Em seu Antropofagia Zumbi, Suely Rolnik traça uma interessante reflexão sobre como a experiência brasileira, a partir dos cinco séculos de vivência canibal. Passando pelos hábitos de Guerra dos povos tupinambás, pela força do Manifesto Antropofágico na fundação das bases do modernismo brasileiro a partir de uma perspectiva digestiva, foi se criando uma forma de […]
How to Become Irreplaceable
Reading Cathy Davidson’s The New Education had a nearly therapeutic effect on me. Her warm writing style is at once optimistic and edifying as she breaks down several of the major issues facing higher education in the United States today. Rather than adopting a doom and gloom outlook, as many critics (and, I might note, defenders) of […]
In-institutional
I remember reading William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep a few years back and thinking: This is about me? It’s not that he’s completely wrong in his analysis of the student-as-customer model of higher education; I think in many respects Deresiewicz is correct, but wide-sweeping claims about an entire generation hardly seem productive, even beyond what Eve Sedgwick has labeled which extend […]
The System is Broken
This book is dedicated to Millennials and to all future generations. You deserve a better chance than you’ve been given. I felt strangely disarmed reading the words that Cathy Davidson chooses to begin her book because I never felt like I deserved an apology. But there is also a sense of catharsis upon digesting the […]
For Any Seat at Any Table for Every Student!
has me thinking about the spatial-material axis of learning. How is learning affected by proximity, and what shape does this proximity take? I couldn’t agree more with Davidson’s claim that “the lecture is broken, and so we must think of better ways to incorporate active learning into the classroom” (Davidson, 248). The hierarchy of the […]
Education as a public good
As an international student “The New Education” it makes me confront myself under many ethical questions and consideration. What led me to pursue a degree at a U.S University? I would not hesitate to state that the prestige and reputation in their programs and faculty that seemed me attractive. But how much of that expectative […]
The new education and the decolonial debate
Cathy Davidson’s The New Education provides interesting insights on how to better the current university machinery in the era of homo economicus and neoliberal rationality. Her proposal relies on an ethical assemblage of all the gears involved, achieved by interdisciplinary approaches and alliances with state-of-the-art educational technology. Her book showcases examples of engaging professors who […]
mundanças para o novo mundo
Traçando um paralelo como o manifesto para uma “Nova Educação” criado por Charles Eliot em 1869, traça um panorama histórico sobre a formação e consolidação do sistema Universitário nos Estados Unidos e avalia as perspectivas e desafios deste modelo frente às transformações operadas na sociedade no nosso tempo. Para a construção de sua proposta de […]
Performing Palpable Impact
There seems a parallel between Mignolo’s “Delinking” (the uncoupling of the western narrative of history from the narrative of colonialism) and Cathy Davidson’s “New Education.” Across eight chapters, Davidson tracks the history of the University system and its operational tentacles (course specialization, admissions processes, tuition fees, grading systems, etc.). She counters these educational traditions by […]
Re-learning How to Learn, and American Problem?
First Idea: In the introduction to The New Education we read “In the last decade, it has become fashionable to say higher education would be more efficient and modern if were run as a business, treating students as “customers.” (pos. 230). The author accurately presents some of the historical roots of the “buisinefication” of higher […]