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ShayBanerjeeFirstEssay 10 - 04 Oct 2015 - Main.ShayBanerjee
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| | | Lizzie, I greatly admire your repeated attempts to assuage two competing approaches to social action, but I fear that you have missed the point. Here you simply restate the perceived benefits of the incumbent approach without fully engaging with the central criticism brought by the insurgent. This makes sense to you because a recurring theme underlying your argument is that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and that so long as the incumbent appears even slightly productive, it is undeniably worth our time. That belief is erroneous and must be corrected before we continue this discussion any further. | |
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< | By approaching this subject the way you have, you are de-politicizing an essentially political decision that is shaping our common life together. To teach a subject one way involves a conscious choice to not teach it another way. Students are at liberty to question that choice, which is undeniably political. Teachers are obliged to explain it. | >
> | By approaching this subject the way you have, you are de-politicizing an essentially political decision that is shaping our common life together. To teach a subject one way involves a conscious choice not to teach it another way. Students are at liberty to question that choice, which is undeniably political. Teachers are obliged to explain it. | | | As far as I can tell, the purpose of this class is - or ought to be - to teach law students how to drive social impact using the Internet. The question hidden beneath our entire discussion (until the end of this sentence) is simple: Is the curriculum that we have purchased the optimal way to fulfill that goal? | |
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< | As I have stated, based on my personal experience and understanding of social theory (both of which are admittedly less expansive than Eben’s), it is not clear to me that mass distribution of knowledge resources constitutes the most productive form of social action (or even close to it). There are ways to teach law that at once center on the Internet and also are more overtly materialist. For whatever reason, we have chosen one and not the others. | >
> | As I have stated, based on my personal experience and understanding of social theory (both of which are admittedly less expansive than Eben’s), it is not clear to me that mass distribution of knowledge resources constitutes the most productive form of social action (or even close to it). There are ways to teach law that at once center on the Internet and also are more overtly materialist, striking directly at social injustice/poverty rather than relying on the additional assumption that knowledge will be used productively by others. For whatever reason, we have chosen one way to teach and not the others. | | | Here we are socially conscious and talented individuals sitting in one of the most privileged institutions in the world. Why are we not learning how to use the Internet to fight economic inequality, reduce the cost of living, and restructure governmental institutions? Why are those being written off as secondary goals to take a back seat to discussions about IP laws, free education, and data privacy? The answers to those questions involve some sort of judgment about what it means to be a lawyer in the Internet society (and also a judgment about the definition of human freedom). I do not think I am out of line demanding an adequate explanation about where that judgment came from. |
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