Speculative Education Colloquium: K. Wayne Yang

Talk from K. Wayne Yang, author of A Third University Is Possible

Uncovering the decolonizing ghost in the colonizing machine

The world feels bleak too often today. Amidst global peril, many systems of education are re-entrenched in back-to-basics packets and regressive forms of online instruction. What’s worse, our sheltering within such ramshackle education solutions is being positioned as a temporary stopgap until students and teachers are returned to the weathered and stratifying systems of schooling from before. COVID-19 is redefining life for students and teachers globally and its dictates for physical distancing have reinforced standardized and isolating models of schooling across the U.S. 

But we know this doesn’t have to be the case. We know that, in the words of Rihanna, we can find the possibilities for designing for love in this often hopeless-seeming moment.

Teachers, students, researchers, parents, community members: we can imagine new systems of learning and new ways of interacting. Packets and online learning management systems are not the future of education we were promised nor the one that our students deserve. 

 

Listen to the whole talk.