Reflective Questions:

1. What effect does the privatisation of knowledge by corporations have on freedom of information? Discuss with reference to Aaron Swartz's Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto.
2. How can we create curriculums that encourage students to read the world critically?
3. Explore what is meant by Henry Giroux’s contention that “power works through the production, distribution and consumption of knowledge within particular institutional contexts and seeks to constitute students as informed subjects and social agents”.
4. Explore whether it is important to create a space in Universities where students have “unconditional freedom to question and assert” (Giroux)
5. Examine how you might respond to some of the questions that Giroux poses: “What is the role of teachers and academics as public intellectuals? Whose interests does public and higher education serve? How might it be possible to understand and engage the diverse contexts in which education takes place? What is the role of education as a public good? How do we make knowledge meaningful in order to make it critical and transformative?”
6. Paulo Freire argued that for education to enable freedom, it must attempt to expand the possibilities for human agency and this in turn will enable democracy. Discuss.
7. Examine education as a crucial site of struggle.
8. Examine the link between social inequality and educational inequality.
9. "Subjects of Western scholarship are enduringly pale, male (and often stale); where people of colour do appear, they are all too often tokenistically represented, spoken on behalf of, or reduced to objects of scholarship" (Bhambra et al 2018). Discuss.
10. The current use of technology is "hijacking our minds and society" (Disinformation and 'Fake News' Final Report Parliament). Discuss.