A herd of freely associating, autonomous cats.

Posted on 23rd February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Cats, cats, cats by Scott Granneman from St. Louis, MO, USA (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

At the moment some of us are attempting to finish an article about the collaborative autoethnography we’ve been working on since the second week of #rhizo14 (the first rMOOC?). One thing we’re attempting to characterise is the way that we zigzagged between different platforms (such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and all the more creative platforms that the more talented also used), moving in a messy, rhizomatic way, having different conversations with different parts of the swarm as we went along – and sometimes drawing others not part of #rhizo14 into our conversations as they saw our tweets, blog posts and everything we produced.  As I was wondering if any of us had blogged about it previously, and was also searching our Facebook group for something else, I came across this description from Scott of our collective:

A herd of freely associating, autonomous cats.

We don’t usually quote publicly what we say on Facebook, but that is a lovely way of describing us.

Cats, cats, cats by Scott Granneman from St. Louis, MO, USA (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Posted in #rhizo14, D&G, MOOC, Rhizomes, Writing | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Scribbling all over the place.

Posted on 19th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine
Puffin colouring book by Jonny Morris and scribbles by me :http://jonnymorris.deviantart.com/art/Puffin-Colouring-Book-65351061

Puffin colouring book by Jonny Morris and scribbles by me :http://jonnymorris.deviantart.com/art/Puffin-Colouring-Book-65351061

I’ve never been one to toe the line: my automatic reaction to being told I must do something is to say no, and I spend way longer looking for ways to thwart bureaucracy than obeying its diktats.  And I loathe those trite children’s colouring books – ugh.  So when I woke up this morning to find two wonderful pieces of writing: Coloring Outside the Lines by Maha and then COLOURING OUTSIDE THE LINES – REFLECTIONS INSPIRED BY MAHA BALI’S POST by Tania I was thrilled.

 

They both talk, in their different ways, about the problems of how we assess student learning – Maha (writing about her three year old) notes that:

In a school entry assessment they ask kids to color something in and i am pretty sure they are checking for fine motor skills of coloring inside the lines

While Tania says that:

My youngest failed a  cognitive test when he was three because he didn’t complete a drawing like he was supposed to.

Wow – three years old and already failures.  Something’s going wrong here.  Very wrong.

These pieces made me think about the problem of designing authentic assessment.  Instead of looking at all of the creative, interesting things that learners can do, all too often the focus is placed upon what it is easy to assess.  And, by so doing, we remove the fun from learning and (all too often) turn it into training.

 

Posted in #MoocMooc, Learning | 1 Comment

Institutionalisation of values

Posted on 18th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.  Rousseau, Social Contract, Book 1

I’m teaching my first years Rousseau and I’m (meant to be) reading Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society – everywhere I look there are critiques of the state and its institutions.  I have not read Illich for years, but the point I took from him was that the state “schools” its citizens to:

accept service in place of value.  Illich p4

We are “schooled” to believe that the state provides for all our needs, and that we cannot do without it, but this “institutionalisation of values” turns us into cultural paupers.

 Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control, constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.  Rousseau, Emile, p16

Why do we allow the state to continue?  Are D&G right to say that:

“The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?” D&G Anti-Oedipus p38

Stockholm syndrome?  Or something else?

(Sorry this is a really short piece – no time to smell the flowers this week.)

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Anarchy

Posted on 8th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

As my old supervisor, Dudley Knowles, used to say, the anarchist is not typically found skulking outside the Houses of Parliament with a bomb beneath her long, black coat – the philosophical anarchist is a gentle soul with a belief in the innate goodness of her fellow humans.  Well, I exaggerate, but my anarchism stems from a belief in my right to determine how I should act without a state looming over me and threatening me with sanctions if I do not play its nasty little games.  I reject the neoliberal values of the government at Westminster because they are not my values; I reject the authority of any state to rule over me for reasons that Wolff states far more eloquently than  can:

The defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule. The primary obligation of man is autonomy, the refusal to be ruled. It would seem, then, that there can be no resolution of the conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the putative authority of the state. Insofar as a man fulfills his obligation to make himself the author of his decisions, he will resist the state’s claim to have authority over him. That is to say, he will deny that he has a duty to obey the laws of the state simply because they are the laws. In that sense, it would seem that anarchism is the only political doctrine consistent with the virtue of autonomy. Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism I, 3

This picture of anarchism is not a world without rules, but a society without a ruler.  Anarchy is not, as some have thought, a place of chaos, it is the freedom to think for ourselves.*  It comes with a belief in the ability of humans to think for themselves, and to act from their conscience as an inner policeman rather than out of fear of punishment. I may be dubious that such a society can ever come to pass, but I hold it as an ideal and dream of a society where I can skip around and smell the pretty flowers.

Now to think about how to use these ideas to make my classroom a better place …

* I started saying this sort of thing earlier, on Ann’s blog

Posted in #MoocMooc, Philosophy, Politics | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Sapere Aude

Posted on 7th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

In 1784 Kant asked a question: What is Enlightenment? His answer was that it was having the courage to use one’s own reason: Sapere Aude –  dare to be wise. In order for this to happen, he said, we must be free to publicly air our views  about injustices we perceive, while privately obeying the laws of the state.  So as a citizen I must pay my taxes, as a scholar I can (must!) at the same time argue that is it immoral of the Tory government to give tax cuts to the rich while at the same time making devastating cuts to public services.  Note, as Foucault does, in his 1974 essay of the same name, that this is a twist on the usual interpretation of freedom of conscience, which is the ” the right to think as one pleases so long as one obeys as one must”.  Kant is not interested in giving us a right to think as we please in private, rather he imposes upon us, as intellectuals, a duty to speak up publicly when the State is unfair, or allows injustice. I am not always a fan of Kant, but this seems right: if I see injustice and have a public voice then I should use that voice to fight for what is right.

I remembered this earlier this week when I read Giroux* talking about “the responsibility of teachers as public intellectuals”.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?

* Giroux, Henri. (2011) On Critical Pedagogy p73

Portrait of Immanuel Kant by unspecified (/History/Carnegie/kant/portrait.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Posted in #MoocMooc, Critical pedagogy, Philosophy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Being a good libertarian

Posted on 4th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

There are a few passages is Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed where he talks about (or is translated as talking about) libertarian education.  For example:

The raison d’etre of libertarian education, on the other hand, lies in its drive towards reconciliation. Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

This was troubling me, as I associate libertarianism with the neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher (and we Scots really, really do not like Thatcher).  But then I realised (see my earlier post from today) that it was also possible to be a left libertarian, and further that this was actually where my political sympathies already lay – and that although I’d always called myself an anarchist, libertarian socialist was a much neater way of describing my political beliefs.

The term “libertarian” has an idiosyncratic usage in the US and Canada, reflecting, I suppose, the unusual power of business in these societies. In the European tradition, “libertarian socialism” (“socialisme libertaire”) was the anti-state branch of the socialist movement: anarchism (in the European, not the US sense). (Chomsky, interview from the Leiter Reports)

Posted in #MoocMooc, Freire | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Political compass

Posted on 4th February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

pcgraphpng

A lot of us talk about people being left wing or right wing, but actually there is also another axis on which to measure: authoritarian/libertarian.  There is a political compass that you can use to check out where you lie on this – this is mine. I go back and check from time to time to make sure I am not “making peace with the establishment”.  It seems that I am not 🙂

Posted in #MoocMooc | Tagged , | 6 Comments

The pedagogical is always political

Posted on 2nd February 2015 by NomadWarMachine

337px-Fist.svgI grew up hearing the feminist mantra that “the personal is political” (I always misquote that, and add an “always”, maybe because I believe it needs to be emphasised). It means different things to different people, but to me it means that humans are not discrete individuals who are parachuted into society at birth, we are born into a culture and are inextricably interlinked with other people.  No (hu)man is an island.  As Aristotle says, a (hu)man is a zoon politikon – (a political, or social, animal) – it is part of our nature to be thus.  My personal actions have an effect upon those around me, as do theirs on me – the personal is also political.

It has a more sinister undertone, as well, for me.  It reminds me that I am part of a 21st century capitalist society, whether I like it or not, and all of my actions and all of my thoughts are a result of the State Apparatus that looms over us all.  I was educated by the State, for the good of the State.  Here by the grace of the State go I.

And there is more.  The State educated the educators, and the State dictates the curriculum: the pedagogical is also political.

So, for me, the problem with modern pedagogy is not that it is not political, it is rather that it is political in the wrong way.  It reinforces a neo-liberal ideology.  The pedagogical does not need to be more  political, but it does need a better politics to drive it.

[I]t seems imperative that educators revitalize the struggles to create conditions in which learning would be linked to social change in a wide variety of social sites, and pedagogy would take on the task of regenerating both a renewed sense of social and political agency and a critical subversion of dominant power itself (Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy, p71).

Enter the Nomad War Machine …

Posted in #MoocMooc, Critical pedagogy | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A poet who didn’t know it?

Posted on 30th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I have been introduced to the rather lovely Poetweet which has made this for me and this

In principle
by Sarah Honeychurch

You should meet and
When the speaker does not engage.
I’m calling on to stop in Scotland
Aye, it could be the first stage.

I’d like an account, please.
Will try to do one about discomfort
Only, feel free to paraphrase
Thoughts. Tired, so very short:

End. Call me Wendy, not Norman 😉
About rhizomes and dandelions
I am not a number, I am a free man
Start gives wrong connotations
Great quote by Scott Freeman

*******************************

Agree norms
by Sarah Honeychurch

Is a useful eye opener 2/2
😛 Will keep my eyes peeled
Earlier, then had to cook dinner

Teaching. Love the “human” aspect
Are also good to read alongside
Would that be a subtellect?

Change that as soon as I get home

Forward to meeting you in Scotland.

Posted in #MoocMooc, Poetry | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Uncomfortable thoughts

Posted on 30th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

A philosophical problem has the form: “I don’t know my way about”.  Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 123

Philosophy makes my head hurt. It’s hard, and it makes me think, and it challenges me to justify my inchoate beliefs when I just want to relax and watch TV.  It’s confusing, and it’s challenging, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  And sometimes it makes me, and my students, think about uncomfortable things.

I care about my students – I really do.  I try to make my classes safe spaces for them to learn how to do philosophy.  I structure and scaffold tutorials so that they can gain confidence in their abilities, and sometimes I leave the room so that they can talk without feeling so self-conscious.  I try to make them feel comfortable practising philosophy, and learning to voice their philosophical opinions.  But sometimes it is necessary to cause them mental discomfort – to get them to think through moral and political problems:

  • Is eating meat murder?
  • Is euthanasia morally permissible?
  • How should we treat our criminals?
  • Why do we have a Tory government (can we blow up Westminster)?
  • And so forth.

And these issues are hard to think about.

We talked about this in our #moocmooc chat this week, and all but one of us were agreeing that discomfort was not a bad thing, and we were not sociopaths for (sometimes) trying to cause our students such feelings.

But sometimes I just want to switch off.  I want to watch TV, play with my cats or do my knitting without a million pesky thoughts flying around in my head.  As Wittgenstein says:

The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 133

Image by KylaMay from Deviant Art http://kylamay.deviantart.com/<br />
art/The-Confused-24558778

Posted in #MoocMooc, Learning, Philosophy, Teaching, Wittgenstein | Tagged , , | Leave a comment