“Usually I was not so moralistic, believing as I still do that it was my duty to teach the curriculum and not to pontificate, to inspire debates, not weigh in with verdicts. I did on one or two occasions tell my students they were living in a society that valued people of their age, region, and class primarily as cannon fodder, cheap labor, and gullible consumers, and that education could give them some of the weapons necessary to fight back.”
-Garret Keizer, “Getting Schooled: The re-education of an American teacher,” Haper’s Magazine September/2011
I am so fired up to teach after reading this essay! Helping students achieve information fluency is one of the reasons why I became a librarian, to watch students’ worlds get larger and more complicated, and watching them grapple with all of life’s ambiguities.
