Carl of Dead Voles has kindly (irritatingly) tagged me with a meme. I didn’t participate in the last one, so I suppose I’m obligated to give it a go this time around.
The meme is this:
“Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.
Give your picture a short title.
Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”
Link back to this blog entry.
Include links to 5 (or more) educators.”
The picture I have chosen is this:
I suppose, despite Delacroix’s own wishes, I will call it “Liberty and Revolution”. In the tradition of thinkers such as Lucretius, Spinoza, Hume, and Marx, I would like to produce students who are free, who are not simply props of ideology, cliches, and superstitition (or who have the tools to question these things), and who are capable of imagining a world other than the one we live in and who act to produce such a world. This does not entail using the classroom as a platform or pulpit for indoctrinating students with a specific set of claims, but rather of giving them tools and concepts that might allow them to no longer see the world as self-evident, natural, or obvious. I can’t say whether or not I’ve had much success in achieving these aims, but certainly something like this is simultaneously why I so often find myself depressed when teaching (as I discover just how pervasive these things are), and what I ardently hope education is capable of achieving.
I tag
Larval Subjects . 
May 13, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Sorry man. This aptly-named meme thing feels a little too much like a chain letter to be entirely comfortable. But I’ve enjoyed seeing and reading the responses so far, and appreciate your retrieval of the buxomly virginal Marianne au combat for pedagogical inspiration. Thanks.
I share your goals. I also agree with my students when they begin to get the point and, faced with the awesome responsibility of freedom, flinch in dismay.
May 13, 2008 at 9:46 pm
damn. I wish I hadn’t seen the tag. it feels like revenge or punishment or horrible knife gutting me and exposing my utter lack of creativity…
May 13, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Ditto Jodi, that’s why I generally avoid these things.
May 14, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Relax! Didn’t we have a conversation about “innovative” teaching at some point? Isn’t that all part of the progress ideology? No need to be creative even a little. You can lecture like the Sophists or you can ask questions like Socrates. Everything else is either personal style or bells and whistles. We want to do one of two things when we teach: transmit information, or stimulate thought. Preferably both. Since thousands of years ago this has been what education is.
Btw when the bean counters show up and ask you to self-assess your innovative teaching, describing Socrates and plugging in your own topics ALWAYS works. The other thing that works is lecturing via a technology. Describe the technology and its imaginary appeal to techno-savvy students rhapsodically and you’re home free.
May 14, 2008 at 3:56 pm
[…] 14, 2008 by Shahar Ozeri Ack. Both Carl of Dead Voles and SInthome over at Larval Subjects tagged us here at Perverse Egalitarianism with a meme. I’m particularly irritated today […]
May 15, 2008 at 4:18 am
Great response to this meme.
May 19, 2008 at 4:58 am
I’m laughing hysterically at IT’s picture-thinking quilt… Mostly just because she’s so grumpy about it and also has a very good response. Check it out here:
http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2008/05/picture-thinking-meme.asp
May 19, 2008 at 8:02 am
I am a grumpy bastard! But honoured to be tagged, sir.