Controversial '60s figure Bill Ayers gives talk on education at Des
Moines' Highline College
Former militant activist and college professor Bill Ayers spoke to a
full room at Highline Community College for Martin Luther King Week.
He talked to a packed room about education reform, ignoring his activist
past during the 60's and 70's as a leader in the anti-Vietnam War group
the Weathermen. While in the Weathermen Ayers participated in bombing
the United States Capital in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.
Ayers is a retired University of Illinois at Chicago, where he taught,
among other things, urban education reform.
Education reform was the topic for Ayers talk at Highline Community
College. Ayers said he sees teachers and students as being pilgrims on a
voyage, learning together. There is a current framework that says the
teachers are knowledgeable and the students are ignorant Ayers said, and
he doesn't agree with that.
"We get stuck in this idea that there is a fixedness to learning," Ayers
said. "This notion of a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old and a 12-year-old
who are all the same is a myth."
He said children have three teachers. Their first teacher is their
parents, their second teacher is their grade school teacher and their
third teacher is their environment.
"We have an educational policy that is simple," Ayers said. "Choose the
right parents...Well, that's wrong. In a democracy, that is
fundamentally, profoundly backward."
He talked about the inequality of the money spent on each student
depending on if they were in a rich neighborhood or a poor one, the
student in the rich neighborhood having more money spent on them and
thus getting a better education.
In a Democracy, Ayers said, this policy is not acceptable.
"In a democracy we base education on the fundamental principal of the
incalculable value of each person," Ayers said.
He said education is under attack as it is being framed as a product.
If we cannot imagine anything different than the injustices we see
today, Ayers said, we are doomed to repeat them.
He asked people to open their eyes and imagine and work for something
better than the world we have now.
"Standing right next to the world we are living in is a world that could
be, but isn't yet. And that is our responsibility.
"We are all blind people who can see; we are all seeing people who are
blind," he said. "So when I say open your eyes, I don't mean once or for
a minute. I mean continually. There's always more to know, more to see.
And as soon as you are satisfied that you can see everything, then you
are dead as a seeing person."
The room where Ayers was giving his talk filled up before he even took
the podium. A video feed was set up and was displayed in another room so
more people could listen to him talk.
--
http://www.highlinetimes.com/2011/01/26/news/controversial-60s-figure-bill-ay
ers-gives-talk-ed
Via InstaFetch
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