Unschooled Seminarian

The ‘gay agenda’ has been about passing our apartments to each other when we die, not about increasing affordable housing or opposing illegal eviction. It has been about getting our partnerships recognized so our partners can share our private health benefits not about defending Medicaid rights or demanding universal health care. It has been about getting our young sons into Boy Scouts, not about advocating for the countless/uncounted queer and trans youth struggling against a growing industry of youth incarceration. It has been about working to put more punishment power in the hands of an overtly racist criminal system with passage of hate crimes laws, not about opposing the mass incarceration of a generation of men of color or fighting the abuse of queer and trans people in the adult and juvenile justice settings

—

Dean Spade from “Compliance is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy” (via sage-power)

At one time, this actually wasn’t the agenda but it certainly is now.

Whenever the need for some pretence of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. I am responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my children’s culture in school. Black and third world people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.

— Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”, in Sister Outsider, page 114-115. (via fucknokyriarchy)

I think we need to talk about how higher education has co-opted the idea of engaged learning. A college is proud of the ‘engagement’ of its students, but there’s no commitment to a particular future as part of that engagement.

— Ithaca Sociology Prof. Alicia Swords. (via locusimperium)

Students are oversaturated with fragmented academic information, not underexposed to content. They are underexposed to the passion of knowing themselves and their society. They are starved for meaningful contexts, for intellectual and emotional pleasure in the life of the mind, for holistic learning that feeds their understanding. Schooling teaches many students that education is a pointless ritual wrapped in meaningless words.

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—Ira Shor, _Empowering_Education_ (U Chicago P, 1992), 83.

This book has been a great read so far, and I’m only three chapters in. I’ll probably post about the previous book I read, _Distinguishing_Disability_, at some point too.

: angwe :.

(via resmc)