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I second Alan's view (his message is below) of the student protests, and would like to extend support also to protesting Irish students, who are facing very similar problems. Both in Ireland and the UK, the intensity and scale of student protests have increased sharply in recent months, and an increase in police brutality has been common on both sides of the water also.

 

The educational environment in Ireland is marked by higher student numbers, rising lecturer-student ratios, cuts in capital spending, the casualization of all employment relations on campus and, most insidious of all, a shift towards the evaluation of education in terms of merely economic outputs. The thuggery of educational policy is a policy that breeds more thuggery, greed and materialism.

 

As a film lecturer (here is my reason why this post is relevant to this forum), I try to educate my students about the political economy in which film is made and consumed, and in which they find themselves. Film education is a means of encouraging ethical and political engagement in a society where such an activity is deemed unquantifiable and therefore suspect. There are many terms that we can use to name the values that we would like future generations to champion - fairness, non-domination, inclusion, equality, sustainability, ethical responsibility, solidarity, community, skepticism, independence, wisdom, resistance, or whatever you're having yourself.

 

However we identify these values, there is little doubt that they are under threat by educational policies across Europe. I think it is the role of film lecturers, scholars and others to stand up to this, to demonstrate to our students that standing up to this is worthwhile, and to attempt to carve out at least one niche of the humanities where resistance is alive and well. 

 

Cormac

 

Alan wrote:

 

Hello everyone,
I just want to raise my voice in support of our brave and committed students, who are today out on the streets fighting this
completely anti-democratic legislation that is an attack on the foundations of our culture. From now on only the rich and those
enthralled by the paranoid individualism of consumerism will be afforded an 'education'. because this is so blatantly
anti-democratic the sons and daughters of the working class who have found employment in the police force are now in the position
of defending, by force, the laws that are designed to deny their children an education. (remember Pasolini?) Everywhere the
paradox of parliamentary democracy is  displayed and everywhere this spectacle is denied by the mediations that reproduce it.
Victory to the students.
Peace
Alan