To educate for initiative and courage

This interview is incredible. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are deeply articulate and endlessly committed to living lives that exemplify the change they want to see in the world. They describe a kind of everyday resistance I admire. In listening to this, I realized that there are many ways in which I have not yet entirely embodied my ideals and need an occasional reminder that silence and inaction are affirmation and complicity to that which is ethically objectionable and inhumane. We each must invent our own ways to contribute to the human endeavor to love and progress as a people lest the corporate-political, military-industrial project of fear and greed infiltrate our lives completely. Below is an excerpt in which Ayers describes his view on the necessity of education for an enlightened society.

..."So, the question is, who gets to set the agenda? ...[W]hat makes education in a democracy distinct? And I would argue that what makes education in a democracy distinct is that we don’t educate for obedience and conformity; we educate for initiative and courage. We educate for imagination and hope and possibility. And we recognize that the full development of each person requires the full development of all people. Or another way of saying it is, the full development of all is the condition whereby we can educate each. And that shifting of the frame is so important. And frankly, I’m hopeful that in this period of rising expectations, of rethinking so much, that this is where we can go."