political climate and in many developing nations.
> Our most serious opponents are well-organized on a narrow range of
> issues, extremely well funded, and implacable. To many of them, we are
> the greatest threat to humanity ever. If you think I am exaggerating,
> go listen to Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter talk about The Culture Wars,
> or any current or would-be dictator on criticism of the government.
> Education is the front line on the battleground. Hence religious
> home-schooling in the US.
>
> I was in O'Hare airport in Chicago, waiting for a shuttle to the
> PyCon2008 conference, and offered my XO for a little boy to look at.
> His mother wouldn't let him touch it, on the grounds that God provides
> everything they need. The boy turned on his mother and said, "I hate
> you." She replied, "No, you don't," which is no doubt true, but
> entirely unhelpful.


Gnnnnnnnnnnngggggggg.

It is breaking my heart to read stories like this from the USA that,  
word-for-word, could have come from my own country at the height of  
apartheid.


Yet, I make the observation:

On the whole adults will always be too busy trying to take over the  
world from each other to pay proper attention to what is happening at  
school.

There are also human developmental factors at work which ensures that  
children will always have less difficulty than adults to correctly  
apprehend the low kolmogorov-chaitin complexity value which  
characterizes all propaganda.

This is what ensures that it only ever takes one lifeline to reality:  
one good teacher, one good book, one good website or one good computer  
program to cut through a billion kinds of crap and render a child  
forever immune to the danger of growing up and becoming boring.

  - antoine