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Noam Chomsky on Democracy and Education in the 21st Century and Beyond

Noam Chomsky on Democracy and Education in the 21st Century and Beyond
Combat the epidemic of misinformation that plagues the corporate media! Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout and keep independent journalism strong. Noam Chomsky. (Photo: Andrew Rusk / Flickr ) Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, political critic and activist. He is an institute professor and professor emeritus in the department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Also see: Democracy and Education in the 21st Century: Part 1, Daniel Falcone Interviews Noam Chomsky, June 2009 Daniel Falcone for Truthout: I wanted to ask you some questions about education in the 21st century. Chomsky: Not sure the topic exists. Falcone: Yes, right. Chomsky: That's an interesting question. And these were independent farmers. And there was more to it than that. So, it's kind of a mixture. Right now, we happen to be in a general period of regression, not just in education. The other is what's happening to teachers like you.

After Your Job Is Gone Do you have a job? Do you like having a job? Then I have some bad news for you. The Guardian is worried “today’s technologies are going to remove people from economic activity completely.” Wrong tense: the right question is what is happening. It’s the same around the world. Think you’re safe because you don’t work in a factory? Retail? Retail now employs fewer people than it did in 1999. Even lawyers, financiers, and surgeons aren’t safe. Oh, you work in tech? It’s like the global economy has forked into two tracks: tech, which boomed right through the Great Recession, and just keeps booming on, and nobody can hire enough engineers…and everyone else. It’s happening right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Which is great for those of us in tech, right? I want to stress again that this is only the beginning — that as software eats the world, as Marc Andreessen put it, this two-track economy will grow ever more divergent around the planet. At least I hope so.

Manga and anime declared good study tools for kids Children’s books and television shows these days are nothing compared to the ones that many of us had growing up. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. I think back fondly on those days of watching Rugrats and Scooby Doo marathons and scoff at the thought of modern-age children rotting their brains with Spongebob and Annoying Orange. But the fact of the matter is that letting kids subject themselves to those books and animations is important to the development of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, though the shows now seem like garbage to our fully-developed minds. In Japan, the same sort of issue arises with kids becoming obsessed with manga and anime. Parents may try to insist that their children put away the comics and pick up a real book. Let’s start with the manga. Every time a child rereads their manga of choice, there is something new that they discover. But what about anime? In addition, anime can drastically broaden a child’s vocabulary. Like this:

Are Sugata Mitra's ideas on education doomed to failure? Joe Tibbetts recalls his part in developing the National Curriculum and is depressed by the failure to make education relevant and appropriate. Sugata Mitra is a 61 year old Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University in the far north east of England. He is a genuine polymath, so described because of the wide range of disciplines and subjects in which he has made telling interventions. Mr Mitra asks difficult questions about the ways in which we do education. He’s right of course. In 1971 when Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society was published I was at Bretton Hall (later Leeds University) in the first year of a three year teaching degree. Like vampires in a blood bank we fell upon Illich’s ideas, swallowing them in great gulps and cracking open the seal on the second bottle while still draining the contents of the first. We took exception to this system because it is a useless and silly way to educate people.

C.M. Porto Consciente de que o capital humano é o potencial mais sólido de uma sociedade baseada no conhecimento, o Município do Porto elegeu, na última década, a Educação como eixo prioritário da sua atuação. O reforço da qualificação dos cidadãos constitui o seu principal desafio estratégico que orienta as prioridades definidas em matéria de política educativa, reconhecendo a educação e a formação como fatores centrais do desenvolvimento económico e tecnológico, da coesão social, do desenvolvimento pessoal e do exercício pleno da cidadania. No quadro de uma nova cidadania, aumentam os níveis de exigência e de participação política direta. Os municípios assumem hoje um papel, significativamente, mais relevante e alargado, em matéria de educação, ensaiando modelos de descentralização, autonomia e complementaridades, no quadro das políticas locais de educação.

Citizens Will Make the Future of Cities 'The future of making is changing again, and cities and citizens will lead the way', says an expert of Human-Future interaction. The way we make things is constantly changing. Making can be traced throughout history. The steam engine sparked the Industrial Revolution, shifting the world from handcrafting to mass production. The assembly line and mass production transformed industry after industry and gave birth to the middle class. Over the past decade, making has started to change once again. But this chapter of the maker story is different. This global culture has a name—the maker movement—and you can see its impact through new publications like Make magazine and the fast growth and global reach of makerspaces and maker meetups like Maker Faire. The DIY ethos of making isn’t limited to creating physical objects—stuff. Makers are coming together in civic innovation hackathons to prototype new forms of citizen-led governance.

What is your absolute worst "meeting the parents" story? : AskReddit Studying vs learning There is a fundamental difference between studying and learning in the field of language learning. Being able to speak a language is a skill. A skill is something that is achieved over time through trial and error. Do you remember the first time that you magically started to find the balance on the saddle of your bike? Now, let us suppose that my very enthusiastic father wanted to teach me how to ride a bike by constantly giving me instructions on how to do it. A bike remains upright when it is steered so that the ground reaction forces exactly balance all the other internal and external forces it experiences, such as gravitational if leaning, inertial or centrifugal if in a turn, gyroscopic if being steered, and aerodynamic if in a crosswind. The rider applies torque to the handlebars in order to turn the front wheel and so to control lean and maintain balance. Studying is an act of deliberate learning. Mark and John both get a new language course. Mark examines the book. (*) Footnote:

Finlândia: a melhor educação do mundo é 100% estatal, gratuita e universal Atualizado em 29.08.2015 Follow @tarsocv Curta o Blog do Tarso no Facebook A Finlândia tem a melhor educação do mundo. Na Finlândia a internet é um direito de todos. A Finlândia se destaca em tecnologia mais do que os Estados Unidos da América. Sim, na Finlândia se paga bastante imposto: 50% do PIB. O país dá um banho nos Estados Unidos da América em matéria de educação e de não corrupção. Na Finlândia se incentiva a colaboração, e não a competição. Mas os neoliberais-gerenciais, privatistas, continuam a citar os EUA como modelo. Difícil o Brasil chegar perto do modelo finlandês? Veja o seguinte documentário chamado The Finland Phenomenon, imperdível, elaborado por estadunidenses: Em inglês: Legendas em espanhol: Assista este outro vídeo com legendas em português, sobre a educação na Finlândia. Curtir isso: Curtir Carregando...

Participate in the Citizens Pact! **We particularly encourage small or new groups to apply, as well as motivated members who do not have a local group in their city but would like to use this opportunity to establish a wider group and gather more volunteers. You may hence state in the application form your particular situation or the situation of your group.** The Citizens Pact is an initiative organised by European Alternatives, which brings together a coalition of citizens and organizations joining in to advocate for concrete demands on the Europe they want to live in – one of the outputs will be a citizens’ manifesto to be presented in advance of the European Elections in May 2014. A series of consultations with citizens are being organised in Spring of 2013 in the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany and Slovakia. We have some new funding from the European Parliament for local groups to run events as part of the process. Unfortunately these opportunities are limited to countries inside the EU. FAQs Who?

Australians of Reddit, what's an animal in North America that scares the fuck out of you? : AskReddit Don't Go Back to School: How to Fuel the Internal Engine of Lifelong Learning by Maria Popova “When you step away from the prepackaged structure of traditional education, you’ll discover that there are many more ways to learn outside school than within.” “The present education system is the trampling of the herd,” legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright lamented in 1956. So, in 2012, when I found out that writer Kio Stark was crowdfunding a book that would serve as a manifesto for learning outside formal education, I eagerly chipped in. People who forgo school build their own infrastructures. Reflecting on her own exit from academia, Stark articulates a much more broadly applicable insight: A gracefully executed quit is a beautiful thing, opening up more doors than it closes. But despite discovering in dismay that “liberal arts graduate school is professional school for professors,” which she had no interest in becoming, Stark did learn something immensely valuable from her third year of independent study, during which she read about 200 books of her own choosing:

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