Education Divested

September 28, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

Here in New Jersey, as in Wisconsin and elsewhere, the governor has been attacking educators and cutting education budgets, and educators have been doing their best to fight back. 

In France too, professors are trying to win public support against the “depouillement” of education.  The word literally means stripping or skinning, leaving something bare, and it carries the same connotations as the English “fleecing.”  So the profs have posed, depouillé, for a calendar. 


The writing on the blackboard carries a message appropriate both to the academic area and to the protest.  The double meaning gets lost in a literal translation.  “Let’s do economics, not budget-cutting.”

The decreasing function in math is more obvious.


As you might expect, the conservative reaction laments that by doing something that might win public opinion to their side, the profs “dévalorisaient la profession.”  Of course, if you really want to “devalue” something, you  reduce the money you allocate to it, which is what the government is doing. 


View and download all twelve months here, all safe for work.  The calendar begins with Septembre 2011, so you’d better hurry.

HT:  Maîtresse

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