Thursday, May 26, 2011

Enough is enough

I have the title for the book I am writing: Enough is enough: Starting over in American Education. I can no longer take the "tinkering" line of action. We've been trying this for several hundred years and we are in worse shape than ever. Been doing some reading and there are some books out there about how to change education now that we have new stuff (technical and ethos - Lankshear and Knobel) but they all seem to be arguing that we just have to tweak the current system and it will be okay. Demonstrating individual achievement still seems to be the end game. Argh.

It's so much deeper than that. We have to start over. Start over with fundamentally different ontologies and epistemologies: (from a place of equality rather than inequality - Ranciere); where everybody counts - Shirky, Bruns); and, where sociospatial relations are taken into account (Soja). I don't want to write a "how to" book. Rather, I want to lay out the argument and suggest some future pathways. I have some examples of single cases at the classroom and community levels, but not at the systemic level. The book will be about thinking that through. Lucky for me two publishers are interested in publishing it!

I'm excited, but scared. Will probably use this blog space to work through ideas and would love feedback.