(Ir)religiosity

To create good participants in the current system:

Schools should be focusing on [the capacity to communicate effectively or to cooperatively solve problems], as well as ethical reasoning. Wall Street’s meltdown, linked to shady lending practices, reveals the moral bankruptcy of huge segments of the market. Yet political leaders now urge our children to quietly fill-in bubble tests, seeking only to become productive cogs in a broken wheel.

I’ve been thinking about pedagogy this past week and the downfalls of various methods of teaching and testing.  It reminds me of a Paulo Freire quote I ran across a while back.  I cannot for the life of me remember where it came from.

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

That is inspiring however it is at the same time discouraging to see institutions and educators who continue to foster the present system(s).

“In the 1970s, around 47 percent of Americans were overweight or obese; now 66 percent of us are. In addition, the number of just obese people has doubled, from 15 percent of our population to 30 percent.”  Why?  We keep eating and drinking more and more.  We’re killing ourselves.