 |
When Education Is Not Enough: The Separation of Knowledge and Change |
 |
I’m going to piggyback a little bit off of J-Ro’s education article and continue to address the topic of the effectiveness of education alone. While his article focuses on the socioeconomic issues kids deal with and how to address them in family life, what I want to talk about is education and its role in social movements, activism, and what we’re doing now as the Netroots.
So let’s start right here: is education, by itself, an element of social change? Does it dramatically change the landscape of American society? No, no it does not. There is no saving grace inherent in education that allows one’s existence to be any different from the current state of affairs. The virtue of being educated does not absolve you or any others of existence that is, in many respects, divided and inequality-stricken. In fact, it may make you a bit more elitist and condescending to others while ignoring deep societal problems. I won’t deny that having an education makes you smarter, more perceptive, and possibly more critical, but all that stuff is for yourself.
For instance, let’s take a look at race. I’ve mentioned before the role of education in afrocentric movements: a messianic fix-it-all that premises once one black is up, he/she can raise others (through philanthropy or transferring education, of course). But it does not get at the structures of race that pervade our society. This was the age-old debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, the former wanting only vocational education and ignoring segregation and Jim Crow for the time being, and the latter advocating the construction of a civil rights groups and affecting the emergence of the NAACP (although DuBois’s idea of the “Talented Tenth” seems to suggest the notion of a small educated class doing the social lifting of the rest of the race, but I’ve talked about this at length in the article cited above).
We also see this in the blogosphere, where vented frustration and anger established by a few bombastic individuals in a chatroom or on DailyKos is considered action-oriented, something that will change so much of society. It seems, however, to just reinforce our own elitism and confirms our belief of the “backwardness” of the masses. No matter how you play it, the blog is a luxury, a place of comfort, and is condemned to the world of education for a limited few.
Now, I’ve just said this of education alone. I didn’t say that this does not drive people to do things. It certainly does. The right tone with a spot-on message can certainly set people alight and inspire them to action. Education, as well as effective art as J-Ro has pointed out, often are elements of a powerful social movement. The Black church in the Civil Rights movement served as a place of education, as well as hymnal and inspirational messages.
That said, there should be a redefinition of education if it is to be useful for us as Netroots and activists. Education for today shouldn’t be one that fits comfortably with the realm of non-action, something that we’ve seen so much of in the current discussions of social change that occurs at universities and within intellectual circles. Education itself shouldn’t be confused with action, either. We should be interested in the notion of a progressive and critical pedagogy that doesn’t get so mired in its own existence that it doesn’t have implications for the real world. What I want to see in the progressive blogosphere is a conversation that is intrinsically tied to movements of social change. If we’re going to see an actual conversation, then we can’t just “educate” each other with superficial analyses and observations of the current state of affairs. Such an act is as abstractly negative as saying “anyone but Bush” or saying we need to get out of Iraq without proposing a comprehensive alternative.
For a good example of effective education, Ish proposed protesting in suits on September 15th in Washington D.C., and people on the web went wild with comments. Afterwards, the report back brought even more people into the discussion, sparking the movement that we now call Serious Change. Even if people don’t agree on all the points of the protest, this small example shows how the interaction between the educational and action-oriented sides of Serious Change are integrally tied to each other and how, if we were only talking about Serious Change, then the response and conversation would be completely different entities.
Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at Georgetown University cited in J-Ro’s art article above, has stated as one of his better points that narrative is good, but it certainly has to be “informed narrative”, that is, you ain’t just makin’ up shit, speaking a language that’s in your head without acknowledging objective conditions. An education devoid of the insight and follow-through of changing objective conditions is not political action. DuBois’s action-oriented education was a driving force behind the Civil Rights movement, demonstrating that Washington’s merely vocational education is not a critical (and therefore not an effective) education at all. One’s personal education needs to work towards establishing a new set of material conditions, one that aims to eliminate oppression where ever it lies.
Your examples in the progressive blogosphere are on point, we shouldn’t just be “educating” other like-minded individuals. But I think you overextend the argument by bringing Washington and the public education system into the picture.
If you start with the premise that an education has to be critical and action-oriented in order to be effective, then no, Washington’s education is not effective. And it’s not likely to make those changes any time soon. I don’t think it necessarily should.
Taking action on issues shouldn’t be spoon-fed to kids. That’s called indoctrination, teaching little kids that X,Y and Z are the issues we adults have decided are important, ones that you should devote yourselves to. That’s all wrong in my eyes. The idea is to provide a quality education, one that allows for independent thinking (something the current system does not do as adequately as it should), and then let the individual make the thought-to-action transition on their own time, of their own accord. Individuals, educated individuals, should pick the battles they want to fight, not the writers of course curriculum.
I don’t disagree with you on that, LGS. When I say “critical”, I certainly don’t imagine that preformed conclusions just get repeated endlessly without meaning. A teacher should not just simply tell a student to end racism because “racism is bad”. A teacher talks about inalienable rights, the social construct of race, and race relations regarding history and geography. Then the student is able to freely construct the criticism which concludes that racism is bad.
And critical education often informs teachers about what issues are important to students. Critical educators 60 years ago weren’t talking about LGBT issues; now it’s been brought up by the students who’ve found it relevant and in need of critical inform. A critical education is not one of indoctrination which simply gives a course of action or presents a side of an issue to students. These ideas ought to stand on their own, and they surely can.
For me reading this, the idea of “service learning” comes to mind. ie, not just having kids pick up trash one day and call that service learning, but take them out into different kinds of communities and have them volunteer, mostly so that they can interact with people from different backgrounds. Building in volunteering to high school curricula, and combining those experiences with some serious sociological discussions of what the root causes of social problems actually are, could go a long way toward making education more hands-on and action-oriented without losing the intellectual depth one would hope to see.
Web-based dialog promoting social action lends itself to some issues better than others. The internet is suited to public discussion of politics, media, pop-culture, LBGTQ issues— because enough people directly affected by these topics can participate in the conversation. But blog discussions of race, class, or gender— conducted overwhelmingly between white men—have severe limitations.
Additionally, theoretical conversation happening on the internet over issues of urban poverty, racism, children’s needs, or global trade to name a few hot topics, exclude the populations most directly affected. Such a need-based model of development—whereby an outside elite determines the problems and solution needed by another group without consultating them first hand—- is inferior to asset-based development, which engages with a marginalized group’s strengths first-hand.
My impression of bloggers is that most are armchair activists and snobs with little real-world experience of social action or social change, which is why they find themselves blog in the first place. That is not to say that there is not any benefit to web dialog, clearly creating a multiplicity of public conversations about social change is important. But, just because someone may type in capslock and use hyperlinks doesn’t make them any type of useful activist.
I think this critique is fair in some ways and unfair in others. Two points come to mind:
1) Important, arguably the most important, political battles are fought largely in the media. Insofar as blogging engages people in a process of questioning their media and holding media sources more accountable, as well as creating new channels of sharing information and ideas, blogging promotes democracy. This may not count in your eyes as activism per se, but it is at the very least active citizenship and active consumption. If someone who would have just been a passive television watcher ten years ago is now writing, even for a tiny audience, that’s positive in my eyes.
2) Bloggers are still figuring out how to transform their online followings and networks into real-life action. Serious Change, as Alex points out, is one example. Open Left’s Bush Dogs campaign (www.openleft.com) is another example. Fundraising, of course, is something the big blogs have made a major impact doing. And conferences like YearlyKos are vital. The internet and the networking it promotes, both in real life and online, introduce people to each other who never would have met otherwise. We’re going to have someone representing Serious Change in Chattanooga, TN on October 27th because of the internet - I don’t know that that would have been possible twenty years ago. And I think the conversation is just getting started about how online activism and on-the-ground activism can support each other, especially as people attempt to move from blogging to real-life organizing and not vice versa.
Internet activism hasn’t reached its full expression yet. As Alex points out, a lot of activism in general is centered around simply “raising awareness,” which is necessary in some senses. However, that should be step 1. The followthrough is often lacking.
It is important to recognize what blogs and other forms of Internet activism excel in, and what their limitations are. They are great at connecting people, building coalitions, raising awareness, raising money, and influencing media. They are not so great (yet) at influencing those in power, creating radical structural changes, and such. Not that Internet activism can’t get there, but the bridge between online and offline is still being built.
“What I want to see in the progressive blogosphere is a conversation that is intrinsically tied to movements of social change. If we’re going to see an actual conversation, then we can’t just “educate†each other with superficial analyses and observations of the current state of affairs.”
This is not addressed directly to you, Alex, but to progressive thinkers in general.
If you want a conversation (and not just another metadebate on why the progressive blogosphere is ineffective), then start one. No, not on your own blogs, instead find someone who has a blog post that disagrees with you. Start the conversation with them by taking your ball to their court. Will you experience some bullshit? Of course. However, eventually you will find someone who wants to talk out the issue rationally. Maintain that conversation. That person is more likely to have other readers who, while they disagree with you, may still want to talk rationally. Link back to your own blog to provide backstory.
Speaking of your own blogs, far too many liberal bloggers simply shut out anyone who disagrees with them, not just conservatives but those from the middle, the ones who decide elections. These bloggers wield moderation like a weapon. They preach only to their choirs because they locked the church doors. Open those doors. Ignore the obvious trolls, but at the same time, don’t discount every emotional outburst as a personal attack.
dsf,
I like to think that we at The Seminal embody exactly what you’re talking about. We do carry on conversations with other blogs, and we bill ourselves as an independent political blog precisely to open the door to people with many different viewpoints. Our most regular commenters for much of the spring and summer were two conservative gentlemen who unfortunately no longer comment here, and if you follow any of those threads you’ll see that for the most part we engaged with them in a constructive fashion; incidentally, I do not think they left our community because we shut them out. As Josh said once, anybody who can make a point (and avoid making personal attacks) is welcome to comment here.
As I’ve said before, we’re definitely not a Democratic cheerleader blog!
dsf:
I echo a lot of Ish’s sentiments, and I know myself I’ve gone after authors from both openleft.com and futuremajority.com, authors that are certainly on the left:
http://www.theseminal.com/2007/10/01/links-1001-new-fiscal-year-korean -relations-iraq-contractors-clintons-inevitability-postmodern-rebellio n/
http://www.theseminal.com/2007/08/22/international-labor-connections-t eamsters-and-iran/
So we don’t shy away from constructive contention., be it with those on the left or the right.