The Education Revolution and Our Global Future | David Baker | TEDxFulbright

This is a provocative presentation by Dr. David Baker Professor of Education and Sociology at Penn State University. Education worldwide has indeed taken place with many people now having access to it at an unprecedented level. This is good. Very good.

His goal in this TED Talk he delivered in 2014 is to underscore the positive, growing influence of educational access worldwide, particularly in light of all the "negative" portrayals of education. My main criticism is that he confuses "negative" with the idea of being critical of education. When we are critical of education, as I very often am in this blog, the idea is always to name and analyze the problem with the idea of improving it. This is clearly the same for pretty much everyone I know in my corner of the universe in academia.

That said, it's clear that education changes us and very frequently empowers. This last point he makes is the strongest. Countries improve access to education and while they appreciate expanding the knowledge and skills base of their denizens, they do not always appreciate that empowered people—and organizations and communities to which they belong, I might add—assert themselves in ways that challenge local, state, and federal governments. That is, they act politically, forming social movements and making demands. For Gen Z youth, they are digital natives and masterful with getting their messages across in social media. We are witnessing this in the Harris-Walz campaign as we speak.

A skillful youth population as a consequence of education and literacy is of particular concern to totalitarian governments. This then gives rise to such things as "Arab Spring" and youth organizing and uprisings.

What Baker fails to address is how the tamping down on these social movements takes different forms, including harmful legislation like book bans, school district takeovers, privatizing education, attacks on voting rights, and outright political oppression. 

To his credit, Baker does say that education is this two-edged sword. 

However, my concern is that Baker can most definitely stay in the positive zone as long as he ignores how the failure of lower-class Black, Brown, and Indigenous youth gets organized within our educational systems, albeit with important exceptions. Outright political repression when youth and their allies advocate for a more just world is also hard to ignore.

Baker seems to suggest that we should all simply be content with what we have. While I believe in living with gratitude, it's important to recognize that policy and politics play an inescapably powerful role in shaping education. Sorry, there is no way that we can all be happy when so much is at stake both for individuals and society.

I'm posting because I really do appreciate my global audience and think that Baker's presentation is a good launchpad for discussion on the meaning of education in your corner of the universe. Oh yes, and let's indeed be critical as we think this through.

-Angela Valenzuela