Education versus technology: Educationally oppressed, technologically emancipated

Abstract

This research analyses tweets, interviews and observations to grasp power relations between oppressive education and liberative technology in Arab contexts. It ascertains that liberative technology may limit oppressive education and unveils that oppressive education may restrict liberative technology or exploit technology as instruments for further oppression. It discloses that oppressive education may apply liberative technology to oppress itself or may tolerate liberative technology to gain vested interests. It reasons that students may use technology to counter-oppress oppressive education, meaning that education and students undertake repressive ‘battles’, turning oppression into a lifestyle. It proclaims that students may, online, incite the public against education. It indicates that, in societies where the crowd is more powerful than authorities, oppressed students can, virtually, unite against oppressive education, meaning that ‘the oppressed’ (students) becomes more powerful than ‘the oppressor’ (education). The take-home message is that, despite the growing philosophisation of technology as oppressive tools, individuals are, as found by this article, not powerless, as they can turn technologies into liberative tools and develop emancipation out of oppression. A further proposition to be drawn from the findings is that students are not apolitically decent, as they can encounter downward oppression with even crueller upward oppression.