And there we have it…

Posted on | June 26, 2007 | 3 Comments

Michael Gorman makes explicit his repellent position on education:

“Learning and education are enterprises in which the academically gifted prosper and are justified in prospering.”

I prefer to see education and learning as processes by which everyone prospers relative to their starting position. Gorman and his ilk, those who, with no sense of irony whatsoever, can style themselves as ‘intellectually gifted’, wish to corral education for their own selfish and exclusive use.

He and they deserve our unadorned contempt!

Technorati Tags: education, learning, contempt, elitism

Category: education, elitism

Comments

3 Responses to “And there we have it…”

Martin
June 26th, 2007 @ 12:47 pm

Yes, repellant indeed. I felt almost physically nauseous reading it so riled did I feel. He is of course confounding many different things. Experts don’t become redundant, indeed in an info rich world you need them. But there are new metrics now (e.g. your Technorati rating). But crucially there is no divide now, more a gradation. The new media are not fenced off as the private enclave of the ‘experts’ (or heaven help us ‘intellectually gifted’), which makes you much more accountable.
There seems to be a spate of these semi-intellectual attacks on web 2.0. A sign that it has penetrated even ivory towers. What I never understand in all these criticisms of wikipedia is not that it is wrong in some places, but that is is so very good in most. Don’t they see anything amazing in that at all? You’ve kind of got to pity them really if they don’t.
Martin
John Connell
June 26th, 2007 @ 3:37 pm

I just wonder how these guys manage to sleep at night as they worry about the great unwashed standing at the very gates of their faux-intellectual towers. It really is obnoxious stuff.
Britannica mounts elitist defence against Wikipedia. Germany funds theirs. « Flesh is Grass
June 27th, 2007 @ 9:28 pm

[...] John Connell (via Stephen Downes) picked him up on that: “I prefer to see education and learning as processes by which everyone prospers relative to their starting position. Gorman and his ilk, those who, with no sense of irony whatsoever, can style themselves as “intellectually gifted”, wish to corral education for their own selfish and exclusive use.” [...]