An unofficial AU advocate at large, Jason never misses a chance to recount the merits of an Athabasca education. Jason’s studies began alone in front of a rustic rural fireplace in December of 2003 and carried on through various brick and mortar college classrooms yet always with Athabasca as part of his journey. In 2014 he completed his BA in Sociology and in 2022 graduated with an MA in Cultural Studies. To this end, his columns seek to explore edifying moments of learning how to learn within the challenging ideological terrain of that great bugaboo facing students everywhere: the real world!
Colonial Education and the Introduction of ?The Word? Imagine yourself living on a beach. When you were young your parents and elders taught you to swim and fish. Then one day some missionaries arrived. They made you sit indoors at a desk and told you that they had turned your oral language into a written… Read more »
An exchanged glance, a hand brushing a hand, a slip of paper exchanged deftly and discreetly . . . Up until a decade or so ago the paper note was state-of-the-art technology for expressing secret longings and desires. Imagine if a teacher in today’s text-messaging world intercepted one such note, and found it to contain… Read more »
In all cultures and times, education systems enforce a degree of uniformity on pupils. During lunch hour, however, students are freer to express the outside culture of which they are a part. By comparing the lunchtime experience of Canadian and Japanese schoolchildren, basic cultural differences appear. Sometimes lunch seems like only a mirage on the… Read more »
Education has existed for as long as people have been raised by their elders. The idea of formal schooling goes back thousands of years, yet school as a mandatory part of growing up is a recent phenomenon. For instance, many of us know of or can remember a relative who attended few or no classes… Read more »