Metaphor

Defense Against the Dark Arts: Do You-Know-Whose Side School Is On?

Ministry supervisor Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter's Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom made the difference between School and Education crystal-gazing clear.

[quote=JK Rowling in Order of the Phoenix]- "This is School, Mr. Potter. Not the Real World," she said softly.

- "So we're not supposed to be prepared for what's waiting out there?"

- "There's nothing waiting out there . . .
who do you imagine wants to attack children like yourselves? If you are still worried, if someone is alarming you with fibs, I would like to hear about it. I am your friend. Now kindly continue your reading."[/quote]

I had to blog this while the Stupid Girls debate is on, because I consider JK Rowling's cultural smarts to reach far beyond Stupid Girls and the Tyranny of Thin. Having read every Harry Potter book at least once, I'd argue that the Culture of Schooling is a specialty of Rowling's. I'd argue that Order of the Phoenix would make a first-class focus for modern citizenship education throughout all worlds muggle and magical, in any language.

Are we just a pretend world of fashionable thought, obsessed with trying to look and feel smart for each other, neglecting and perhaps unable to actually BE smart and DO smart?

» read more | JJ Ross's blog | 9 comments | email this blog | 3158 reads

Visit our sponsors

culturekitchens

The Publisher
Liza Sabater

Daily servings of political dissent
culturekitchen

Grassroots News and
Activism for New Yorkers
Daily Gotham

Feminist Bloggers
Network
BlogSheroes

A new kind of vouyerism
Voogling

Art + Code + Philosophy
Potatoland.blog

Got any dirt, tips, leads or money for us? Then drop us a line or two at editors [at] culturekitchen [dot] com or use our general contact form to reach everybody in the editorial team ASAP.

Words to live by

Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes --indeed, deletes-- the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.

But most of the people who use the new designation --economists, in particular-- are innocent as to the effect. They see nothing wrong with their bland, descriptive terminology. They pay no attention to the important question: Whether money "wealth" accords a special power. (It does.) Thus the term innocent fraud.

— John Kenneth Galbraith: Free Market Fraud | The Progressive