Time magazine, in recognition of what they suggest might be a ‘global tipping point for frustration’, announced the 2011 Person of the Year as ‘The Protestor’ (December 2011). Time’s assertion of a ‘global tipping point’ may well be correct or how else can we view the fact that political acts and activism, from the publishing of Wikileaks; the Arab Spring; Greek demonstrations against austerity measures; the Occupy movement; to recent anti-Putin demonstrations in Russia, continue to take centre stage in world news? What is clear from this year’s global, political dissent is that more localized or niche concerns have become part of a larger perception that people might, or should, challenge the global machine comprising of governments, banks and corporations, where previously they felt powerless: ‘[the protestors] literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change’ (Time 2011).
Much of this year’s activism has been directed at global capitalism and at the need for democracy: the Occupy movement’s war cry has been ‘We are the 99 percent’, referencing the divide between the majority of people and the 1% in whose hands, they claim, power and money lie (http://occupywallst.org/).
To look at education as a microcosm of society, then, it is useful to consider two central concerns within Higher Education presently which directly relate to the above issues; the commodification of education and the notion of the student experience, related to democratization through the notion of choice.
(continue withn politics and education....)