Postman, N. (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. Random House.
Dewey expressed that the role an individual is assigned in an environment – what he is permitted to do – is what the individual learns In other words, the medium itself, i.e. the environment, is the message. ‘Message’ here means the perception you are allowed to build, the attitudes you are enticed to assume the sensitivities you are encouraged to develop – almost all of the things you learn to see and feel and value. You learn than because your environment is organized in such a way that it permits or encourages or insists that you learn them.
All authorities get nervous when learning is conducted without a syllabus.
A change in an environment is rarely only additive or linear… What you have is a totally new environment requiring a whole new repertoire of survival strategies.
When you plug something into a wall, someone is getting plugged into you. Which means you need new patterns of defense, perception, understanding, evaluation. You need a new kind of education.
While (students) need to find new roles for themselves as social, political, and religious organisms, their teachers are acting almost entirely as shills for corporate interests, shaping them up to be functionaries in one bureaucracy or another.