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Matt Hern

Auteur de Deschooling Our Lives

16+ oeuvres 419 utilisateurs 5 critiques

A propos de l'auteur

Matt Hern is Codirector of 2+10 Industries, teaches at multiple universities, and lectures widely. He is the author of Common Ground in a Liquid City.

Comprend les noms: Matt Hearn

Crédit image: Matt Hern

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Partage des connaissances

Date de naissance
20th Century
Sexe
male
Nationalité
Canada
Lieux de résidence
East Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Études
? (PhD|Urban Studies)

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Critiques

Meh.

The concept--three west-coast treehuggers traveling to the tar sands to get a fuller understanding of climate change and the impacts of the economic transitions required--was very interesting. The end product was confused.

There was so much academic discourse based on the reading they'd done before they left or the conversations they had with academics that I don't fully understand what they gained from their travels; conversations with Fort Mac locals were few and far between, and observations of the town itself (it's just like any other place! Fort Mac workers need the money! Mostly they're just like us!) were banal. Their argument that calling climate change what it is--an emergency--would usher in authoritarianism was superficially interesting, but lacked evidence, and the experts they spoke to disagreed (not that this altered their conclusion). The benefit of downplaying its emergency aspect was never described or made clear (something like, if we pretend it's not an emergency that's already killing hundreds of thousands of people a year, we can give ourselves the space to solve this democratically--but of course we can't, because there's no fucking pause button on the global carbon cycle). There was a lot of academic language about the theoretical structure or basis of possible answers to dislocations resulting from the required economic transitions, but no discussion of what that might look like in any practical terms or how to effect such a radical political proposition within the timelines imposed by the science. Proposing that answers to the climate crisis must be positive and provide an attractive future are not as revolutionary as they seem to think; the challenge is in developing a vision of that alternative future in enough detail that people can picture it and aspire to it. That's not here.

I did appreciate learning about the concept of "the sweetness of life" as created/applied in Latin America, and I found it interesting to read this in 2019 while governments everywhere declare climate emergencies and talk about the Green New Deal (as a kind of counterpoint to their arguments), but mostly I finished this book thinking that these three guys know a lot less about climate change than they think they do, and I can't believe there wasn't a single reference to the IPCC or their reports or the scientific conclusions or *anything* in the entire book. A whole book about climate change stuffed to the brim with political theory and entirely absent of a single scientific fact. What on earth was the point?
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
andrea_mcd | Mar 10, 2020 |
Felt like a bit of a mess, but the second half of this book is brimming with ideas to do in your own neighborhood.
 
Signalé
simonspacecadet | Jul 29, 2018 |
quick with pointers about what living in a city can, should and shouldn't be about.
 
Signalé
simonspacecadet | 1 autre critique | Jul 29, 2018 |
I'd already read Hern's Deschooling Our Lives but found much to inspire in this expanded, revised version. There's not much here if you're looking for "how to" information, but the essays are provocative and lead you to take a step back from the daily journey that homeschooling/deschooling/unschooling and take a broader view of what your family is doing and why. Now, I'm all fired up again.

Also, the global nature of the essays was extraordinary.
 
Signalé
beckydj | Mar 31, 2013 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
16
Aussi par
1
Membres
419
Popularité
#58,191
Évaluation
3.8
Critiques
5
ISBN
21

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