education | ZETEO

Consumers, Apprentices, Failed Universities

April 3, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I have no complaints about living in Maine. I find good music, good restaurants, good friends in the small city of Portland. I’ve taught inland and upstate in Bangor – just this side of Old Town, home of the classic canvas canoes I grew up with and rigged for sailing in a tidal river that opens on Buzzards Bay. That inlet-laced coast reminds me of the Maine Coast. There’s an older, slower, pace to life here. All this nostalgia […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, Uncategorized, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, education, literature, reading, technology, writing

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Technology in the Age of Inequality

March 13, 2016 by fritztucker

Last week, I attended the Technology, Privacy, and the Future of Education symposium at NYU’s Media, Culture, and Communication department. One panelist, NYU Sociology’s Richard Arum, addressed the impact of technology on education-as-vocation—a subject on which I recommend Sugata Mitra’s self-organized, child-driven pedagogy. The other panelists focused primarily on digital technology’s impact on educational administration. Debates arose around the development of online-only curricula, apps that send parents reports on how late their children arrive to class, and the ethical implications […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: capitalism, civil rights, crime, death, education, ethics, History, New York City, politics, science, social justice, technology

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Alienation, The Academy, Public Philosophy

March 13, 2016 by Ed Mooney

Once upon a time, there was a wildly popular “school” of thought called “existentialism.” Ordinary educated persons read works of existential writing and attended plays by existentialist dramatists; existential themes were bandied about in pubs and cafes; even the mass media took note of the way in which existentialist philosophy had broken the boundaries of the academy and been taken up in the streets. Eventually, of course, the badge “existentialist” became exhausted and dismissed, parodied, travestied, and ignored until […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: alienation, education, literature, philosophy, universities, writing

THERE IWAS UNDER M YROCK

June 15, 2015 by Alexia Raynal

Earlier this year, New York’s iconic Scholastic store in SoHo permanently closed. I never visited the store while it was open, but I got a glimpse of its history while visiting the small exhibit that was put in its place. The larger piece in the exhibit (displayed in an entrance window) is a scroll-shaped canvas with an illustration of a child dragging herself out from underneath a big rock. The upper part of the canvas features a text box whose words are arranged in […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: art, childhood, children, education, literature, poetry, reading, Xavier Donnelly

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Wanna fit in? Burn the witch!

June 15, 2015 by fritztucker

While every journalist and blogger is happy to put his or her own political slant on the motives behind Rachel Dolezal’s chronic, pathological lying, few seem to consider that Dolezal may in fact be lying to cover up an even more frowned upon secret; Rachel Dolezal, who is racially European-American, might actually identify as ethnically Black, and thus is likely suffering from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). If so, Dolezal is certainly not alone. BDD affects as much as 2.4% of the population. Extreme […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: African-Americans, capitalism, civil rights, education, gender, homosexuality, politics, race, Rachel Dolezal, social justice

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Hard Times: Scott Walker

May 8, 2015 by Walter Cummins

A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another, and the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation. — John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) For many years after immersion in Victorian novels during grad school, as much as I enjoyed them, I believed the world and the people they depicted […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: Charles Dickens, education, J.S. Mill, labor, Repubican Party

Pushing for more engineers and scientists through film

March 9, 2015 by Alexia Raynal

In recent years, the US has strongly favored education programs that focus on creating more engineers and scientists. Education advocates have opened up debates on how to get children more interested in STEM fields, an acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. They are also interested in learning how to integrate these subjects into children’s everyday lives. I was recently reminded of this national drive while watching the Walt Disney Animated Studios movie “Big Hero 6” (released in fall 2014). The film tells […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: Big Hero 6, children, education, film, STEM

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The drawbacks of ethnic product placement

February 23, 2015 by Alexia Raynal

Or On the Importance of Inclusion To some extent, ethnic art (including film and literature) has been recognized as an empowering tool for minorities. Latino and African-American advocates have consistently pushed for the inclusion of content reflecting the lives and struggles of people of color in art and at school. But while these stories have gradually made it into the market, they have nonetheless preserved their ethnic labels. For example, movies with African-American casts are usually labeled as ethnic films rather […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: African-Americans, art, books, children, education, film, literature, reading, writing

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Michael “Little B” Lewis, abandoned orphan who has spent more continuous time incarcerated than any person starting his sentence at the same age.

How to treat a boy convicted at age 13

February 16, 2015 by Alexia Raynal

Last month, The Daily Kos published an article written by Shaun King about Michael “Little B” Lewis, a 13-year-old Atlanta resident who was convicted for murder in 1997. In one of the first paragraphs, King explains: [Lewis’s] story had gripped the city and was regularly on the nightly news and on the front page of the AJC. They said he murdered a dad in cold blood in front of his kids on January 21, 1997. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: childhood, children, civil rights, crime, education, politics