Chris Hedges spoke at West Virginia State University last year just before Occupy Wall Street. He begins about 15 minutes into the video. A highly recommended watch this weekend. For me, his best talk to date.
Dora
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The problem, as I see it, is twofold. The erosion of the view that education is a “public good” and the consequential loss of funding that that view has wrought. This makes education more of an economic liability and causes us to focus on how we’re going to pay off the debt that education incurs. The intrinsic value of higher education is in the diversity of subjects and specialties that is offers, not the economic viability that those areas of study can potentially bring us. We should be able to study something of interest, something that will enrich us personally. Something that ignites our passions and interests. Otherwise, we are in danger of becoming a slave population where our value boils down to a dollar sign. What a sad say that would be…