Why is the bear named Gomez? I’m really curious to know. If it was a dog or a cat instead, would you name it Gomez, too? SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!
I kind of agree, but not 100%. I think collectively, we have more power than we do as individuals. If enough people make enough noise (and sometimes, you don’t even need that many), you can get the leviathan to change direction. it’s hard, and there is constant pressure not to do it, but I think it’s the only way we can do it.
But there is still the question of if MOOCs are good as the PRIMARY form of education–especially if they are profit driven. At the end of the day, the whole purpose of business is to make a profit, no? This doesn’t mean that positives can’t come out of what business does, but it does color their activities with a particular tint of green–and that CAN be the enemy of good, just look at the 2008 crisis, where profit drove the housing market and what seemed like a positive–more people owning homes–turned out to be a shell game, at best. Sure some good things can come out of the drive for profit, but bad things come out of it too.
I’m all for being descriptive (Ta-Nehisi Coates was making that point just this week, but at some point, you do need to tackle the moral and ethical questions as well. I also don’t know if MOOCs are inevitable, especially if they don’t prove profitable. Which, if that were the outcome, and the only people doing MOOCs are those who are truly interested in the dissemination of knowledge to the largest audience possible, I could get behind that and I do think it can be a net positive for society. I’m not sure it’s MOOCs I’m against, but the notion of that as our only option. I think the GA Tech MS might be the test we need to see if this is a possible pathway for higher Ed or not.
And you’re right on the left wing. I think that is one of the things that tore apart the paris Commune, alienated various activists from one another in many other cases… they let ideology cloud their practicality, always a bad thing. But the left is often hamstrung by ethical and moral debates, which make practical solutions sometimes tough to formulate…
[quote=“ActionAbe, post:10, topic:19200”]
Throw a wig on me and call me Cassie if it helps you to understand the point I’m trying to make here. See, from my perspective, we’ve already lost some of these battles and can’t fight yesterday’s battles unless we’re prepared to lose tomorrow’s.[/quote]
I agree about fighting today’s battles, not yesterdays… I just don’t think the MOOC stuff is over and done. I’m all for looking to the future, but we really can’t tell what’s coming. I don’t think the struggle over higher ed is over and done…
Also, I don’t know why the cassie thing made me think of this, but it did:
Me neither, though I’m ABD now. Let’s do it anyway, because fuck the system, that’s why… I know, we’ll start some MOOCs… I hear they are the wave of the future from some smarty pants dude around here… 
