Louise
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it is not necessarily true that teaching, say,
> mathematics, in relation to the workplace (more obviously for literacy)
> could not be a superior intellectual strategy to teaching it in a purely
> abstract and "decontextualized" academic fashion.
>
> It is also not necessarily true that the same education is most relevant to
> all people's lives. By "the same" here I mean in its content, methods of
> instruction, and goals. Most secondary education in the US today aims, at
> least in the eyes of reformers, at a universal college-bound academic
> model. This really seems unrealistic to me and doomed to failure. Esp.
> since the academic model is almost universally the "decontextualized" model
> (i.e. teaching of formal structures apart from relations to concrete social
> functioning in an actual society), which seems useful ONLY as a passport to
> higher education.
>
> 2. Gordon shared some notes about the World Bank's agenda -- and they're
> not the only ones with it -- for privatization of higher education as a
> means toward higher education reform. I frankly don't think they are as
> crazy, or evil, as may seem at first sight.
>
>