Even erudite flies get smashed now and then for sounding too ‘school smart’. As one of many AU students not immersed in an academic social sphere, Jason’s ‘Fly on the Wall’ column seeks to aid and abet the success of others in his cohort. We won’t always be understood when we speak of what we are learning in school but we can rest assured that our education still has value.
His lighthearted approach to sociological philosophy stems from conducting field research at bush parties and working his day job reforesting the mountains of BC. Born in the city of Vancouver and raised on a farm in the Fraser Valley and an orchard in the Okanagan, he attained a diploma in Horticulture in the Creston Valley and then returned to school as a Sociology major. Today’s he’s an AU Master’s of Integrated Studies student who spends his spare time enjoying nature walks, snorkeling and reading whatever philosophical and sociological tracts capture his fancy.
Jason is fascinated with the micro-sociological thoughts and interactions that frame and demarcate our experience of daily life as well as the philosophical realm considering essential questions about what it is to be a human. It’s dense brush but Jason seeks answers where murkiness holds sway.
A Few Theoretical Influences: Louis Althusser, Isaac Asimov, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Aime Cesaire, Carol Clover, John Cummings, Kurt Cobain, Jacques Derrida, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Antonio Gramsci, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Hobbes, Agnes Martin, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Max Weber
In my elementary school the seventh grade was the last before entering high school. This was a fact our teachers ceaselessly reminded us of. One of the sternest warnings we received was about what a sociology text might call ?the rigidity of bell structures.? In other words, tardiness was not tolerated. I still recall my… Read more »
In my last article I described how Israeli settlers overcame the dichotomy of school smart/life smart by forming communal farms known as kibbutzim. In the lands of Palestine, which are currently occupied to varying extents by the state of Israel, education has taken a different turn. Perhaps nowhere else can postmodern social theory be better… Read more »
The concept of ?school smart? as compared to ?life smart? permeates every corner of society and the schooling that takes place within it. From elementary school onward, students feel a conflict between what they will actually use in the ?real world? and what they are being taught in class. It is interesting, then, to find… Read more »
When we as Canadians learn about our education system we usually start with what we call the colonial period. For us, this historical era entails the French and then British presence in our part of North America. In other parts of the world as in Canada, colonialism also involved the domination of indigenous cultures by… Read more »
It seems doubtful that any teacher in Canada would deny that an important aspect of education is to mould young people into well-rounded adults. A holistic approach combining practical with interpersonal knowledge is generally espoused by well-meaning educators as well as parents. Yet there are many contradictions because we tend to value production, consumption, and… Read more »
When I was growing up in a suburb of Vancouver, my school occasionally conducted an earthquake drill, which basically consisted of us crawling under our desks and giggling at one another. Invariably one comedic-minded student would knock his desk over as he stood up. For us, an earthquake seemed a remote possibility and in any… Read more »
Sunday School versus Weekday School: Parallel Church and State Developments in Post-Colonial Morocco For most students who grew up in Canada during the last few decades, school meant reading, writing, and math with a dose of socialization on the side. Some students, myself included, also had a ?bonus? morning of school as part of church… Read more »
This article originally appeared July 10, 2009, in issue 1727. 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… Read more »
The palpable excitement of winter holidays has warmed the hearts of students for many generations. Here in North America the majority of pupils have participated in Christmas traditions with varying degrees of religiosity. Surpassed only by the ubiquitous Santa Claus, the Christmas tree is one of the most emblematic symbols of winter break. Throughout the… Read more »
?Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.? These words, written by a woman named Anne Mansfield Sullivan, could apply to any teaching situation. As students we express ourselves most completely when we are guided in a direction that stimulates our creative desires. This… Read more »