Friday, September 18, 2009

Cracked article mentions unschooling

I love cracked.com - it's a humor website, but many of the articles are genuinely informative as well. I was reading this article, called "What if Kanye West is Retarded?", and was enjoying it, but cringed when I got to the part about Kanye "railing against education". Knowing the mainstream tendency to confuse being anti-school with being anti-intellectual, I had a feeling I knew what was coming. But when I actually read it, I was pleasantly surprised:

"For two whole albums, Kanye rails against college and education in general. At first glance, it seems likely that he detects some discrimination in Chicago’s public school system. It’s possible, based on his own success that occurred independent of formal schooling, that he thinks the whole system is inefficient, or that the wrong set of skills are being encouraged. That’s admirable. Plenty of intelligent people embrace unschooling, a practice that seeks effective alternatives to conventional education.

If Kanye West is retarded, it means that he wrote two albums attacking college because he gets frustrated with complex numbers and words that are a) longer than three syllables and b) not written in all caps."

THANK YOU, DANIEL O'BRIEN. This is the first time I have ever EVER seen a mainstream source (inasmuch as popular comedy websites are considered 'mainstream') clearly delineate between being opposed to school and being opposed to learning. That the article mentioned unschooling directly and favorably seems almost too good to be true. So awesome.

4 comments:

Idzie Desmarais said...

Wow, that really is awesome!

Unknown said...

That is awesome! Comedians are often on the cutting edge of truth, honesty, and common sense!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Netzi said...

I read that too, two or three months ago. Cracked gets more love from me. :D