On tools and individual desire
“Educators inspired by the technological approach often want to empower their students by equipping them with a powerful toolkit of socially important knowledge,skills, attitudes, and values that would open limitless possibilities for the students in their future. However, these educators seem to forget that what makes a tool a tool is individual desire. Without human desire of the individual, a tool is a dead thing. But for many school years, students’ desire remained unwelcome in the classroom as the students have to constantly do what the teacher assigns them to do throughout a school day, a school year, and the entire school term. Even when a student’s desire overlaps with the school curriculum, many teachers worry that the student’s lively academic interest can highly jeopardize their control over the flow of instruction and the curriculum preplanned by them (Kennedy, 2005)…”
E. Matusov (2011) in Authorial Teaching and Learning