http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M4tdMsg3tsConsidering we're in the midst of that season, thought it was an apt time to post this speech. It was given last year, and apparently made a tiny bit of a splash - but I first became aware of it only recently, and it doesn't seem like it has nearly enough views as is. The speaker delivered it well enough, but I almost preferred reading it:
Full text:
http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/2010/07/coxsackie-athens-valedictorian-speech.htmlAlso, a few other related links:
Sir Ken Robinson: RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4UAlan Watts on schooling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X1OmSf4bf8An Essay by Jerry Farber:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030301studentasnigger.html(some may not get past the evocative title, but they would be missing out on a wonderfully articulated assessment)This is by no means an affront to all the hard-working public school teachers out there, but a pointed critique at, as the author of that last essay puts it, an "authoritarian and dehumanized school system" - the one tailored after a society steeped in the mindless drudgery that values rote memorization and standardization over divergent thinking and exploratory wonder. Charter and for-profit private schools are not nearly the answer to these problems, they only exacerbate them. Instead, we need to reconsider the very factory-like structure of our public school system, and - while keeping them in the public milieu - give them an almost complete overhaul.
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