A week before the announcement of the Janata [public] Curfew slated for March 22, 2020, I spoke with a 43-year-old close relative in her village in Leh, Ladakh, by phone from Delhi. Around that time, the news of rising infections from the novel coronavirus coming in from China, Italy and Iran were ominous. Ladakh had […]
Education, jobs and capitalism
American capitalism has a hate-love relationship with the nation’s schools. On the “hate” side is a stream of complaints from business leaders and organizations about the many students, particularly in city schools, who fail achievement tests, are high school dropouts or, if they complete high school, do not have the academic qualifications for college and […]
Jacques Ellul: A Prophet for Our Tech-Saturated Times
By now you have probably read about the so-called “tech backlash.” Facebook and other social media have undermined what’s left of the illusion of democracy, while smartphones damage young brains and erode the nature of discourse in the family. Meanwhile computers and other gadgets have diminished our attention spans along with our ever-failing connection to […]
Bulldoze the Business School
Visit the average university campus and it is likely that the newest and most ostentatious building will be occupied by the business school. The business school has the best building because it makes the biggest profits (or, euphemistically, “contribution” or “surplus”) – as you might expect, from a form of knowledge that teaches people how […]
CTRLshift: An Emergency Summit for Change
In Britain, these days, all the essential endeavors that are supposed to promote general wellbeing and what is known as “civilization” are, it is widely agreed, in crisis: health and social services; housing; education; energy; transport; and of course, though successive governments haven’t taken it seriously, agriculture. Oh yes, and then there’s “the environment” – […]
Strangely Like Gulag: Schooling and the Industrial Machine
For many years, I’ve seen more and more of my rural and tribal neighbors pack their children off to school. Now, every morning between 8:00 and 9:00 am in this upwardly-mobile-yet-backward district, the country roads are full of children commuting to school, hoisting bags laden with what they believe is the wisdom and knowhow of […]
Rambo, Barbie and Wordsworth
By John Page The scene is a classroom in Leh, Ladakh, twelve thousand feet up in the western Himalayas. A young teacher stands in front of her class of 12 year-olds. “I appreciate the poetry of …”, she starts, inviting her students to complete the sentence. Milarepa? Nagarjuna? Tagore, perhaps? But no. “Wordsworth”, they dutifully […]