Rhizomatic learning ~ WMD...

It all started so well. Swimmingly. Massive participation, fervour, willingness to serve. We were so impatient to tear down the walls, we were so aware of the short-comings of their education.

#RHIZO14 Call to arms! Hurrah!
Then the clearly voiced instructions started to grate. "I want you to investigate how you can use Rhizomatic Learning as a Weapon." was what I remembered him saying. I, like the others, had had this planned for years. Revenge was nigh, the years of humiliation were coming to an end.

Not so hasty mates!


It dawned on me, draftily,  I can not sleep, God damn you Cormier! We all have bloody work to do, and this is an unwelcome distraction. We have to educate them, for God's sake, for the country's sake, for the planet's sake.

Not so hasty mates!

I was hastier than most, so eager to wield newly found weapons, powerful weapons, massively cons/des/ins/tructive weapons.

Awesome!!! 

Tired, in front of the Experts, I browsed the columns of the Guardian.

Madness!!  

Those bloody rhizomatic connections led me here, at 5 o'clock in the morning, half-dressed, half awake. Fuck it.

Thanks a lot mate!

Lest we forget...
2014 is not so far away from 1914, that I can remember the boys, my ancestors who served. They flew, my friends, the first aeroplanes, they signed up, they bore their weapons with pride. Heroism beckoned them to dig their trenches. They ducked, they duck-boarded, they made brave faces of it, together... until disillusion struck.

The telegram arrived, I have the copy, I have the despatches, I have images of the tidily cared for plot. He was the age of my son.

Poetry, war poets.
#Rhizo14 started so well, already friends met, poems written, new lands glimpsed. But, I am here, at 5:13 this morning to announce with regret that I shall not be following orders, I shall show patience where before I had the hot-head of my own unfettered passion.

Fight not over the ruins of a crumbling sand-castle. Its time is numbered by the coming tides.
The Rhizome is a pathetic weapon, used in the wrong hands, to impress the locals, to impress the girls. Pick the irises if you will. Decorate your offices, if you must. But don't miss the point. There is no point. Leave them alone, the dinosaurs will disappear without our willing. Let's use our time well.

Sing, dance, be merry while we can. There is much good company to be had.
When I am gone, the boys will lay down their arms, will sing their songs, and will drill past the weapons of the past barely noticed.

They will drill to plant seeds, they will see the seasons turn, they will learn, living together apart from us.

Let the ivory tower crumble, the massively 'open' 'online' courses run their course, cheat the system if you must but don't forget the others, or we are the system we despise.

No Mr Cormier I shall not. I shall be patient in my passion.

Bah!  humbug...

I no longer believe in Santa Claus.