To be clear, I maintain that teachers need to display a greater level of maturity than the studetns they teach. This includes showing restraint in political matters. This was not an insult to students as you have wrongly suggested. I see it is an ethical requirement upon the teacher to respect students and not to railroad them with political views.

Second, I love Paolo Freire. He is the greatest educational thinker that I know of. But you have to approach him critically. Here’s my general guide to him: everything Paolo Freire writes about learning is well worth considering; everything Paolo Freire writes about politics is well worth ignoring. He wrote about the farmers in Brazil 60 years ago in an age when Marxism seemed plausible, an age of hellish, pre-Democratic S American governments. That has litle to do with today, despite what your ideology-loving confreres might suggest. It is dismaying that people cannot read Freire crtitically. He himself knew that his politics would not apply in other contexts - he made it very very clear in his writings.

I remain of the opinion that we mneed more learning and less ideology.

Ken Carroll

I had a few words with Jim Groom over at Bavablog via the comments after following up on his Glass Bees post in which he coined the term Edupunk. We realised, via some of the more negative replies, that some……

I guess my perspective on things may be at odds with the prevailing thinking and perhaps that brings a new angle to the debate. I think it would be a mistake to exclude poeple on the basis of their politics by injecting ideology.

I have also learned from the discussion.

Ken

I think these are excellent points. The market is an incredibly complex thing. No single paradigm can possibly hope to explain it, and certainly not the view of markets as instruments of oppression. You have pointed out some of the many issues that are at play here.

Jabiz, I can see that you mean well. I am definitely in your first category - that is, I beleive we can all work for the same types of outcomes, even though we have different political perspectives on the world. This is precisely why I reacted to the politicization that edupunk atempts to create. I beleive their view of the market (the ‘vultures of ‘ that started the meme) is hateful, one-dimensional, and wrongheaded. Obviously people are free to think and beleive what the want, but bringing ideology into the debate will prove destructive and will exclude people who do not share those sentiments. I feel it is worth resisting.