Spivak on ‘how to teach with no guarantees’ in rural India
“…you cannot undo thousands of years of oppressing the mind through these nice kinds of Montessori-style experiments. (…). When you see these things in pictures and posters and booklets or television, the protofeudal, downwardly class mobile, liberally outraged activists are always present.
(…)
the moment you feel it’s really working, you have to stop and ask yourself, for whom is it working? Give it a try; be absent. See. And you will see within the week … it’s not so easy to undo a thousand years.”
– interview with Jenny Sharpe, Signs, Winter 2003, p. 623.
Spivak is ‘ARDCORE!
Comment by charlie — 3/16/2007 @ 12:58 am
Don’t you just love it! “Protofeudal, downwardly class mobile, liberally outraged activists” … she is such a genius!
Comment by ana — 3/16/2007 @ 11:32 am