There’s something wrong in the world today, and Sociologists know what it is. We live in a system that privileges cash value over everything else. If you can’t lay a dollar value, and if you can’t generate profit, it is worthless in the eyes of the system. That might be a great way to pursue personal enrichment, but it sucks as a way to live healthy, environmentally sound, happy lives. It’s time to consider some alternatives, don’t ya think?

Here at sociology.org / Athabasca University, we’ve always been pioneers. Decades ahead of the curve, we smashed the brick and mortar boundaries of traditional post-secondary ed, and pioneered distance education. We ( and when I say we I mean me), also started the very first online journal of Sociology way back when the Internet was nothing more than an online dust bowl and now we, and by we I mean a handful of interested scholars, are pioneering online pedagogy, in the interests of the student and not profit (as some of the initiatives in the U.S. seem to be doing). Our goal here isn’t to use technology as an excuse to corrupt education for personal enrichment, or to gut post-secondary education in the interests of conservative economic policy, but to use technology to enhance the educational experience, and bring it to a wider audience. If you like what we’re doing, jump on board.

You never stop to think that sending your kids to school can be a problem, but it can be. From the residential schools of First Nations infamy to the violence of straps and the horror of school yard bullying, schools are not always safe places. The truth is, children can experience physical, emotional, and even sexual abuse at the hands of students, teachers, priests. ministers, reverends, etc.. The research demonstrates that abuse of all forms undermines self esteem, lowers social productivity, causes depression, and contributes to long term social problems. Isn’t it time we recognized the horror and stopped hurting our children?

This article was originally published in The Learning Revolution (IC#27), but was published before that in Annals of Earth (1990), and was a commencement address before that. It’s been around a long time and though the author says some really important things, it doesn’t seem to have sunk in. So, here it is again in the hopes that twenty years later ears will be open and eyes will be primed to see.

Did you know that what you get depends on who you are? It is true. Females get different things than males, and the lower classes get different things than the upper classes. No where is this more evident than in the education you get. Working class, professional, or ruling class, it’s not who you know but who your parents are (i.e. their social class) that makes all the difference.

In truth, Bill Gates probably isn’t an idiot. He did build one of the most successful software companies in the world after all. At the same time however his ability to prognosticate on post-secondary education seems questionable at best. The problems we, as university educators, face are well understood. We can’t do our jobs while the government is cutting our resources. This is like applying the logic of the assembly line to education. More product, less resources, more profit, less cost. Makes sense maybe in the business world but when we’re dealing with human minds does it pay to cut corners. If we want to remain competitive in a global economy, probably not.

An educator speaks about pedagogy, critical thinking, and connecting with students. Education is about creating a safe place for exploration, for confronting the hard social, political, and psychological realities of our existence. But it’s also about honesty, exposure, and trust. It is not easy moving beyond the rigid and stereotyped roles of the cardboard educator, but we try to be more than the boxes we find ourselves in.

This article was printed in the spring 2007 issue of “Our Schools / Our Selves,” published quarterly by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives www.policyalternatives.ca. David F. Noble (guest blogger) Critical pedagogy has long condemned grading as an impediment to genuine education, but critical pedagogues continue to grade, as a presumed condition of employment. “I
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Through the medium of kinship, early humans developed cooperative arrangements that, according to Marshal Sahlins, were apparently mandated by virtue of the conditions of life. In his words, “The emerging human primate, in a life-and-death-struggle economic struggle with nature, could not afford the luxury of a social struggle. Co-operation, not competition, was essential…. Hobbe’s famous
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