“Schools should not, in other words, be responsive, welcoming, or servile in the face of change, but should be bulwarks against it. Schools should be the high point from which to watch the flood.”
Gary Chapman The Not School discussion of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death
I read Neil Postman’s book Teaching as a Conserving Activity when I was in teacher’s college. Something stuck with me, although I haven’t read it in over 31 years. To me, there was an important message in this book. Education needs to stand in resistance to the dominant culture.
I have always seen the educator’s role as that of a subversive. We need to resist the dominant culture and teach our children to be critical thinkers.
This is more important now than ever.
For most of us, we are living under a truly evil leader for the first time. This happens, it just hasn’t happened to us before.
Donald Trump is not something that we have seen before in an American President. Denying refugees safe haven and painting them all as dangerous subversives is simply wrong and we who teach need to stand in opposition to this type of thinking.
How do we resist?
I would suggest that this is the time to really embrace social media and teach our children how to use it responsibly. I can no longer stomach those who say that social media is dangerous and has no place in the classroom. Those who say our students use social media just to keep up with the Kardashians are really missing the point. The Kardashians are simply the Flintstones of a new generation.
Let’s move on.
Social media is the best way for all of us to resist the evil that now exists in our society. Remember this, most of us have never lived under a Pinochet, a Franco, a Mussolini. In the days of these and other dictators, there was no light that you could shine on their evil and have it viewed by others.
Our one hope is that the power of social media means we finally have a weapon to deal with ignorance and hate.
In 2007, a group of protesters in Suchitoto, El Salvador were abducted when they were protesting against water privatization. Their capture was caught on film and quickly uploaded to Youtube. Ten years earlier, these protesters would have disappeared never to be seen again.
Because of social media, there was an international protest against the illegal capture and eventually, the Salvadoran Government was forced to release the protestors.
If you know anything about the slaughter of civilians during the civil war in El Salvador this was an incredible event. International pressure fuelled by social media certainly saved the lives of these people.
Now, in 2017 we are faced with a government system that has all the earmarks of the oppressive Salvadoran regime of earlier days. But we have the tools and as educators, we need to use them as a way to stand in opposition to racism and bigotry.
Look what is coming out daily through social media:
Ontario’s minister of health and long-term care says the province will offer to provide life-saving care to children whose surgeries have been cancelled in the United States as a result of recent travel restrictions.
“Given that this is a critical time for these ill children, our ministry and Ontario’s specialized children’s hospitals, which provide best-in-the-world care, feel the responsibility to act quickly,” Eric Hoskins said Friday.
Hoskins said it has come to the government’s attention that some critically ill children are being turned away at the U.S. border solely because of where they were born and that Canada has an obligation to respond.
CBC Ontario to provide life-saving health care to children affected by U.S. travel ban
Today, Uber also bowed to public pressure and distanced itself from the Trump government.
So, resistance, peaceful and respectful works. Let’s really be educators and teach our children that this is an important time. Tell them to use social media in an intelligent way and resist.
Whole-Hearted 