Invitation
Public Education | Participatory Democracy is an invitation to imagine education differently. I invite you, as viewers|readers, into the counterstories and activism of marginalized and displaced communities as they struggle to claim their education at a time when receiving it is threatened. I offer up the challenge to envision education that values and works for all of us, not simply those privileged. To accept such a challenge requires understanding what has happened through educational policy and law to people (students, teachers, school personnel, parents), their neighborhoods, and communities. We need a collective understanding, beyond the needs of one's individual family to explore and make real a vision for education suitable for a democracy.
The project puts aside more common questions about asymmetrical power relations:
Who are the winners and the losers?
Who makes the rules?
What do the winners tell the loser so they keep playing?
>These questions focus the attention on the winners, rule makers, and hide the impact of structures they built. Instead i ask—How do those who lose show the consequences of the game and work to make another reality? While the previous questions illuminate what people fight against, my question explores what people struggle for and how they do it. This work
Document & Chronicle; Describe & Contextualize; Analytical & Theoretical; Invitation;
