The Final Theorists in the Sequence (Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse)

 

Turn the critical perspective toward personal and cultural questions, and particularly to questions about the form and functions of bureaucratic institutions (such as schools) and how they act to shape human behavior, and constrain human freedom.
Specific to schools, colleges, other institutions of education, how do these organizations constrain and restrict the behavior of students? How do they limit freedom or push human thought and behavior in specific directions so as to protect their (the institutions) own power?
Assignment: for the institution of education (the type of institution not the specific one) in which you work—analyze that organization under these questions (the ones in the paragraph above). Further, using your creativity and ability to dream, how might the challenges and problems inherent in this type of institution be more accommodating of individual human freedom, less bureaucratic, and less institution-focused? I want to finish the assignment strand by moving into this opportunity to dream and create with respect to our own professional lives.
================