I hate case studies. A lot. They’re beautiful for story-telling and quirky books we can keep, like oral traditions and love poems. I just don’t find case studies particularly engaging. Yes, people can manipulate statistics ’til their face turns indigo, but people can hyperbolize the effect of one or two people without making sure that there’s a pattern for said behavior.
Except when it comes to Malcolm X.
Whenever he comes up in the discussion about whether our students need school, I lose my tongue. He is the essential answer to the question, “What’s the difference between education and schooling?” So many of us are caught up in pretty ed-tech solutions, teacher talk, and data enumeration, we forget the bare essentials and how we have yet to find real, concrete, and plausible solutions for as many students as possible, which is always the goal. How do we discuss those secondary parts of education when the more rudimentary parts of our pedagogy get completely ignored?
Subscribe to continue reading
Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.