School's out forever!

In our New School Histories class today we considered the role students should take in determining curriculum, teaching, administration at a school like ours. We read an essay about an episode of student take-over of a class at the New School College in 1968, by an instructor who found himself relegated to the role of "paid consultant" to his class. With several levels of irony he described how the students reconstituted their course with great energy and rigor - only largely to recreate what would anyway have been taught. A win for all sides" Next week we'll be looking at more radical forms of student protest, including "Disorientation," a guide put together by students in the middle of the "war" between the New School and its president in 2009. It includes this splendid account of how taking ownership of your education can be a form of subversion of the capitalism educational machine. Take that!