Explaining literacy crisis through philosophyfrom @glass__museum

Transcript

Lack of literacy is turning you into an NPC, and you're letting it happen. Despite advancing technology and more access to information than ever, literacy rates are declining worldwide. I know you're probably tired of hearing about the literacy crisis at this point, but honestly, it should concern you. Especially as politicians continue to pull funding away from education right under our no, and tech giants make billions off of our declining attention spans. Because the literacy crisis is about more than just education. It's an existential threat. I know it sounds dramatic, but it's really not if you think about what education represents. That is, our capacity for humanity. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, author Paula Ferre emphasizes the importance of curiosity and a critical understanding of one's condition in the world as fundamental to what he calls humanity's ontological vocation to become fully human. For Freire, education serves as a process of humanization, where students and teachers alike participate as active subjects in the process of knowledge formation and cultivating what he calls our critical consciousness. No, he's not saying that if you're uneducated, you're not human. But better, he's suggesting that to alienate human beings from their own decision making is to change them into objects. Restriction upon someone's capacity to cultivate their is thus an act of dehumanization. Yes, this is exactly what is promoted by our traditional concept of education. Referred to as the banking concept, most pedagogical approaches treat the student as an ignorant empty container into which the teacher and epistemological authority deposits knowledge. In this system, the more meekly students permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. The student is treated as a passive object who's told what to think think and what knowledge to absorb without exercising her own cognition. She's discouraged from questioning and simply expected to adapt to existing conditions, and as such, is prevented from fully exercising her capacity to be fully human. Education isn't treated as an act of cognition or a process of inquiry, but rather a one way transmission of information. And this establishes a particular relationship between human beings and the world, where students learn that there are people who know and people who don't know, authorities who possess truth, and subjects whose role is to receive it. As such, the goal of education consequently becomes adaptation, to learn enough about the world as it's presented to you to successfully function within it. By incentivizing passivity, you're conditioned to become an adaptable, manageable being. That is, a well oiled cog in the machine. People are encouraged to adapt to the world rather than to understand it. And so it systematically churns out NPCs. And the thing is, it makes sense because society also rewards those who accept their NPC status with with success. But success under the current system is just another word for domestication. Because who do you think benefits from this unquestioning passive acceptance of the world as it is? Indeed, Farrah argues that the interests of oppression lie in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, no the situation oppresses them. There's no need to fix the situation when people have adequately adapted to it and already accepted it as inevitable or natural, especially when it's so much easier to just eat the little complacency pills they're being fed in the form of digitized vice and instant gratification available at our fingertips for no cost other than our humanity. So I don't blame you. Because when all society is structured to push you in this way, it does indeed prove to be the path of least resistance. But isn't that what an NPC is? Moving through the world on autopilot with no critical consciousness? By giving up our critical capacity, we're allowing ourselves to be dehumanized, domesticated, and played.