Neil Postman rocked the boat. He imagines aloud and politically heralds what schools could be about. He says, What this means is that at its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living. Such an enterprise is not easy to pursue, since our politicians rarely speak of it, our technology is indifferent to it, and our commerce despises it. The water is, after all, wet, overboard.
Postman suggests three gods which have acquired allegiance within our schools.
The latter is obvious to me in the rare conversations that I have with coworkers who are more than ready to casually bomb Baghdad or commit troops to Kossovo while not being able to find either on a map nor have any knowledge of their respective history, culture or suffering. But, I might add, they know well the statistics of the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. Let's talk about that. My teaching career spans 28 years. Never has the topic however, been so often discussed and debated as now.