U of O Watch mission, in the words of Foucault...

"One knows … that the university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class. … It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them." -- Foucault, debating Chomsky, 1971.

U of O Watch mission, in the words of Socrates...

"An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all." -- Socrates

video of president allan rock at work

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Clickers for teaching, nothing for learning


Senator Joseph Hickey has exposed another administrative scam at the University of Ottawa (LINK).

The admin wants to tailor classroom practice towards more mindless technology that prevents or substitutes human interactions with technological gadgetry. And of course they want to media market the fact that they are doing this, as though it were a good thing.

The best way to manage the behaviours of professors is to offer research money and gold stars of funding for their annual reports...

Meanwhile the disease of PowerPoint has spread to epidemic proportions:


without any hope in sight.

Societal engineering of the sterile classroom...

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