Okay, perhaps so I understand this better - how would you design the curriculum? Genuine question.

-- LizzieOShea - 08 Oct 2015

Gregg, thank you for your perspective, but I think you also might be de-politicizing. Your comment reads as if we have not been told that our freedom is linked to the free software movement, as if we have not been fed an insular body of literature, as if we have not been told that tending to human brains achieves more than tending to human bodies, as if it has not been implied that Mark Zuckerberg is a greater threat than, say, Agribusiness or Big Oil. In other words, you write as if there are no power relations governing the makeup of this curriculum.

If there are impoverished children in India expressing their ingenuity and curiosity through computers and in ultimate pursuit of socioeconomic change, perhaps those stories should be told instead of discussed in the abstract. That would actually convince me about the merits of the free software movement. Until then, all I am hearing about in these readings and lectures are a group of society's most privileged individuals who so love their privilege they decided to give it a name: "Revolution."

To be blunt, I simply do not believe that starving children half a world away are engaging in the same sort of intellectual endeavors that we are under the shadow of the ivory tower. I believe those children are hungry and want us to help get them food. Until I see evidence of the former, I would rather structure our learning environment on the latter. I'm sorry if that demand comes off as impatient or cynical. But, as a racial minority, I have been lectured enough by those in power about what my freedom looks like to approach this whole thing with a certain degree of skepticism.

-- ShayBanerjee - 07 Oct 2015