“Action expresses priorities.” - Gandhi

Do you order your daily responsibilities according to personal priority criteria? I certainly do. I have always thought the determining what is, and is not, a priority was a subjective process, and up to the discretion of each individual – I have learned that others do not feel the same way.

Here’s where I’m at: True to my blue nature, I have, once again, packed my life full of activities and responsibilities: I am taking a full course load, working 18 hours for the government, singing in a charity choir, volunteering 1.5 days a week at Lucy Mc Cormick, and another 3 hours at Youth without Shelter. I'm baking non stop again, commuting to Waterloo from Toronto everyday, and managing my household which recently has come to include an 18yr old (!). As if that wasn't enough, I went in to what I thought was a job interview on Tuesday morning only to find myself on the first day of my absolute dream job (more on that next week). Essentially, every minute of every day is scheduled. Please do not think that I am complaining. I take full ownership for the state of my schedule; I just wanted you to know what it looks like.

I have a fairly packed schedule. Sometimes, negotiating and navigating priorities can be challenging, but I always do my best to make sure that I can satisfy all of the demands on me and my time. Most of the time, people and organizations are accommodating and flexible – except for one: school. (And thus begins my rant)

I often hear from professors that I need to “set my priorities” and “not take on so much that I lose sight of my priorities”. [Actually, my blood pressure went up a little bit just writing these two horribly presumptuous and condescending remarks.] The assumption made by these professors is that my education (more specifically readings, course work and class participation) is my priority, and that everything else comes after. On the contrary, I say, on the contrary! In fact, if I was going to rank my responsibilities, I would have to say that the artificiality, and tediousness, of the banking model education system makes it dead last on my list of priorities.

I have a view of education, and specifically the institution of education, that is in line with the problem posing model that Paulo Freire puts forth in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. At the core of my belief is the idea that education should support the existence in reality and not become a reality unto itself. The world of academia has lost sight of its actual purpose and has taken on the status of an alternate reality – in fact, I would argue that some academics believe the world of academia to be the only reality.
I have a real problem with this view because I always seem to be caught in the middle of the two worlds.

Freire says “thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world” which I think should be the foundational principal of the institution of education. I think that a fundamental part of all education should either be born from action upon the world, or applied through action upon the world, rather than having knowledge exist in a vacuum, never to have an impact on the greater global community. to remove the action from the education, the institution is alienating any true meaning from the process. As Freire puts it “the teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static compartmentalized and predictable” and goes on to say that this way of education is “disconnected from totality”. By assuming, and enforcing, that course related responsibilities should be a priority in each student’s life the education system is denying every student the opportunity of real life experiences that add depth and meaning change to experiences. Universities especially should allow people the space they need to access and support their life through education in whichever way is most meaningful to them where teachers “trust people and their creativity” and are “partners of the students”. I believe that this would create a system where people would come out with a richer, fuller education that is more applicable to the work outside academia.

I think of the dialogical experiences and the educational models of Socrates, Aristotle and Plato that encouraged deep free thinking and compare it to our narrow minded and ultimately oppressive system. The institution of education had developed a vested interest in making sure students do things their way. I am a little disenchanted because I think that the system has become hyper-consumerized and has lost its status as the place for free, unbridled thought.

Gandhi said “Action expresses priorities.” My priorities are healthy communities, happy people and just action; none of which are realized by sitting in a desk downloading information. I express my priorities in the things i do outside of academia. I’m gonna hit the next person that asks me to “set my priorities”!

Thanks for reading my rant!
*love*